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Adobe Experience Platform will change the game<\/h2>\n
This year’s most notable unveiling was the Adobe Experience Platform. From a positioning perspective, it essentially replaces what has previously been referred to as “Core Services”. But technically speaking, it is so much more than a fresh coat of paint.<\/p>\n
The Experience Platform promises a significant step forward in Adobe’s ability to act as the hub and activation engine for your customer profile data. It will ingest disparate sources, resolve identities across tools and data sets, maintain real-time profile “hydration” with the latest traits and behaviours, and support advanced AI\/ML-powered analysis and activations within the Adobe product ecosystem and beyond. That’s a mouthful of words and ideas, to be sure\u2014but make no mistake that this is a serious play to elevate the traditional data-lake approach and surface real-time, democratised personalisation capabilities at scale.<\/p>\n
In notable contrast to Adobe\u2019s history of acquisition and (eventual) integration to broaden their portfolio, this entire platform has been purpose-built from the ground up to deliver on the underlying technology required to support the promise of a truly singular experience platform. This could very well be the legitimate manifestation of what this and other integrated mar-tech cloud offerings have long been pursuing.<\/li>\n
ODI\/XDM is transforming theory into practice<\/h2>\n
As a real-time customer data platform (CDP), the launch of the Experience Platform will dovetail perfectly with Adobe\u2019s role in the Open Data Initiative (ODI) and is further evidence of their significant industry-wide influence. Adobe debuted the ODI last year in partnership with Microsoft and SAP in an effort to describe and join up customer data in a consistent and usable way\u2014leading to the combination and activation of otherwise-siloed data resources.<\/p>\n
It’s all based on the Experience Data Model (XDM), an open-source set of more than 200 data models which is set to become the standard by which the industry records and activates customer profile and experience data. A lofty goal indeed, but one that could materially benefit a space that is plagued with a deep inability to turn theory into practice for many organisations.<\/li>\n
Retention is the new growth<\/h2>\n
Following a two-hour keynote to Adobe Partners, CEO Shantanu Narayen fielded questions from an intimate audience of invited press, analysts, and partner-insiders on day one of the Summit. When asked by a Chinese official what Adobe’s next acquisition would be, Shantanu gracefully told the packed ballroom that although Adobe’s acquisition strategy has been instrumental to its recent success and innovation, he had no plans to buy any companies in 2019 or even 2020.<\/p>\n
![\"Shantanu](\"\/wpe-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Shantanu-Mainstage-2.jpg\")
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Narayen’s political answer echoed an impassioned message heard throughout the keynote, and again later in the Q&A session: “Stop obsessing over acquisition!” He urged companies to stop applying marketing technology exclusively to new customer acquisition, and instead shift focus and resources towards customer retention. With the rise of subscription models, Narayen stressed that retention has never been more relevant. Easy advice from a company with millions of subscribers, sure, but his point that acquisition is much more expensive than retention couldn’t have been made any clearer.<\/p>\n
For non-commodity products, it’s no longer enough to simply dial in a lower price to retain customers. To craft personalised, sticky customer experiences in today’s market, businesses need to apply best-in-class web analytic solutions<\/a> to capture high-value actions, deploy AI tools to crawl through data and plug leaks and experiment constantly to stay ahead of competitors. Now more than ever.<\/li>\n\n \n