The major upgrades to Adobe Marketing Cloud span all six of its products. A central theme is unifying not only customer data but also creative assets, marketing work flows, and Adobe products.
Today Adobe introduced upgrades to Adobe Marketing Cloud that span all six of its products. A central theme is unifying not only customer data but also creative assets, marketing work flows, and Adobe products themselves.
After absorbing and building out the various products the company has acquired over the years, Adobe is now beginning to remove the barriers between the products themselves and between the data and/or assets within each.
To support this vision, Adobe has created a few “core services” that span the different products within Adobe Marketing Cloud, which are:
One Customer Across Channels
Master Marketing Profile provides a single view of customers and prospects across marketing channels, thanks to integration between Adobe Target and Adobe Analytics.
Marketers can use this profile data to create audience segments and then deliver ads or marketing across media types and devices, including social networks and app content.
These profiles can be updated in real time with behavioral data from within other products in the Marketing Cloud and/or third-party applications for CRM and ERP or the like, as well as from transactional and payment platforms.
With Master Marketing Profiles, “Messaging can be more intelligent,” says Ray Pun, senior product marketing manager for mobile solutions for Adobe. For example, instead of sending multiple duplicate messages to the same consumer on different devices, a marketer can address complementary ads via the different channels.
Integrated Web and Mobile Marketing
A new release of Adobe Experience Manager lets marketers launch both Web and mobile sites at the same time. Interactive elements, including video, can now be created and delivered across devices via Experience Manager, while templates can reduce project time by as much as 50 percent, Adobe says.
Assets Available Everywhere
Another element in the unification push is Shared Assets, letting companies sync, store, search, and share digital assets from a central repository for use across Adobe Marketing Cloud products. With Shared Assets, companies that have centralized control of brand assets can save time by finding assets more quickly and also benefit from better standardization of assets across channels, Adobe says.
“Today, it’s very fragmented. Agencies and brands all have stuff in silos,” Pun says. “We believe, for many CMOs, this is how they want their brand and message to be communicated.”
Technology Previews
Adobe also previewed Marketing Mix Planning technology that will let Adobe Marketing Cloud users plan, optimize, and execute both digital and traditional-media campaigns, including TV, print, and events. The product will use descriptive and predictive analytics to unify cross-media planning and execution, as well as attribution and analytics.
Experience and PhoneGap Unite
Another preview of technology that Adobe says should be available this summer is an integration of Adobe Experience Manager with PhoneGap Enterprise that will let marketers have more creative control over mobile apps. They’ll be able to easily swap out assets and content within mobile apps using a drag-and-drop interface.
“Historically, developers have built apps, and marketers didn’t have a lot of control,” says Pun. “Now, as a marketer, you can change the home-screen creative, for example, instead of picking up the phone and calling the developer.”
Supporting iBeacon and New Customers
Adobe announced support for Apple’s iBeacon technology within Adobe Mobile Services 2.0. This lets marketers in real time analyze a user’s location near an iBeacon, including dwell time, whether the person is entering or exiting the proximity, and how he’s moving around the beacon. The brand can then deliver push messages and promotions, as well as to tie these interactions into all other app engagement data in Adobe Analytics.
Although iBeacons are far from ubiquitous, Pun says, “Marketers need to measure and understand the ROI of this innovation.”
Finally, Adobe says that Deloitte Digital, Epsilon, and Wunderman are integrating Adobe Marketing Cloud into their own marketing platforms.
