Why marketing operations teams are central to business strategy and performance: Seven learnings from Mopza 2025
This year’s Mops-Apooloza in Anaheim was inspiring, showcasing just how much marketing operations teams are innovating. We live in a transformative time for MOps teams, and not just due to AI. Marketers are being asked to balance two equally important business priorities: a better customer experience is needed to generate hotter leads, yet CMOs are simultaneously demanding streamlined campaign launch timeframes and increased marketing efficiency.
1: Marketing and business strategy must come first
Marketing operations has a critical role in achieving both those objectives. To do that, MOps teams must be aligned with the rest of the marketing organisation as well as the wider business.
Building campaigns is no longer enough: MOps needs to be part of the overall marketing strategy. The function has a key role to play in breaking down the silos holding back marketing performance, while also building the capabilities necessary for the campaigns of tomorrow. Effective use of technology and data allows for deeper personalisation and better campaign outcomes, but only if systems and process are aligned to overall business objectives. To deliver those improvements, MOps teams need to understand the overall goals and strategy driving the campaign framework they’re tasked with implementing.
2: Efficiency is a critical C-Level mandate
Efficiency is king right now. It’s the number one priority in the boardroom. It’s what the CMO is talking to the CEO about. This drive for improved productivity is a major opportunity for marketing operations to achieve recognition and deliver real value to the business.
Sure, the CEO may not understand the difference between AI and automation, but that should be seen as an opportunity rather than a problem. AI hype is the business case for MOps teams to streamline manual workflows, improve data quality and automate complex processes. Not only does that reduce the workload on overstretched MOps teams, but it also allows marketers to bring more effective campaigns to market.
3: Data quality is essential
Meanwhile, more effective use of data can drive marketing and sales alignment, thereby increasing funnel velocity and conversion rates. The trouble is, data quality is not getting any better. Additional data sources and additional data categories introduce additional complexity, which only compounds any existing data cleanliness challenges.
Fortunately, AI provides an excuse to kickstart long-stalled data transformation initiatives. The C-suite has long been aware of the data quality challenges facing the business. For once, they’re also interested in fixing it. MOps has the chance to leverage AI hype to implement the data integration and data cleansing workflows they always wanted. You don’t even have to integrate AI Into the data layer, although there are use cases for it.
4: Meaningful attribution is a realistic ambition
AI is already a fact of life in some areas of marketing. It’s driving an acute need for better cross-channel reporting. The decline in SEO means that the business wants more information about the effectiveness of organic and third-party channels that have previously been neglected.
Fortunately, this is a challenge that vendors and marketers are working on solving. Comprehensive reporting requires the same integrated data pipelines and predictive models needed to deliver AI. Centralising analytics data and building marketer-friendly dashboards must happen as part of the broader AI roadmap that the board is demanding. MOps is the only business function capable of delivering it.
5: AI is just another tool
AI was everywhere at Mopza. Every conversation touched on it. Every breakout session talked about it. Yet, despite being an ever-present topic, the technology attracted surprisingly little hype. Instead, there was a down-to-earth discussion around what the technology can do, and the steps needed to make it happen.
Two key concerns were repeatedly raised at the event: data and governance. Data is a well understood problem. AI adds another layer of complexity to the long-standing data quality challenges. Governance is a much less understood issue, but just as important.
6: Strong governance frameworks are non-negotiable
Hallucination is the key blocker to successful AI implementation. Oversight is critical in overcoming all these issues, but the question of how to implement human-in-the-loop processes was a major talking point.
Addressing data quality is only one part of the challenge, because no AI will ever be 100% reliable. A probabilistic solution will always give unpredictable and occasionally inaccurate results. The need to mix AI with traditional automation workflows was well understood – even if the technology to do it is still very immature.
7: A better customer experience is possible
Marketers want more from their marketing platforms. The event saw plenty of debate about how to accelerate production workflows, and about how a more streamlined operational framework can improve the results of ABM programs.
At Mopza, a new wave of startups took the stage to promise 1:1 personalisation, even if the technology isn’t quite ready yet. Some leading industry veterans are aiming higher though. They want to develop a new wave of AI powered campaign engines that replace the leading martech platforms such as Marketo. These planned ‘Marketo killers’ are little more than hype at the moment. However, AI is adding new capabilities that marketers are only just beginning to understand.
Conclusion: Marketing operations is more pivotal than ever – that’s a good thing!
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Mopza is that it cemented the growing awareness that marketing operations has a key role to play in making the vision of personalised marketing a reality.
Whether it’s through streamlined process, enriched data or optimised technology, Marketing operations allows the business to focus on activities which improve the customer experience. MOps is the bridge between the old reality and the brave new world.
In time, Generative AI promises to transform B2B marketing. Until then, marketers are focusing on the day-to-day challenges of data improvement, demand generation and ABM optimisation. And, yes, MOps might even use AI to deliver those incremental improvements – assuming, it’s the right tool for the job.
In that respect, AI is rapidly becoming just another tool in the marketing operations toolkit,while MOps teams are becoming the entire foundation on which the success or otherwise of marketing strategy is built.