Curated by Greg Kihlström of The Agile Brand, with contributions from leading voices across marketing, CX, and customer decisioning
Arlington, VA — February 17, 2026 — The Agile Brand today announced the release of the 2026 Edition of The Agile Brand Guide® to Customer Journey Management & Orchestration, curated by Greg Kihlström of The Agile Brand, and with a foreword by Mark Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of the Institute for Journey Management (I4JM). This curated edition brings together practical guidance and perspectives from multiple thought leaders to help enterprise marketing and CX teams modernize how they manage customer experiences—moving from heavily scripted approaches to Next Best Action (NBA) decisioning that adapts in real time.
Customer expectations keep accelerating while most enterprise systems—and operating models—continue to lag. The result is familiar: disconnected experiences, duplicated efforts across teams, and automation that quickly and consistently scales the wrong decisions (a talent most organizations didn’t know they had). The 2026 Edition focuses on building an enterprise-grade foundation for Customer Journey Management and Orchestration, including how to align data, governance, measurement, and cross-channel execution into a working system.
The book covers topics such as:
- The difference between Customer Journey Management and Customer Journey Orchestration, and why the distinction matters now
- How Next Best Action changes operating models—from campaigns and flows to decision strategies and action libraries
- Core platform capabilities including mapping and design, triggers, event modeling, integrations, governance, decisioning, analytics, and learning loops
- Practical guidance on change management, adoption, and measuring value and momentum over time
“The goal isn’t to automate more messages—it’s to make better decisions, more consistently, in the moments that matter,” said Greg Kihlström, curator of the 2026 Edition. “If your ‘personalization’ strategy still requires a weekly meeting to decide what a customer should see next, NBA is going to feel… refreshing.”
Featured Contributors to the book include:
- Tara DeZao, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Pega
- Raymond Gerber, Co-Founder, Institute for Journey Management
- Eytan Hattem, CEO & Co-Founder, Cemantica
- Trent Rossini, CEO and Co-Founder, inQuba
- Mark Smith, Co-Founder and CEO, Institute for Journey Management
The Agile Brand Guide® to Customer Journey Management & Orchestration (2026 Edition) is published by The Agile Brand and is available through Agile Brand channels, including agilebrandguide.com, with additional availability through select booksellers.
About The Agile Brand Guide®
The international best-selling book series providing marketing leaders and aspiring leaders an overview of key marketing concepts, platforms, and trends in three hours or less.
The current marketing technology landscape has thousands of platforms, with a continually growing set of feature sets, functionality, and potential. It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine how to approach marketing technology growth in the best and most relevant way.
Agile Brand Guides are created to help marketers evaluate, buy, and implement critical pieces of marketing technology infrastructure most effectively, and to understand the principles and concepts that support a successful digital strategy.
Previous Agile Brand Guides explore Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs), Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), Generative AI, Conversational Marketing, and more.
