We had an action-packed time in Las Vegas last week at the Adobe Summit—innovative discussions and conversations, and a very exciting announcement of our newest partnership with Marketo, an Adobe company. For us, what happens in Vegas should not stay in Vegas. Here are some of our takeaways from the conference:
Creating human experiences
From inspiring content on how emotions evoke a stronger memory to the importance of data and analytics in all industries, it was clear from Adobe Summit that experiences that matter is the focus for all marketers. While artificial intelligence may be the future, the goal of it is very human: to intelligently create experiences for consumers that can be intuitive and automated. Ensuring those experiences are personalized and meaningful is the foundation for all our customer touchpoints.
That goal of empowering human experiences is amplified by our newest partnership with Marketo, an Adobe company, which was announced on stage at Adobe Summit. With this partnership, the worlds of adtech and martech have converged. Marketers can create a truly relevant, cross-channel, highly tailored experience by leveraging a data-first strategy to the broader digital ecosystem in a privacy-conscious manner. Adobe and Marketo are committed to delivering a hyper focused, consumer-centric experience with the goal of empowering and engaging customers like never before.
As Marketo’s CMO Sarah Kennedy put it in her keynote, “the customer is always the answer.” Sarah told us about her customer obsession earlier this year at RampUp, and how marketers must be just as obsessed with customers as they are with data. The customer experience is “the future of everything,” she says.
B2E(veryone)
As customer experiences come more into focus, the once separate worlds of B2C and B2B are becoming one. We’re moving into a “B2Everyone world,” as Marketo’s Steve Lucas called out in his keynote. This new world of marketing focuses on the experiences of the consumer or the account using the most relevant and contextual data, where rich profiles of the “consumer” are what is driving this new way of marketing forward. Regardless of whether we’re trying to reach individual consumers or businesses, similar tactics are employed at the end of the day to create personalized experiences that matter to the end customer.
This idea of B2E echoed what we’ve been working on recently at LiveRamp, especially with our recent launch of LiveRamp B2B. B2B marketers now have the same targeting, measurement, analytics, and personalization capabilities that have been available to B2C marketers, enabling B2B marketers to better reach the decision-makers within an organization.
Brand experiences for the entire marketing funnel
This year at Adobe Summit, we saw more of a focus on down-funnel activities than ever before. Previously, it was enough for a marketer to drive awareness, and maybe even intent, with their activities, but now marketers are being tasked with the entire brand experience, from the digital journey all the way through the offline conversion.
DialogTech, which offers marketers a way to access unstructured offline data from phone calls (and a LiveRamp partner), noted the significance of voice in consumer experience marketing. Said CEO Doug Kofoid, “Thanks to smartphones and voice assistants, we now see the online consumer journey move offline, with digital channels generating billions of high-intent consumer conversations with businesses. What’s really exciting is marketers now have the tools to win these important moments, providing callers with personalized experiences and turning these conversations into actionable insights to inform and improve the performance of digital campaigns.”
We are beginning to see the emergence of a whole new set of tools around how marketers can extend their reach beyond the digital into the world of phone calls, voice assistants, chatbots, social messaging, and even into the call center in a privacy-first manner.
One thing is certain from what we heard most among attendees: more and more marketers are looking for technology that creates or drives a consistent brand experience, whether that’s online or even in stores. In making those purchasing decisions, marketers need to keep customers top of mind to ensure they’re delivering experiences that matter.