When AI breaks things, the provider may be accountable for parts of compliance, depending on their role. The deployer is accountable for how it is used in their organisation. Regulators and stakeholders will not accept “the tool did it” as a defence, especially where transparency, oversight, and monitoring were expected.  Inside the company, Marketing Ops is rarely the legal owner of the risk, but it is often the operational owner of whether the business can prove it is acti

Marketing Ops says, “This sits with us.” Revenue Ops says, “No, this is ours now.” Leadership nods politely, adds another role to the org chart, and hopes the noise dies down. It rarely does.

The right vendor doesn’t just make your systems work better. They help your organisation understand itself more clearly. How decisions are made. Where friction exists. What’s getting in the way of performance. If a vendor is willing to have these conversations before you sign, that’s usually a good sign. If they aren’t, the warning signs were there all along.

MarTech is not the problem. It never was. It is a mirror. It reflects the choices, compromises, and assumptions baked into your operating model. If you do not like what you see, replacing the mirror will not help. Fix how you operate, and the stack will suddenly feel a lot less broken.

We sat down with a few of our Europe based team to find out what they believe Marketing Operations in 2026 will look like - this is what they had to say.

These are the five shifts that we genuinely believe will move the needle in Marketing Operations in 2026... not vague futurism, but the disruptive, systemic changes already brewing under the surface.

Playing it safe can be the very thing stopping teams from evolving. While the world around them accelerates... new tech, new data expectations, new pressures from sales and finance... many teams are still working with agencies that deliver “maintenance,” not momentum. And all the while, there are consultancies out there that operate on a completely different level.

Sojourn Solutions spends its days in the messiest rooms of modern Marketing. We see teams with solid strategies, ambitious leadership, and stacks of tech that cost a fortune. Yet, time and again, Marketing Operations is expected to be the brain of the organisation while being treated like the underpaid assistant...

Every few years, Marketing Ops gets handed a shiny new “game-changer” that promises to solve all our problems. This time, it’s AI.

Marketing Ops is broken. You broke it. But we can fix it. If we’re honest enough to start now.

Marketing Operations isn’t being upgraded. It’s being rewritten. Teams that cling to comfort, dashboards, and incremental automation are setting themselves up for redundancy. Those who embrace strategy, oversight, and the human judgment AI cannot replicate... they will thrive.

If your current consultancy hasn’t made you feel anything in a while - no challenge, no spark, no real momentum - you owe it to your team (and your budget) to rethink the relationship.

At Sojourn, we’re regularly asked by clients to help define roles and responsibilities within the Marketing Operations function -...

If your Marketing Operations strategy hasn’t had a serious overhaul since Stranger Things Season 1… we have a problem. Because while the tech has sprinted ahead - hello AI, intent data, predictive modeling - the strategy holding it all together is still wearing skinny jeans and quoting "best practices" from 2017.

Most companies are trying to implement AI before they’ve done the basics. They haven’t mapped their processes. Their data is messy. No one knows who owns what. And yet… they’re plugging in AI like it’s going to fix everything.

Somewhere inside your organization is a marketing technology stack that’s bigger, messier, and more haunted than anyone wants to admit.

If your "personalization" is just dropping a first name into a generic email template, you're not nurturing leads - you're nurturing your unsubscribe rate.

When used right, AI can absolutely help scale and sharpen your operations. But if you’re using it to dodge strategy, skip hard decisions, or chase shiny things - it’s going to hurt.

MOPs might not have the sex appeal of a brand refresh. But when the boardroom heat is on, they’re the coolest asset you’ve got.

By embracing sustainable marketing, B2B companies don’t just help the planet - they future-proof their business.