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Survey: Sky-High Stakes for Digital Security in Healthcare

Imagine checking your credit report to find healthcare bills past due and in collection, yet you never ordered or received those services. You’ve been a victim of medical identity theft, most likely from a security breach.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much imagination to visualize this scenario. According to a recent survey by Accenture, one in four Americans has experienced a healthcare related breach, and half of those affected will find out on their own, without any notification from their healthcare providers. Healthcare information is among our most personal and private data, so a breach can have serious personal and financial consequences.

Content patients and revenue depend on trust and security.
The survey found the stakes are high for digital security in healthcare — one quarter of those affected switched healthcare providers because of the breach. According to Accenture, healthcare providers that don’t make cybersecurity a strategic priority will put $305 billion of cumulative lifetime patient revenue at risk in just the next five years. This is more than a threat of regulatory action or bad PR. It’s an existential threat to business. As Accenture says, “You are one breach away from losing a healthcare consumer for life.”

Recent high-profile breaches of hospitals and large health insurers have shown how vulnerable our personal data is. And securing data is not getting easier. Healthcare companies have to worry not only about thefts of financial information, but also the private data in our electronic medical records, on our health insurance IDs, and increasingly, from wearables and medical devices.

Consumers trust medical providers with their data.
Despite these high-profile cases, consumers actually trust their traditional health care providers much more than app or device technology companies. 88 percent trust their physicians or other healthcare providers to keep digital health data secure, and 82 percent trust their insurer.

Healthcare companies are taking steps to secure content and information.
Healthcare companies are taking further steps to improve their digital security and defend against attacks. This requires rethinking organizational structure and more fully implementing technology solutions. Most healthcare companies have separate teams and technology stacks running campaigns, analytics, data collection, and so on. Too often, siloed systems do not use the same security standards across teams and technologies, which makes security breaches more likely, and harder to detect. When team, technology, and data silos are broken down, data is centrally stored and secured instead of integrated across systems, and processes like workflows for approvals may be built into the tools. This makes security and regulatory compliance easier and more efficient.

It makes sense. If each internal team is building separate customer-facing interfaces, the added complexity makes it difficult to identify and manage vulnerabilities or security gaps. And if companies are spending precious IT resources on integrating different systems and maintaining those integrations, security can be overlooked. In moving towards a unified digital foundation, make sure you are partnering with a dedicated team of security professionals who will offer alerts and do forensic backups, so you can communicate effectively with your audiences about the security of their data.

Many healthcare companies are also relying on the cloud to improve security. Cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and AWS have HIPAA-compliant services with specific product integrations to address the healthcare industry’s need for information privacy and security. If the cloud provider is HIPAA-compliant, you can sign a business associate agreement with them to transmit and store protected health information and architect solutions that are HIPAA and HITECH compliant. A great benefit of cloud usage is that even small companies, hospitals, or medical groups can benefit from the cloud provider’s compliance obligations for database, application, and network security.

How you can improve security today:
● Elevate the role of security officer in your company. Be sure this person has the authority and staff to secure all aspects of your technology stack.
● Use cloud services for key data and application storage. A cloud provider can be more secure than homegrown IT security for most functions.
● Choose a cloud provider who complies with HIPAA and is committed to remaining compliant.
● Communicate thoughtfully and fully to consumers about any security issues. Accenture found some consumers actually gained trust in their healthcare vendor after a breach if the vendor took immediate action and communicated early and often.
● Begin implementing a cohesive digital foundation that contains unified technology along with the processes and internal structures to help deliver secure digital experiences.

A centralized, robust digital foundation can help healthcare companies mitigate risk and stay in compliance for securing patient data. The stakes are high in health care. The more security requirements become standard in the industry, the more secure your digital foundation must be. Let’s use the best technology and processes to create a more secure future for healthcare.

At Adobe, we take security seriously. Read more about our approach to making your data secure in this white paper, and about our HIPAA-compliant services here. To find out more about how we can help healthcare companies, please visit our healthcare industry page. You can also read our new article on data integration challenges in healthcare.

The post Survey: Sky-High Stakes for Digital Security in Healthcare appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/survey-sky-high-stakes-digital-security-healthcare/

Driving Better Customer Relationships

The internet has changed how consumers shop, including the way they shop for automobiles. Rather than visiting dealerships and looking at cars in person, consumers can browse and compare hundreds of models from different manufacturers in the comfort of their own home. While online browsing is much more convenient for customers, it reduces the opportunities automobile manufacturers have to meet with customers face-to-face and deliver relevant information that may sway consumers toward a particular vehicle.

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. is a major global name in reliable automobiles. Traditionally, the company has focused on mass advertising campaigns over television, newspapers, and magazines to reach the largest possible audience. But with customer touch points changing, Nissan came up with a new strategy — use digital marketing to understand customers’ needs, and create tailored advertisements that will speak directly to the customer.

Nissan decided to build a new digital platform on Adobe Experience Cloud. With Adobe Analytics, part of Adobe Analytics Cloud, Nissan can analyze the behavior patterns of customers online in real time, and build customer profiles. By feeding these customer profiles into Adobe Target and Adobe Campaign, both parts of Adobe Marketing Cloud, Nissan can create custom digital experiences and marketing messages.

One of the best examples of custom marketing is Nissan’s one-to-one email marketing strategy. Rather than sending the same marketing email to a large group of people, Nissan creates custom emails using interchangeable content. Nissan marketers develop a handful of content blocks around color variations, fuel economy, and specifications. Then, Adobe Campaign arranges the most relevant content for each customer into the marketing email. As a result, Nissan can send dozens of email variations with just a few pieces of content. As a result of these personalized, on-to-one emails, open rates increased 1.3 times, and click-through rates grew 2.6 times.
“If we can understand each customer’s needs, we can provide infinite options,” explains Mr. Moyuru Kudo, head of Japan digital customer experience at Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.

To learn more about how Nissan builds long-term, trusted relationships with customers via Adobe Experience Cloud, read their story.

The post Driving Better Customer Relationships appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/driving-better-customer-relationships/

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Adobe Target for the WIN: AI-driven “One-Click” Personalization Shines at the DMA Innovation Awards

We’ve always been proud of Adobe Target — not only in terms of what we’ve achieved technology-wise, but just as important, the value that it has brought to our customers over the years. But, today, we’re thrilled to announce that Adobe Target won the Data & Marketing Association’s (DMA) Innovation Award for personalization. The DMA Innovation Awards “showcase the disruptors that are creating innovative developments in the use of data and applying data in groundbreaking ways.” The personalization category specifically recognizes solutions that are raising the bar in helping marketers “as they tackle the latest technologies and tactics that are paving the road to true one-to-one marketing.”

Its consideration set focused on Adobe Target as an “exciting advance on previous technology.” Indeed, for the last decade, Adobe Target has been considered a leader in website personalization and optimization and has been used by top global businesses in virtually every industry. But ours has always been an iterative approach. It wasn’t good enough to have a great product. We wanted to ensure Target was growing, scaling and evolving with our customers to give them the most innovative and effective tools to scale their personalization efforts.

