The Gist
- ROI before hype. Brian Riback’s 2025 writing consistently challenged leaders to stop chasing trends and start demanding measurable business impact.
- Vanity metrics are a warning sign. From loyalty programs to personalization tactics, Riback argues that surface-level signals often mask deeper strategic confusion.
- CX leadership is becoming architectural. The leaders who win next aren’t firefighting metrics—they’re designing systems, data flows and decision models that actually scale.
Brian Riback didn’t spend 2025 telling marketers and CX leaders what they wanted to hear. He spent the year asking the questions many organizations actively avoid — especially when budgets, technology decisions and leadership credibility are on the line.
In his first year contributing to CMSWire, Riback emerged as one of the site’s most consistent contrarian voices, pushing past hype cycles, vendor narratives and feel-good metrics to focus on one foundational demand: prove the return.
Editor’s note: Brian Riback is a 2025 CMSWire Contributor of the Year. His debut year set a clear tone—rigor over reassurance, outcomes over optics.
Table of Contents
Show Me the ROI — Or Don’t Sell It to Me
Across Riback’s 2025 work, one theme surfaced again and again: if a platform, program or strategy can’t articulate its economic value, it doesn’t deserve automatic trust.
“Don’t race to choose a new vendor just because the market is almost making you feel like you have to,” Riback said. “You might want to bring on the technology, but make sure at the end of the day it’s going to make you money.”
That stance shows up clearly in his writing on martech chaos, AI adoption and CDPs — areas where urgency often overrides discipline. Riback consistently warns against buying into abstraction before understanding operational impact, organizational strain and exit costs.
“Everyone talks about onboarding,” he noted. “But what about offloading? If I have to leave a vendor in three to five years, what does that look like—and what are the costs associated with that?”
It’s a question many teams don’t ask until it’s too late. Riback insists it belongs at the beginning of the decision, not the end.
Related Article: Inside CX Now: How Kustomer’s AI-Native Breakthrough Highlights Enterprise Readiness
Vanity Metrics Are a Symptom, Not a Strategy
Riback’s skepticism toward common CX and marketing metrics is not subtle — and it’s intentional.
When organizations cling to impressions, points, open rates or surface-level personalization, Riback sees it as a warning sign, not progress.
“When people focus on vanity, it is usually a non-verbal admission that they don’t know what to do,” he said. “I don’t mean that as an insult. I mean it as an opportunity.”
This perspective shapes several of his most-read CMSWire articles, including critiques of loyalty programs, awareness-first marketing strategies and oversimplified personalization tactics.
In Riback’s view, personalization isn’t inserting a first name into a subject line. “That’s personalization the same way a McDonald’s hamburger is technically a hamburger,” he said.
The real work, he argues, happens when organizations use zero- and first-party data to listen — not broadcast — and when systems are designed to respond to learned behavior, not assumed intent.
From CX Advocates to Business Architects
One of Riback’s most forward-looking arguments in 2025 centered on how the CX leadership role itself is changing.
Rather than acting as reactive problem-solvers chasing NPS fluctuations or survey feedback, Riback believes CX leaders must evolve into business architects — leaders who design data structures, workflows and accountability models that support experience at scale.
“The CX experience is one where you need to bring in the right people to help you structure your data,” he explained. “Make sure everything is built in such a way where it’s actionable—where your team knows how to use it and how to benefit from it.”
This architectural mindset shows up repeatedly in Riback’s writing on omnichannel contact centers, customer journey mapping and predictive analytics. The common thread: experience outcomes are rarely the result of a single tool. They emerge from how systems connect — or fail to.
Brian Riback’s 2025 CMSWire Contributions
Brian Riback, CMSWire’s most prolific controbutors articles in 2025.
Why Debate Is a Feature, Not a Bug
Riback’s work doesn’t just inform — it provokes. And that’s by design.
Whether questioning emojis in email marketing or challenging entrenched loyalty assumptions, his articles frequently spark internal debate, LinkedIn threads and reader rebuttals.
“There’s nothing greater than being wrong,” Riback said. “Because then we get to figure out why—and that can actually help somebody else.”
That openness to challenge reinforces his broader philosophy: insight improves when it’s tested. Metrics become meaningful when they’re interrogated. Strategy sharpens when it’s uncomfortable.
As Riback looks ahead to 2026, his focus isn’t on new buzzwords. It’s on accountability.
“If they’re still focusing on awareness only, likes, LinkedIn posts and sponsored ads that don’t translate into conversions,” he said, “then we’re going to talk about it.”
