Make Experience Your Business’
Continuing with the call to focus on experiences as the key differentiator, a narrative that is now forming an integral part of Adobe’s vision ahead, the company has made a slew of enhancements, including giving the option of self-serve, to marketers.
The firm’s EVP and GM – Digital Marketing, Brad Rencher, said that this was in line with industry expectations at the ongoing Adobe Summit 2018 in Las Vegas.
Quoting examples such as Delta, Marriott, Adidas, Nike, he explained that personalisation at scale is near mission critical for the marketing fraternity.
“Making experience your business is good for business,” he said. Rencher also cited numbers from an Adobe and Forrester Research study to state that businesses that have made that commitment have 1.6X higher brand awareness, 1.5X higher employee satisfaction, 1.9X higher average order value, 1.7X higher customer retention, 1.9X return on spend and 1.6X higher customer satisfaction rates.
The Growing Business
Adobe Experience business has seen growth since its launch a year ago. Adobe’s 2018 Q1 saw the Experience Cloud part of the business report USD 554 million in revenue, and has projected a 15 percent year-over-year growth in the second quarter. As per Gartner, this part of the business has also put Adobe in the lead in comparison to some of its competitors such as IBM, Oracle, Salesforce and SAP.
And Adobe intends to keep the push going. The Adobe Experience Cloud has advanced its capabilities in Advertising Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Analytics Cloud. There are also enhancements to Adobe Cloud Platform, as well as a comprehensive new customer enablement program designed to empower customers to become the architects of digital transformation at their companies.
Explaining that consumers are everywhere today from mobile to social and in the store, Rencher said that the experience business requires a new system of record.
The next generation Adobe Cloud Platform or the Experience System of Record includes a new unified customer profile, Adobe Sensei services and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) readiness. Adobe Cloud Platform enhancements will allow unifying data from disparate systems into an Experience Cloud Profile and can better customise Adobe Sensei capabilities as well.
Adobe’s CTO Abhay Parasnis reiterated the company’s increased investments in artificial intelligence — mainly Sensei, Adobe’s framework for AI. “AI and machine learning will completely transform enterprises. We are entering an AI-powered world,” he said.
Adobe Advertising Cloud, the end-to-end platform for managing advertising across traditional TV and digital formats, will now help bridge the divide between creative and media professionals. Adobe has now made this a self-serve platform that expands its dynamic creative optimization offering by giving marketers control over basic design elements, including advertising copy and assets used in display ads, to allow for the rapid rollout of new messaging and design without the painful and expensive steps of re-trafficking or starting the design process from scratch.
Creative assets that are designed in Adobe Creative Cloud will be automatically available in Adobe Advertising Cloud Creative, so marketers can edit, target and optimize personalized display advertising across ad sizes.
Adobe Marketing Cloud will also see change with the release of Adobe Experience Manager. The company has unveiled new Adobe Sensei-powered content capabilities in Experience Manager including intelligent image discovery, allowing the tailoring of images for different screens and automated personalization of content.