The most recent — and, now, award-winning — example is a new capability in Adobe Target called Auto-Target. This innovation leverages sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate personalized experiences with a single click. Auto-Target is already changing the way marketers deliver more relevant and revenue-generating experiences, and from where I sit, truly represents the future of personalization.

What Separates Adobe Target from the Pack
Most personalization platforms offer basic rules-based targeting and collaborative filtering approaches, combined often with traditional and basic A/B testing features. It’s all very manual and not particularly experience-driven. Does it work? Sure — to a point. But because traditional personalization lacks the automation marketers need to define an effective strategy — or to scale the delivery of personalized experiences — it almost always falls short.

But Adobe Target has raised the bar. Target provides a full spectrum of optimization and personalization capabilities ranging from automated testing to machine learning-driven personalization across all channels. With the addition of Auto-Target, marketers can kick their personalization up more than a few notches — personalizing customer experiences at the one-to-one level with one easy click.
Auto-Target leverages powerful machine learning powered by Adobe Sensei, Adobe’s AI and machine learning framework, to introduce as many experience variations as marketers choose in order to personalize customer experiences across their digital properties – including websites, apps and IoT interfaces. Then, with one click of a button, Auto-Target automatically evaluates all behavioral and contextual variables to determine the best experience for each consumer. Those experiences are continuously optimized over time as the consumer takes additional actions.

By learning what resonates and what doesn’t with specific consumers, Auto-Target improves experience performance over time, delivering the most relevant experiences possible. Not only is this a huge win for consumers and for brands, but it mitigates the risks that comes with allocating critical traffic to tests. With the backup policy feature in Auto-Target, marketers can always be assured that no variation will perform worse than their best control. The result is that the best experiences will only get better.

What Adobe Target Means for Today’s Marketers
Adobe Target’s DMA Innovation Award win confirms what we’ve suspected all along: consumers demand a high level of personalization and brands are challenged by the scale it takes to deliver these compelling, spot-on relevant customer experiences. With Adobe Target — and, now Auto-Target — marketers can leverage powerful machine learning, automatically introducing countless experience variations with a single click.

Leading brands are leveraging Adobe Target to achieve success with their personalization efforts. Enterprise storage provider NetApp saw a 170 percent increase in click-throughs and a 13 percent lift in engagement using Adobe Target to optimize content for its website redesign. Using Adobe Target, Marriott saw a considerable improvement in gross bookings driven by Rewards members, plus a 50 percent-plus increase in enrollments. Progrexion, an online credit services provider, experienced a 14 percent boost in conversions by leveraging customer insights in Target.

With advancements like Auto-Target in Adobe Target, Adobe is changing the way personalization happens, while helping brands rethink and re-architect their personalization approach so they, too, can deliver the best customer experiences. We’re thrilled to be recognized by the DMA for these efforts and bar-raising achievements. And the best part? This is just the beginning.

The post Adobe Target for the WIN: AI-driven “One-Click” Personalization Shines at the DMA Innovation Awards appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/personalization/adobe-target-win-ai-driven-one-click-personalization-shines-dma-innovation-awards/

How Fluid Experiences Can Redefine Financial Services

Financial institutions are becoming increasingly aware of the need to implement solutions that facilitate personalized interactions at scale. This capacity requires the ability to connect content with data and analytics to deliver personalized customer experiences.

The National Australia Bank is optimizing online engagement by taking the first steps toward creating what experts call a “fluid experience.” Delivering fluid experiences requires technology that adapts to the context of each user’s interaction, across all platforms and devices. That means delivering a consistent experience as customers move between different touch points, such as branch offices, apps, PCs, and smartphones.

Customers at NAB are more engaged online than ever before. By integrating and leveraging customer data to improve online content delivery and targeting, the bank is better able to connect customers with its products and services. Now, instead of getting bogged down with website updates and digital asset management, NAB’s content management team has more time to focus on website optimization and cross-selling opportunities.

It’s all about personalization and integration.

For NAB, the ability to use technology for personalization is a perfect fit, and it’s paying off. The company has boosted customer engagement by integrating online and offline data in order to create a single view of each customer. In addition to improving content velocity — the time to market for delivering new information —  the bank has implemented responsive design to ensure a consistent customer experience on any platform or device. This reflects a core tenet of the fluid experience philosophy — Consumers are using multiple channels to do their banking, and financial services companies need to facilitate that process.

Implementing fluid experience technology for financial services is an evolutionary process that requires connecting legacy systems to sophisticated artificial intelligence and machine learning technology. This enables financial institutions to customize content for the context and environment in which the customer is accessing it. Just as liquid conforms to the shape of any container, web content needs to adapt to the needs of every individual user.

The power of fluid experiences.

Mobile responsiveness is particularly important for meeting customer demand for ease of access to financial services. Financial institutions have to make it easy for customers to find and use key products and services via mobile devices, facilitating everything from bill payments and deposits to loan applications and balance transfers.

For example, when NAB added a single-click application form to its mobile application, submissions increased by 430 percent in the first week of implementation. “It could have taken weeks, previously, to recode, test, and release the changes needed to either build, or even turn off, a new application,” says Todd Copeland, digital general manager, at NAB. “Now, we have the tools we need to adjust applications quickly to meet changing business requirements.”

“The power of fluidity includes web and mobile experiences, and can even extend to well-structured touchpoints, such as ATMs and social media sites,” says Loni Stark, senior director of strategy and product marketing at Adobe. “It also has the power to transform how customers engage with mobile apps and IoT experiences.”

The retail banking sector, in particular, has been forced to implement more robust mobile offerings in the face of competition from online banks such as Moven, Atom and WeBank, which have tapped into the desire of many consumers to manage their finances on smartphones and tablets.

Companies in the financial services sector have the advantage of being able to implement well-integrated digital asset management systems that have proven successful in other industries. Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Asia (SIE), for instance, has used the same tools deployed by NAB to improve website productivity and optimization.

SIE’s content management team can now implement website production changes that used to take days, in seconds. “Using an integrated web management platform, we can rapidly move through optimization cycles, and improve the quality and efficiency of web content,” says Takehiro Akiba, director of web management at SIE, who is responsible for Sony’s blockbuster PlayStation product. “As digital channels become an essential point of contact for customers, it becomes more important that we establish such a fast and flexible internal workflow.”

Likewise, for NAB, improved analytics and targeting capabilities are yielding impressive results. For instance, when the bank tested page designs to optimize customer experiences, one test showed a 45 percent increase in conversion rates.

Evolution Means Change.

The emergence of agile financial service alternatives to traditional banking is putting pressure on banks to invest in new technology in order to remain competitive. When it comes to money management, customers expect a brand experience that reflects a knowledge of who they are, and what they need and want from a financial institution. The challenge for marketers in the financial services sector is to deliver the digital experiences their customers crave, while maintaining trust, security, and personal connections.

