‘Digital experiences have potential to shape every aspect of our lives.’ Shantanu Narayan, CEO @Adobe #AdobeSummit pic.twitter.com/pOHA0ZscGH
— Loni Stark (@lonistark) March 22, 2016
“Robots will never do great marketing,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said to a rapt audience of about 10,000 marketing professionals as he kicked offed the 2016 Adobe Summit. “Human intuition can’t be replaced.”
It can, however, be aided by marketing technology. And, not surprisingly, Adobe wants to be marketers’ preferred provider. To that end, the company announced several new and updated offerings during the opening keynote session. The aim of those offerings, Narayen said, is to help marketers deliver compelling customer experiences.
“We’re no longer in the business of selling products; we’re in the business of selling experiences,” Brad Rencher, Adobe’s EVP and GM of digital, said during the keynote. “Products are just along for the ride…. This is our new reality.”
How can marketers make that transition? “Consistent, continuous, and compelling should define [customer] experiences today,” Rencher asserted. “Data and content are at the core of creating experiences that delight customers.” And, he said, Adobe has the data and content tools to help, including a new UX that’s consistent across the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite of products.
“Adobe can help bring data and content together to help you be an experience business,” Rencher added.
New offerings announced at the Summit that aim to do so include:
> Smart Tag, a productivity tool in Adobe Experience Manager that aims to help simplify and expedite the process of finding and using creative assets such as images and videos stored in Adobe’s Creative Cloud. The tool uses machine learning to tag assets with multiple relevant terms.
> Adobe Primetime Recommendations, which provides personalization based on a combination of an individual user’s viewing history and purchases combined with data from algorithms in Adobe Primetime and Adobe Target on other viewers who stream content. The recommendations may change based on context, such as device and time of day.
> Segment IQ, a tool within Adobe Analytics designed to help marketers discover any overlaps and key differences between target customer segments that could help them determine and improve customer value. It does so using automated analyses of segments’ attributes.
> Also part of Adobe Analytics, Virtual Analyst aims to surface and present real-time insight marketers can use to answer the question, “What don’t I know that I should know?” The tool is designed to learn from data being input, note and prioritize changes, and then present relevant insight and flag anomalies.
> A new feature in Adobe Target called lifetime value decision is designed to help marketers predict the most profitable paths to purchase. It makes real-time recommendations based on customers’ previous interactions, and can help marketers determine an optimal sequence of offers.
> Adobe Campaign now features predictive subject lines capability. The tool analyzes previous open rates and then makes recommendations aim at optimizing email performance through higher open rates.
