Developing customer strategy in 2026?

Why businesses and agencies need to evolve to build a connected Experience Engine.

For years, businesses have turned to marketing agencies, for short-term growth needs: climb Google rankings, grow engagement, launch products, or modernise their brand.

But marketing has evolved. 

Gartner has documented that marketing’s role within organisations is evolving away from traditional campaign execution toward customer journey orchestration, strategic brand management, and deeper enterprise impact.

Today’s question isn’t what campaign is next, it’s how do we have an always-on engine humming, that means we’re always where our customers are, so they can find us when they’re ready.

And when your brand, data, teams, channels and tools are finally working in sync, you’re running what we call an Experience Engine.

People often misunderstand what the Experience Engine is all about, and what it can achieve for your organisation. So here’s my ‘explain it to a child’ version:

Think of your business like a car.

Your website is the body, your social media are the wheels, your CRM is the fuel tank, and your data is the fuel. What people see from the outside as you drive past - that’s your brand.

Now imagine all of that working together, perfectly timed, no wasted motion, every part knowing exactly what the other is doing.  That’s what makes the car run smoothly and take you where you want to go.

That’s what the Experience Engine does for your marketing.

It connects every part of your business, from your brand to your data, your tools and your teams, so that everything moves in sync. When someone clicks on your ad, your CRM already knows who they are. When they open your email, your website greets them with exactly what they were looking for. When they buy, your analytics instantly learn what worked and feeds it back into the system.

It reduces silos, and exposes wasted spend taking the guesswork out of ‘what works’.

How do you create a connected marketing strategy?

The three components of the Experience Engine

If the Experience Engine is what keeps your marketing running smoothly, then its power comes from three key components CX (Customer Experience), BX (Brand Experience), and EX (Enabling Experience).

Together, they’re what make the engine run well for staff, feel good for customers, and evolve for continuous improvement.

1. Brand Experience: The Feel

BX is the emotional heartbeat of your brand.
It’s how you make people feel, what you stand for, and how you show up, consistently, across every channel.

In the Experience Engine:

• BX aligns your messaging, tone, visuals, and story so every experience reflects your purpose and values.

• It ensures that what people feel when they read your ad is the same as what they feel when they open your packaging or visit your store.

It helps make your brand top of mind for your customer, without selling to them, but instead delivering value, over time aligning your brand to their values.

Example:

Think of how Apple feels the same whether you’re in a store, unboxing a product, or watching an ad. That’s BX at work. Every touchpoint speaks the same design language and emotion.

Your Experience Engine makes that consistency automatic, not accidental.

2. Customer experience: The drive

This is what your audience engages with every time they interact with your brand.
It’s every interaction they have toward conversion (whether that purchase, donate, get involved) such as every click, every email, every purchase, stitched together into one seamless journey.

In the Experience Engine:

• CX connects data from every touchpoint (ads, email, website, CRM) to create a smooth, personalised journey with right place, right time communication.

• It ensures customers aren’t seeing random ads after they’ve already purchased, instead, they see a thank-you email or an upsell that actually makes sense.

• It uses automation and analytics to understand behaviour and continuously improve.

Example

A supporter visits your charity’s website to read about a youth-mental-health program but doesn’t make a donation. Two days later, they see a Facebook ad that speaks directly to the impact of that same program. When they click, they land on a personalised page reminding them of the story they viewed, with a message like:

“You were learning about how we support young people, here’s how your contribution can make a real difference.”

Instead of generic donation asks, they’re shown a suggested amount based on typical first-time donor behaviour, plus an option to sign up for updates if they’re not ready to give today.

3. Enabling Experience: The Build

EX is what happens behind the scenes. It’s the piece that makes your staff happy to do their jobs, ensuring the right systems, tools, data, and teamwork are in place that make CX and BX possible.

Without it, your marketing is just noise, disconnected and diffiuclt to maintain. EX is often the most overlooked. Countless times we’re asking to ‘build a marketing plan’ or ‘drive leads through digital ads’ but as we work with each client, we realise part of the problem might be the existing technology, team processes or missing skillsets.

In the Experience Engine:

• EX ensures your CRM, analytics, ad platforms, and content systems talk to each other.

• It creates processes that break down silos between teams, sales, marketing, customer service, product, so insights flow freely.

• It helps teams experiment and feel safe to fail.

• It gives your people the right training, tools and visibility to act fast and measure impact.

Example:

Every organisation is thinking about AI at the moment, and many businesses are telling their teams to use it.

However, not many are delivering the processes to understand how to make time to use it, permission to try and fail, and to share and celebrate new initiatives.

One client applied well known management theory to simply put the BAU business goal alongside an innovation goal, with an allowance for 90% of time to focus on the BAU, and 10% on the innovation.

With this permission, and the meetings and space to celebrate success, they were able to embrace agentic AI workflows, and find ways to convert and generate content that would usually take them weeks, in hours.

So are agencies obsolete?

Traditional agencies are. The ones that churn out ads, or manage SEO with positive looking vanity metrics, that leave you questioning if it's actually making a difference.

But the modern agency focuses on enabling its clients first, and focusing on innovation to personalise the experience, understand how to give the customer value, and help staff build their capability for the long-term.

Marketing isn’t static anymore, it’s a living system.

And like any system, it needs maintenance, innovation, and foresight.

This is why we created Wonder Works Digital.

Our business was founded out of a desire to make real impact for clients - by helping you build the full experience engine, and continue to grow with continuous improvement opportunities and incremental test plans.

Deloitte calls this the rise of the “Connected Marketing Ecosystem,” where agencies evolve from executors of tactics to enablers of sustainable growth and experience design.