“At NAB, we realized that the future for our digital strategy needed to be built on completely integrated customer experiences,” says Todd. “As we reviewed our digital strategy, we realized that our existing content management platform limited our ability to quickly deliver the more compelling digital experiences that customers expect today.”

A New Era for Financial Services.

Money management solutions such as Mint and PayPal helped start the digital revolution in financial services, but now financial institutions are being challenged to facilitate better integrated money management options for their customers.

For the financial services sector, the time has come to move beyond an ecosystem of legacy systems to a new, integrated framework that leverages open source programs, APIs, and other tools to better understand, manage, and customize content. This requires not only state-of-the-art technology, but also a new way of thinking and communicating across an organization, from marketing and sales to customer service and support.

A recent survey, “State of Digital Transformation in Financial Services,” found that improving customer experiences was the number one priority cited by more than 300 respondents. Moreover, the survey underscored a recognition by financial services marketers that customer experience is increasingly important in terms of differentiating one banking or money management solution from another.

The survey also found that while competition from start-ups is a concern, financial services executives are particularly worried about the potential for a much bigger player to enter into their market space, such as Google Capital or Apple Pay. This worry is a powerful motivator for investing in tools that will both enhance services for existing customers, and improve online conversion rates.

To gain a better understanding of where the market leaders are heading, think about this —  a third of those surveyed said they were considering the kind of strategies that NAB has implemented — omnichannel solutions that leverage machine learning and data management solutions to improve their ability to target customers and prospects with highly personalized messaging.

Getting results.

All of this comes back, full circle, to the idea of fluidity. Creating fluid experiences in the financial sector requires a data management platform that integrates marketing attribution, marketing automation, and multichannel analytics that provide a way to determine which solutions result in the best ROI.

For financial services customers, a fluid experience should include applications and digital forms that are easy to use on any device. It also features omnichannel portals that make it easier for users to find what they need. Customers in today’s financial ecosystem expect a consistent, cohesive experience. From interactions at their local bank branch to mobile apps and the web, financial institutions need to deliver fully integrated experiences that provide measurable results.

Fluid experiences are all about delivering personalized customer experiences that scale across channels in real time. “Fluidity means using technology to glean deep insights into your customers, and your market, so that you can better manage and target your content,” says Loni. “With a 360-degree view of every customer, a financial institution can predict what its customers want, when they want it, and how they want to consume it.”

Learn more about how fluid experiences are re-defining the financial services and insurance sector.

Find out more about integrated technologies designed to support your experience business.

The post How Fluid Experiences Can Redefine Financial Services appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/fluid-experiences-can-redefine-financial-services/

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Lights, Camera, Action: Live Video For Digital Marketing

The post Lights, Camera, Action: Live Video For Digital Marketing appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/lights-camera-action-live-video-digital-marketing/

Now hear this! Adobe Advertising Cloud Strengthens Cross-Channel Capabilities with Digital Audio Advertising Formats

Last year more than one-third of the U.S. population listened to over 59 billion ad-supported audio streams using digital music streaming services. Today, digital audio streamed on mobile devices represents a $200 million advertising market.

In order to help marketers capitalize on this rapidly growing opportunity, Adobe Advertising Cloud is expanding its cross-channel advertising capabilities with the addition of automated, data-driven buying of digital audio advertising formats on desktop and mobile devices. In collaboration with Rubicon Project, the Global Exchange for advertising, advertisers can now extend their advertising initiatives with the ability to plan and buy media across premium digital audio environments.

By adding digital audio formats to its media planning and buying software, Adobe Advertising Cloud enables marketers to centralize targeting and reporting across devices including desktops, smartphones and tablets and message sequentially across formats, such as an audio ad followed by a video ad to move consumers down the funnel along the path to purchase. Advertisers can also leverage Adobe Advertising Cloud’s native integration with Adobe Analytics Cloud to layer first- and third-party data to target behavioral, demographic and geographic audience segments, and receive Nielsen-verified audience reporting on consumer’s age and gender.

“Digital audio has exploded as a uniquely differentiated channel that gives advertisers opportunity to target users not just based on their demographic or psychographic profile – but how they feel at a specific moment in time,” said Brett Wilson, vice president and general manager, Adobe Advertising Cloud. “This collaboration with Rubicon helps move Adobe Advertising Cloud one step closer towards our goal of helping marketers unify their advertising spend holistically across every channel.”

“We are thrilled to be working with Adobe Advertising Cloud to give marketers the premium quality inventory and reach they need across all creative formats worldwide,” said Amy Coveny, Global Head of Audio, Rubicon Project. “And with consumers flocking to mobile in-app audio, we are pleased to automate the buying and selling of today’s most in-demand advertising units.”

The post Now hear this! Adobe Advertising Cloud Strengthens Cross-Channel Capabilities with Digital Audio Advertising Formats appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/advertising/now-hear-adobe-advertising-cloud-strengthens-cross-channel-capabilities-digital-audio-advertising-formats/

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From Segments to Spots: A TV Data Primer

As the worlds of live TV and digital advertising continue to converge, advertisers, agencies, and media buyers are being besieged by unfamiliar acronyms. Traditional media buyers, who have looked at the world through the lens of GRPs on linear TV for decades, now must deal with new types of inventory with fluid definitions such as VOD, OTT, CTV, and FEP. Not to mention the new types of currencies that they’re now being exposed to: CPV, VCPM, CPCV, and CPAs. Moreover, consumers are looking for consistent messaging across channels — whether that be on their desktop, mobile device, or connected TV. Illustrative of these shifting dynamics, two major TV media companies shook up their management teams in the last few months — both Fox and Comcast promoted individuals with advanced advertising or digital backgrounds to head their general ad sales teams. As the line continues to blur between traditional and digital TV, media buyers and sellers are recognizing that audience data, both at the personal level and across devices, will determine the path of television for the next decade. And although some terminology may sound a bit like alphabet soup at first, it doesn’t need to be that hard for those seeking an audience-based approach to TV media buying. Here’s a few key takeaways for marketers and advertisers seeking to work with TV and data in 2017 and beyond.

Advanced TV buying is here today, and it doesn’t need to be a daunting new channel for buyers to learn. The advantages of Advanced TV buying are simple, and they reflect many of the same benefits offered by existing digital advertising. In fact, many of the providers that are leading the pack in digital also offer TV solutions. This is even evident within our own walls, with Adobe Advertising Cloud making video inventory available across digital channels, as well as OTT and linear platforms.

Key Takeaway #1: Use digital learnings to more effectively leverage data in TV buy.

Our clients have used data to make more efficient media purchases in digital for years. Using a strong core of first-party data, brands can more easily personalize messages for consumers, limit the number of times they see a message, and suppress messages if they’ve already converted. This first-party data, combined with third-party data becomes a very powerful tool.

The amount of data available for TV grows exponentially. Relatively recently, connected devices, MVPDs, channel guide companies, set top box owners, aggregators (like FourthWall), and TV manufacturers have started to capture viewership data in a privacy friendly and scalable way. Advertisers can use this data, in conjunction with their existing data assets, to create plans, find deeper insights, and better understand the path to purchase with all of their buy considered. While similar to addressable advertising in concept, Advanced TV instead uses data to make traditional live linear TV buying more targeted, and does not require working with a MVPD, or dynamic ad insertion. Advanced TV, like digital advertising, emphasizes audience over the environment and content associated with the ad inventory.

Key Takeaway #2: The confluence of video formats makes data more important than ever.

OTT, or “Over-The-Top,” is a term used to define any TV or video content that is delivered via the internet, rather than though a tradition cable or satellite subscription. Through this definition, Connected TV (CTV), Full Episode Players (FEP), and Video on Demand (VOD) are sometimes considered sub-categories of OTT.

It is through both OTT and Advanced TV that data becomes relevant for national TV advertisers. Having TV delivered over IP enabled devices means that advertisers and marketers can more easily connect the dots between online and TV viewership behaviors. As the screens that viewers typically use to watch TV have shifted to mobile devices, laptops and TV connected devices, the door has been opened for marketers and advertisers to use linked digital data to help them plan, buy, and measure their TV buys. First-party data from web analytics, second-party data from co-op partnerships, and third-party syndicated data can now be linked to live, linear viewership by matching through the IP, thereby keeping the data PII compliant and analogous to current digital targeting methods.

Key Takeaway #3: Anonymous, cross-channel messaging is just as important in TV as it is in digital.

One of the first lessons learned in digital was to design solutions with privacy in mind. Organizations like the DAA and NAI govern online practices of what data can be captured, and how it can be used. Prior to the creation of these guidelines, it was the wild west of digital privacy. Like these early days of digital, TV data collection is just now being formalized, and the guardrails are being placed. One of the best practices that we encourage our partners to follow is to have an opt-in consent for consumers. Any different way of interacting with a technology partner can be confusing or scary for consumers. With opt-in consent, we give them the power to decide where and how their data is shared.

Opt-in consent is only one of the levers that we’re using for a better consumer experience. Through Adobe’s DMP, Audience Manager, we can anonymously link consumers across their multiple connected devices. This allows brands to provide consumers with the right message, at the right time, and at the right frequency — a practice that we take for granted in digital, but that is just establishing itself in Advanced TV.

Through this transparent exchange of anonymous data elements, both parties benefit from an improved experience. Consumers receive personalized content, discounted product offers, and streamlined user experiences. Similarly, brands receive vital revenue streams supporting multiple online business models. Together, the two approaches to data collection — in TV and digital – pave a path for Adobe to be a leader in providing advertisers and marketers with clear understandings of the privacy of first-, second-, and third-party data — no matter the source.

Key Takeaway #4: Data provides new opportunities for TV media attribution cross-platform targeting.

Through the linkage of digital data to TV viewership data, the current use cases enabled by data-driven TV have exploded. Let’s run through a hypothetical example:

You’re an automotive advertiser with a website, mobile app, and online store. Using Advanced TV and Adobe Audience Manager together, you could prove website lift, measure app installs after exposure to ads, and integrate TV into your path of purchase measurement methodology. By partnering with Adobe and a third-party offline measurement provider, you could even do true offline sales attribution and measurement in a way that is similar to how you run digital studies. Speaking of digital, let’s say you are also a big digital video spender. Advanced TV would allow you to retarget a user that saw an ad on TV in a full episode player environment online, or vice versa. Finally, controlling frequency across devices and TV is no longer a pipe dream — you can do it in platform.

Through these four key takeaways, we hope that you’re encouraged by the similarities between your existing digital media campaigns, and the possibilities now available on TV. Every day we are moving closer and closer to a fully cross-channel, data-driven experience for customers and brands. And consequently, creating a more relevant advertising experience for consumers. From where we sit, that’s a good thing for everyone involved.

The post From Segments to Spots: A TV Data Primer appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/advertising/segments-spots-tv-data-primer/

Launching Adobe Advertising Cloud Community

What is the Adobe Advertising Cloud Community?

Adobe Advertising Cloud Community is a place to ask questions and learn from Adobe’s experts, customers and advertising professionals like you. And it’s free!

It’s a platform you can use to connect with your peers, seek out and find support, talk with other professionals, exchange examples, share experiences, discuss best practices, publish blogs, and get help from the Adobe experts.

Why Should You Join the Adobe Advertising Cloud Community?

When you join the Ad Cloud community, you not only get solutions to your problems, you get access to the expertise built with years of experience, and the latest digital marketing insights. Join the community if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to introduce yourself when you do!

● Ask the community: Post your questions and get answers from experts. You can also share what you know and help fellow community members by answering their questions.

● Help resources: Seek out our reference materials, deep-dive documentation, video tutorials, troubleshooting guides, blogs, and more. Find what’s new, tips and tricks, and solutions to common issues.

● Get recognized: Adobe recognizes expert community members who make exceptional contributions. Stand a chance to get certificates, merchandise, and to be featured on the community page!

● Attend Live Webinars: The community hosts regular webinars covering various aspects of Ad Cloud, which are opportunities to connect with product experts.

● Share feedback: Use our Ideas Exchange to share feedback and give suggestions for improvement on Advertising Cloud features that you use. Adobe experts are listening!

“What’s New” in the Community Platform?

At Adobe, we are constantly innovating to simplify our customer needs. Continuing in that same spirit, we bring to you the all-new Ad Cloud community, featuring a mobile-friendly interface, which allows you to:

● Tag experts in your questions and discussions.
● Quick and efficient search capability.
● Follow & connect with the experts.
● Translate posts.
● Share your engagement & achievements on social media.

Participate in the community events and contests:

● Ad Cloud Community Webinar: Join Adobe experts online for demonstrations and tutorials on the topics that you suggest. Get answers to your questions live.
● Solve-athons: Use your product knowledge to solve as many questions on the community as you can. Get cool rewards in return!
● Discussion Series: Share your expert opinions over monthly Discussions, and know what other industry experts have to say.

Become a member.

We’ll be glad to have you there.

Go ahead! Sign up and experience the new Adobe Advertising Cloud Community by introducing yourself.

The post Launching Adobe Advertising Cloud Community appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/advertising/launching-adobe-advertising-cloud-community/

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Adobe Receives Top Scores in Gartner’s Latest Critical Capabilities for Multichannel Campaign Management Report

Earlier this month, Adobe was recognized again by Gartner in its Critical Capabilities for Multichannel Campaign Management (MCCM) report. In the evaluation, Adobe Campaign received the top score in all four use cases—including campaign creation, orchestration, execution, and measurement—as well as high scores with capabilities such as campaign measurement, campaign creation, multi-dimensional segmentation, and campaign workflow. We believe this reflects the robust functionality of Adobe Campaign, which customers often cite as one of its key strengths.

In today’s competitive landscape, brands must commit to delivering meaningful and relevant cross-channel experiences throughout the customer journey to differentiate. This is driven by heightened customer expectations, including hyper-personalized engagements, regardless of the channel. Organizations that do this well often achieve increased engagement, which translates to increased purchases higher customer lifetime value and brand advocacy. At the core of a successful multichannel strategy is the ability to plan, orchestrate, launch and measure the results of campaigns.

And this is exactly why over 850 organizations and thousands of marketers across the globe rely on Adobe Campaign to drive compelling and engaging experiences across channels like email; mobile channels like SMS, push and in-app messages; as well as offline channels, like direct mail or the point of sale in a store, or kiosk in a hotel.

Gartner describes its findings in in the Critical Capabilities for MCCM report as a “companion” to the Gartner Multichannel Campaign Magic Quadrant report. The Critical Capabilities report offers a market and product/service view that provides powerful insight when making technology decisions. It provides deeper insight into the providers’ product or service offerings by identifying which ones fit best to the four primary use cases and critical capabilities identified.

What does critical capabilities mean for you, not just in marketing technology, but any technology?

For me, critical capabilities are essential enablers of a function or technology. For those of you have a smartphone, it’s a great example—what would it be without wireless, Bluetooth, data, cellular and a camera? As that pertains to multi-channel marketing, critical capabilities support campaign planning, cross-channel orchestration and automation, measurement of multichannel campaign effectiveness, and more. Capabilities like segmentation, workflows, analytics, real-time interaction management, content management, ad management and native email/mobile marketing, are what support these use cases.

This means Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for MCCM report provides deeper insight into vendor’s products and/or services offerings by identifying which ones fit best to the four primary use cases and critical capabilities identified.

Earlier this year, Adobe was also recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Campaign Management report. Adobe Campaign—the solution within Adobe Marketing Cloud, part of Adobe Experience Cloud, that allows marketers to plan, launch, and measure personalized, contextual, real-time, and engaging cross-channel messages—was a key part of the evaluation.

Gartner recommends that organizations evaluate the MCCM market using Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for MCCM research and that they base their assessment not only on each vendor’s current offerings, but also on their product roadmaps and planned support for emerging channels and tactics.

I invite you to take a look at the latest Gartner Critical Capabilities for Multichannel Campaign Management Report and see for yourself how Adobe Campaign helps brands provide meaningful, personalized and relevant experiences across channels.

Gartner Critical Capabilities for Multichannel Campaign Management, Adam Sarner, Mike McGuire, 27 July 2017.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/campaign-management/adobe-receives-top-scores-gartners-latest-critical-capabilities-multichannel-campaign-management-report/

Don’t Destroy Silos (Yet). Eliminate the Problems They Cause.

Technology silos. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re everywhere. Their abundance comes from, as marketing technologist guru Scott Brinker says, the over 5,000 technology solutions in the marketplace today—3 times(!) what was available just 3 short years ago. The average marketing team uses a staggering 20 solutions or more.

Naturally it’s a common challenge to figure out how to get those silos to integrate with one another well. More often than not, there are organizational silos that make it difficult to get departments on the same page working toward a common goal. The same is also true on a micro level across organizations, for example with separate teams within marketing departments trying to coordinate across email, mobile, web, search, offline channels, etc. It is thus typically painful to try to provide a meaningful, cross-channel experience for the customer. But not doing so can cause other problems—leading to declining loyalty, infrequent purchases, and decreasing brand advocacy.

That’s why most marketers agree that providing meaningful, relevant, and well-orchestrated experiences across all channels will yield great engagement. Most just don’t do it, because it seems to hard. But it doesn’t have to be.

With some strategy and planning, they can utilize cross-channel strategies to get a more full-bodied understanding of users’ preferences, transaction history, and more—wildly effective for any company. It can be so effective, in fact, that Gartner Research says their analysis shows that campaigns integrating four or more digital channels will outperform single- or dual-channel campaigns by 300%. Incredible.

You can have that kind of success. But where do you start? Consolidating technologies on a marketing platform is a good place, but—according to my brilliant colleague Linda Reed, Service Manager with Adobe Campaigns, there are other things you must do to provide better customer experiences. You just have to know what those are. Here you go:

1. Don’t re-invent your cross-channel marketing strategies.
2. Attack not the silos but the problems they cause.

Don’t Re-invent Your Cross-Channel Marketing Strategies.
It can be easy to think that by quickly removing silos will be a quick fix to right the ship. Ultimately, that is where it might make sense to go, but doing so quickly ends up being quite disruptive. It’s too quick of a change for people to learn new jobs, new skills, and new people to work with. Ultimately, such strategies lend to negative impact on morale and decreased effectiveness of marketing.

So don’t be so gung ho that you take drastic steps and risk the continuity of your teams. But there’s another reason not to demolish your silos.

For as much trouble as they can cause, they can simultaneously be beneficial. This is particularly true in big companies where they can help provide sound structure that helps companies work better.

So resist the temptation to change rapidly. There’s nuanced work to be done to figure out what you can learn and then how you can mitigate the problems silos are causing.

Identify and Address Silo Problems.
Use tactical acumen to keep moving as you stretch out changes over the course of a few months. It may not feel like it, but you can afford the time to be strategic even though it feels like you’re getting washed away with the tide.

This allows you to handle what you can handle but also be making steady, marked progress—so you’re not always playing catch up.

And doing so will lend you gradually better returns. But more, you’ll learn increasingly new (and because of this, robust, when taken on the whole) information about the problem (within each channel). This will have you taking many small steps in the right direction rather than trying to long jump over the problems!

But how, specifically, do you attack those problems?

With three key building blocks:

1. Collaboration — Cross-training marketers on multiple domains, installing a shared mission, and creating a journey map to help address technology and skills gaps.
2. Goal Alignment — crafting an internal communications plan, utilizing cross-team KPIs that align well, and starting small, while celebrating wins.
3. Change Management — administering training and enablement, keeping teams and leadership informed, and installing a transition plan without being afraid of course corrections.

These steps are considerations to take into account as you think of your team, to get everyone unified and moving in the right direction as a wise, thoughtful, experience-led business. We’ll dig deeper into what these look like in our next post: Eliminate Organizational Silos with Collaboration.

This is the first of four blogs in a series about getting rid of silos the right way. If you’d like a jumpstart to that, you can listen to Bruce Swann and Linda Reed’s talk from the Adobe Summit this past summer.

The post Don’t Destroy Silos (Yet). Eliminate the Problems They Cause. appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/campaign-management/dont-destroy-silos-yet-eliminate-problems-cause/

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Digital Marketing in a World of Altered Reality

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Investing in Technology to Reach Audiences

The financial world can be complex and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. For the past three decades, Morningstar, Inc. has made it a goal to simplify even the most complicated financial investment and make it accessible for everyone, whether they’re a professional financial analyst or a home investor.

Morningstar was one of the first financial news outlets to jump onto the Internet, providing financial news over the web. The company understands the importance of keeping ahead of the digital curve, but over the past several years, the company’s in-house tools began to fall behind. To provide more futuristic services, Morningstar needed to upgrade its digital experience.

After decades on the web, Morningstar understands the importance of working with reliable partners to create a future-proof technology platform. That’s why the company decided that its new digital experience needed to be built on Adobe Experience Cloud.

With Adobe Experience Manager, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, content creators and marketers can quickly create and publish content without needing support from development teams. This leads to greater agility, allowing Morningstar to publish information about changes to regulations within hours.

Adobe Target, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, and Adobe Analytics, part of Adobe Analytics Cloud, provide a foundation for personalization. Adobe Analytics provides real-time insight into audience behaviors, which allows Morningstar to create personas and deliver relevant, custom experiences to all audiences.

“Our customers view finance as vitally important but not always exciting, so it’s important for us to push digital and invigorate our brand with fantastic client experiences,” says Rob Pinkerton, CMO at Morningstar. “Adobe is a trusted digital leader. We know we can rely on Adobe Experience Cloud to stay on top of the digital game for years to come.”

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from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/investing-technology-reach-audiences/

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Bringing Communities Together in Australia

Over 24 hours last November, millions of Australians in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane were invited to celebrate their communities. In one day, locals posted more than 35,000 photographs chronicling a day in their lives and celebrating the unique people and culture in their corner of Australia.

This was the magic of #SnapAustralia, a campaign sponsored by News Corp Australia. The goal of the campaign was to help people get in touch with their communities and spark interest in the metro newspaper brands that cover local news better than any other media.

For several years, News Corp Australia ran #SnapSydney, featuring 24 hours of live events and digital engagement in Sydney. The annual campaign was a resounding success. News Corp Australia decided that it was time to expand the event nationwide, but there was one challenge for the event: moderation.

Open engagement was critical to capturing the diversity of the communities, but News Corp Australia still wanted to moderate image submissions to prevent spam or offensive photographs from marring the event’s image. A team of ten moderators manually approved and posted all #SnapSydney images to websites, but to scale the event nationwide, the moderators needed a better way.

The company turned to Adobe Experience Manager Livefyre, an Adobe Marketing Cloud solution within Adobe Experience Cloud that it already used for liveblogging sports events. Filters helped to eliminate inappropriate images, cutting down on the volume of photographs inspected by the moderation team. Automated workflows did the rest, posting approved photographs to the correct website or billboard.

The event was a huge success, reaching an audience of more than 24.5 million people over social media and significantly increasing on-site time to #SnapAustralia landing pages.

“We ran the event in four cities, but the moderation team didn’t grow nearly as large,” says Brad Forster, Head of SEO at News Corp Australia. “Automation using Livefyre allowed us to reduce operating costs as we scaled the campaign by 400% without needing a proportional increase in headcount. It showed us how we can run more profitable events for News Corp Australia and our clients in the future.”

To learn more about how News Corp Australia brings communities together with LiveFyre, read Sharing the World of Australia.

The post Bringing Communities Together in Australia appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/bringing-communities-together-australia/

Supercharge Your Aftermarket Profits With Digital Customer Experiences

As a manufacturer of industrial and commercial grade cleaning solutions, Tennant sells not only durable equipment, but also consumable cleaning products and replacement parts. Once customers have purchased Tennant equipment, the company ensures their continued satisfaction — and loyalty — with aftermarket sales of replenishment products. By bringing all sales into a single dashboard with saved preferences, Tennant delivers a whole new level of efficiency, which leads to increased aftermarket sales and customer satisfaction.

If you’re ignoring aftermarket service and sales opportunities, you’re walking away from a big portion of your revenue. For 35 percent of industrial machine manufacturers, aftermarket sales provide at least half of their annual revenue, but only 12 percent of manufacturers view aftermarket sales as a competitive differentiator. Fortunately, digital experiences, such as the ones Tennant delivers, pave the way for manufacturers to develop strategies for a lucrative aftermarket opportunity. Not only will you be offering customers more of the B2C experiences they want, but your operations will become more efficient and profitable. It’s a winning strategy to increase earnings and build continuous relationships with your consumers.

Strike gold with aftermarket sales and service.
The aftermarket — including maintenance calls, replacement parts, service contracts, technical support, consulting, repair, future options, and consumable supplies to name a few — represents a broad opportunity for manufacturers. In fact, the global automotive aftermarket had a reported value of $450 billion in 2015 by depending simply on sales to dealers, repair chains, independent shops, and consumers. Additionally, commercial aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) was valued at $63.2 billion in 2016.

Aftermarket activities should be as much a part of your operations as anything that happens leading up to, and including an initial sale. In the aftermarket, you’ve already qualified and acquired a customer, and many manufacturing goods they purchased have lifespans of years. That is a tremendous opportunity to increase ties with consumers and create more value for them. According to IDC, manufacturers that can enhance customer experience can expect to boost aftermarket revenue by 20 percent.

Re-engage customers with valuable aftermarket interactions.
Customers expect rich and powerful digital experiences. We live in a digital age in which you can place an order on a desktop computer and track the status on your mobile device. We’re accustomed to using a phone app to request a ride and pay for it, all with a single tap. The experience is fluid and continuous.

In manufacturing, customers expect the same type of experience and convenience, which means that managing the customer relationship and offering a seamless digital experience are critical to aftermarket sales. Meeting customers’ expectations doesn’t always require the intervention of a salesperson, or time with a customer service representative. Many interactions, particularly about aftermarket concerns, are transactional in nature. Someone may need to order a replacement part, set up a service call, purchase supplies, or consult a manual or diagram, all of which can be done online.

The B2C experience has taught people that transactions should be easy, feature robust services and choices through any number of digital devices, and embody strong self-service options. The better the digital experience you provide B2B customers, the stronger the relationships you will build with them. You will also benefit from a lower cost of doing business, fewer barriers to additional revenue, and increased profitability.

Such success is seen at DuPont. The company’s Crop Protection Division needed a way for its global sales team of 10,000 representatives to reach millions of farmers in 130 countries. They regularly needed to share highly technical product information about crops, pests, and regulations in each region. DuPont transformed its strategy with a digital platform flexible enough to adapt across diverse product lines and hundreds of markets. The adoption resulted in $1 million in global savings and a 50 percent reduction in go-to-market time.

Realize aftermarket profits with digital capabilities.
Here are a few examples of how you can apply digital experiences to aftermarket activities within your business.

Replacement parts. Instead of saddling customers with a weighty catalog and the need to parse SKUs to identify the right item, use a digital catalog that allows an individual to sign in. The system notes which machinery the person’s employer — your customer — owns, and it tracks the specific model number and, therefore, the correct part numbers. The person can call up machine diagrams and photographs, gets pointed to the right parts, and the system fills in the proper information.

Warranty work. If a product needs repair, logging in to that same portal allows the person logging the problem to identify the item and check the current warranty status. Now the user can schedule a day and time for a technical call or print out a shipping label if the item is small and can be sent to a repair center. Further status information is also available at any time.

Technical support and customer service. Many support issues can be solved by someone with access to the proper information. All the relevant technical notes, schematics, repair manuals, tutorials, FAQ lists, and even video training can be available to anyone authorized at the customer site. The more people who can address their own needs, the more your technical staff can focus on more difficult and valuable issues. Although, if an issue’s solution goes beyond retrieving information, you could allow the customer to reach support personnel through an online chat or other type of direct connection.

Similarly, checking and correcting information, reviewing purchase histories, bringing up copies of contracts, and other activities that would have required human intervention can be put at a customer’s fingertips — readily available online. More complex needs could be solved through direct access to someone in customer service.

Find success with aftermarket digital experiences.
Creating the B2C experiences your customers crave in aftermarket activities requires the right digital foundation. At a minimum, you need digital asset management (DAM) to track the assets that provide information as well as a content management system (CMS) to control the display of assets online and personalize user interaction. Using a brand portal to give customers access to the right information when they need it will satisfy many aftermarket needs.

While information alone might be enough for some aftermarket self-service support, anything more complicated will likely need to incorporate interactions with customer histories, schedules, pricing, e-commerce, and other parts of an enterprise infrastructure. Integration with customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and related applications can give aftermarket digital experiences the depth customers ultimately want. Add analytics, and you can begin to better understand how customers use your system, and ultimately predict what they’ll want, even before they know.

Given the significant revenue and profit potential of your aftermarket, enhancing customer experiences can improve relationships while driving impressive ROI. No matter where you are now, it’s possible to begin bringing your aftermarket into the modern age and grow your capabilities over time.

Learn more about how digital experiences are reshaping manufacturing customer and distributor experiences. And read more in our #manufacturing series.

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from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/supercharge-aftermarket-profits-digital-customer-experiences/

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Why Your Competitive Advantage Will Fail — Unless it’s the Experience You Deliver

Competition has taken on a new level of dynamism and unpredictability as new entrants, powered by new technologies, continue to demonstrate that scale, longevity, and brand no longer offer incumbents much protection. Today, even industry leaders — or perhaps particularly industry leaders — need to innovate with the pace and agility of startups to skip forward to tomorrow’s entirely new sources of value and new lines of business.

When Dell launched in the mid-80s, it quickly won market share with a key competitive advantage — a direct sales front end, fed by a just-in-time supply chain. This combination delivered healthy margins at price points that undercut everyone around them. Alas, though Dell’s dominance was long lived, it was not immortal. By 2005, its competitors caught up, leaving Dell as just another runner in the “race to the bottom” it initiated. In the year from August 2005 to August 2006, Dell’s share price dropped over 46 percent. This was the beginning of what would be a wavy, but irreversible, 65 percent downward slide by the time the company was taken private in October 2013.

Though dramatic, Dell’s story is not uncommon — Borders, Motorola, Blockbuster, and an ever-growing list of others hit similar snags when their key competitive advantages were commoditized or leap-frogged. For decades, conventional wisdom held that business success hinged on finding a core sustainable competitive advantage, then tuning the organization to exploit it ever more efficiently over the course of years, or even decades. With today’s increased pace and intensity of competition — made possible by globalization, lower barriers to entry, and the acceleration of technology — the lifespan of competitive advantages has shrunk dramatically.

Embrace the End of Sustained Advantage.
Leaders of established companies once focused heavily on the continuous optimization of a relatively stable competitive advantage in a relatively stable business. Now, they must also help drive their teams to discover, develop, and build entirely new competitive advantages and businesses. As these advantages will be relatively short-lived, it’s necessary to assemble and nurture a portfolio of them, so that as each one moves from a period of higher-yield to one of diminishing returns, new initiatives, new lines of business, or entirely independent ventures, can be implemented to continue accelerating growth.

Amazon demonstrates this approach well. The company launched as an online bookstore, then evolved into “the everything store” — selling $36 billion worth of “everything” in the first quarter of this year alone. But this progression seems obvious compared to Amazon’s more lateral movements. The company’s cloud infrastructure business (Amazon Web Services) accounted for 8 percent of Amazon’s profit in this last quarter, reporting $3.53 billion in revenue. Their artificial intelligence services (Amazon AI), connected home products (Amazon Echo), exclusive video production arm (Amazon Originals) and the recent acquisition of Whole Foods have extended the company far beyond all prior notions of “online retailer.”

At the heart of Amazon’s remarkable growth — including a massive 49,000 percent increase in share price since going public in 1997 — is its ability to maneuver rapidly to initiate new experiences and entirely new businesses that anticipate the evolving needs of its customers. Indeed, exceptional commitment to customer experience is perhaps the clearest through-line connecting Amazon’s far-ranging innovation initiatives.

Anchor Your Future in Customer Experience.
More than ever, customers are buying experiences, not products. Adding to this emphasis, every incumbent who invests in streamlining their customer experience, along with every start-up who launches a new technology-powered customer experience, ratchets up your customers’ expectations. And these expectations aren’t just driven by competitors within your industry — they are shaped by Facebook, Snapchat, Airbnb, Amazon, and the countless other innovators engaging your customers throughout their day.

In this environment, customers don’t sit still. To earn their loyalty, you need to provide a unified and delightful system of product, service, and brand. Experience businesses that engage customers in seamless relationships where, when, and how it is most relevant to them will outperform the rest. Design, as the author and choreographer of experience, has never been a more crucial component of competition and growth.

Leverage Venture Design to Build the Unprecedented.
Change in our world continues to accelerate. As a result, with each day that passes, yesterday teaches us less about tomorrow. Traditional strategies that rely on looking to our past, then extrapolating forward from there, are of limited value when we’re working to create a discontinuous future. By necessity, disruption, and the innovation it entails, is a forward-looking effort. We need to imagine our future state, then work backwards to chart our course.

Venture design is a lean approach to human-centered design that is optimized for the creation, launch, and ramp-up of new businesses. It helps companies of all sizes and levels of tenure to efficiently start new ventures and bring unprecedented products and services to market, fast.

The approach is optimized for the unique circumstances of new ventures. Ventures are time-constrained, resource-constrained, information-constrained, and data-constrained, and must also contend with a dizzying lack of constraint on what the future might hold and how the business might pivot as it grows. The power of design is that it thrives in uncertainty, responds strategically to constraint, surfaces lateral opportunities and generates step-change solutions.

Unlike typical tenured corporate culture, startup culture is comfortable with the notion that knowing where you’re trying to go — having a shared vision and purpose — is more important than knowing exactly how to get there. Deep innovation, creating that which has not previously existed, is never a linear path, and never goes as planned. Though you can increase the likelihood of a breakthrough, you’re going to have a hard time scheduling one. Likewise, entrepreneurship is a succession of many small leaps of faith. In both cases, the big vision stays relatively constant, but the work that leads us there is highly iterative, and adjusts course in response to each discovery along the way.

Enlist Marketers in Venture Wayfinding.
Centering new ventures around customer experience helps innovation teams stay focused on what matters, and honest about their progress. With their long-standing role in gathering customer data and insights, marketers have an opportunity to play a pivotal role in steering new ventures — particularly if they’re comfortable across the intersecting realms of design research, customer insights, and market research. (Hint: Design research has nothing to do with focus groups.)

New ventures — and successful experience businesses — continually reorient their internal efforts as they collide with the outside world. Each iteration of the core product or service relies on empirical validation of the experience to inform the iteration to follow. The rise of data, and particularly our dramatically improved abilities to collect and extract insights from it, make this cycle significantly more powerful.

Drive Tomorrow’s Bottom Line.
Companies will always need to be skilled at optimizing the core business that drives their bottom line today. But to drive the future bottom line, companies need to simultaneously host an entrepreneurial culture, and the capability to be able to tackle unimagined opportunities with courage and alacrity. As Amazon’s dynamic path demonstrates, new ideas today may be a core business tomorrow, but finding those opportunities requires the openness and adaptability of a startup. It also requires strong collaboration across disciplines and business units, and a rejection of rigid, top-down thinking.

To drive innovation and new venture creation forward, business leaders should reallocate much of the time and capital currently committed to researching the past and instead apply it to running tests of the future. Focus on more comprehensive customer experiences that envelope new offerings and form the foundation of successful customer relationships. These relationships — built over time and across shared experiences — will enable you to bring your customers along into the next incarnation of your business.

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from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/why-your-competitive-advantage-will-fail-unless-its-the-experience-you-deliver/

Adobe is a Leader for 7th Year in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management

Web Content Management is the foundation of a brand’s digital transformation. Brands who are winning, regardless of industry/B2B/B2C, are those that take advantage of digital to craft new product/services and business models. At the heart of this is a new generation of customer experiences made possible by companies who are able to source the most compelling content, harness meaning from vast pools of data and have powerful tools and machine learning algorithms to deliver personalized experiences in the context of the customer in the moments that matter.

For a 7th year, Adobe is a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management we believe because of our relentless focus on product innovation, partner ecosystem and the success of companies who have invested in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM).

Over the past year, the demands on web content management have exploded. I’ve quickly seen companies who originally used AEM for their responsive websites now expand their use across mobile and IoT channels, and beyond marketing to other parts of the customer journey where digital experiences have become paramount.

On a personal level, 2017 is also the year I think consumers are feeling the impact of these trends. My parent’s entire irrigation system is connected to the Internet and they can control the water timing from their iPhones. A visit this weekend to a birthday party was orchestrated by an Amazon Echo playing the music and keeping track of a pie in the oven for 15 min. All these screens, voice activations, integrations between digital and physical are seeping into our lives…and the pace is accelerating. A marketing moment, a customer service moment, a sales moment all are blurring. The traditional functional lines defined by organizational structure is being disrupted by the worldview of empowered consumers who see everything as part of relationships that bring greater joy and value, or pain and inconvenience.

Simple to Start Now, Scales to Meet Future Needs
While Adobe continues to innovate AEM as a digital experience platform that can source compelling content from greater sources and serve contextually relevant content to any owned, earned and paid touchpoint, we continue to make foundational experiences such as responsive websites and landing pages simple. The UX and engineering teams continue to push the limits of AEM’s user interface to make it evermore intuitive — an area that Gartner has noted in this latest MQ. A web content management solution is only as valuable as the number of people who are able to use it across business and IT developers. In the last several years we have also introduced the ability to preview and edit on a responsive grid, business user template authoring, initiative UI to define targeted experiences to an audience and core components. These innovations included in our AEM Managed Services offering, paired with customization services offerings by partners and Adobe Global Services, make it highly accessible for companies to get started quickly with AEM and have the confidence in a foundation that will continue to adapt to the growing needs of the business for years and decades.

You don’t want to start with a web content management foundation that is “good enough”. If there is anything this disruptive digital era has shown is that the transformation is accelerating and, in the long-run, most of our estimates on the scale of technology impact is grossly underestimated. As Amara’s law states, “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

Engaging Content Fuels Great Experiences
Given Adobe’s heritage, we have a strong culture and appreciation that it takes great content to fuel great experiences. Each time I visit an art gallery or peruse a portfolio on Behance, I am reminded of the powerful nature of content that presents new ideas, invites strong emotions and tells memorable stories. Digital now makes historical and current content much more accessible and engaging. Adobe has invested to ensure AEM is able to source and curate the necessary content across both brand-created assets, such as images and videos through the Adobe Creative Cloud, to user-generated content from social networking sites such as Instagram or Facebook. With content insights, organizations are able to understand the most impactful content to further optimize a content and personalization strategy.

Fluid Experiences, the Modern Answer to Headless CMS
According to Gartner there are 8.4 billion connected things in use worldwide as of 2017. This is up 31 percent from 2016, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. Brands are already using AEM as an omnichannel content hub today. For instance, Hyatt uses AEM to manage their loyalty program (World of Hyatt) through central booking engine and combines the traditional workflow of researching hotels with editorial content to augment to traveler’s experience on their digital channels. In this case, AEM provides a flexible way to manage the content for the primary web channel yet supports the ability to push content out to parts of the site that are more customized and less traditional.

We continue to make it easier to use AEM as a content hub for emerging channels and applications including single-page apps. Adobe enables organizations to realize this vision with Fluid Experiences, which supports both developer and marketing/business needs: content that flows and adapts to the interaction context. Investments in content fragments, experience fragments and content services, in addition to the machine-learning framework, Adobe Sensei, make this possible at an even greater scale. This is not your grandfather’s headless content management system that only provides APIs. AEM has always had APIs to deliver content as a service. However, with APIs alone, organizations will quickly face the same IT bottlenecks of the past. Fluid experiences is Adobe’s innovation that gives IT developers and business users the ability to address the goals of headless, in a way that meets the demands across business operations and goals.

Adobe’s investment in web content management is focused on helping companies become leaders in digital transformation, now and well into the future. We’re fortunate that we are in a unique position to do this, not only because of our leadership in web content management, but also our leadership into a family of solutions, as part of the Adobe Experience Cloud. We have received Gartner leadership recognition in other critical components of an Experience Business including Multichannel Campaign Management, Digital Marketing Hubs and Digital Marketing Analytics.

Yes, digital transformation is a journey, not a destination. I’m proud to work with leading companies and partners who have been on the journey with us for over a decade, and to welcome the new companies who have invited us on their journey. The vision is clear, the commitment is strong. Adobe’s leadership in Gartner Magic Quadrants, including this latest one for web content management, only underlines Adobe’s commitment that we will continue to work to make sure all of you continue to be leaders in your respective industries.

I invite you to take a look at the latest Gartner MQ for Web Content Management and understand how Adobe Experience Manager can be the foundation of your digital transformation.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management, Mick MacComascaigh, Jim Murphy, 26 July 2017.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/adobe-leader-7th-year-gartner-magic-quadrant-web-content-management/