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Adobe Summit 2022 - Experience Platform

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Image

 Our hero image features many air balloons flying, scattered in a blue sky. Each of them has characteristics in their designs that are “part of a whole”, which in this case is an exhibition that is part of a festival.

Now, let us leverage this analogy, mapping it to the elements that are relevant for this post’s agenda. Think about the pieces of data scattered through different systems, which combined (behaviour and PII data) becomes part of a whole: an enriched consumer profile that can provide you a “360 view”. This allows corporations to find opportunities, and turn them into value: “enabling ways to engage with that customer(s) to meet a cluster of business goals.”

Photo by Lad Fury from Pexels

 

The objectives for this article are:

  1. To provide our takeaways from two (2) Adobe summit 2022 sessions, related to the Adobe Experience Platform and Real-time CDP (Customer Data Platform). Those sessions being
    • S401 (AEP a modern foundation - by Klaasjan Tukler) and 
    • S408 (DMP vs CDP: Why and when to evolve - Nina Caruso and Chris Stolz)
  2. To complete the cycle of our short series dedicated to the Adobe Summit 2022. Our previous article Adobe Summit 2022 - Email nurturing takeaways focused on email nurturing. This article connects the dots, where orchestration and integration comes into play. The combination of systems, such as CDP and Email Service Provider (ESP), provides significant value to businesses, by leveraging the capabilities of :
    • Having the data in one place
    • Segmentation and activation (to orchestrate outcome driven user journeys)
    • Integration with channels, such as email, sms, social channels to engage with consumers

Adobe Summit 2022 - S401 - Experience Cloud

 

Let's get to it

Takeaways from the sessions. The value provided by a CDP:

Customer experience is a differentiator when it comes to conversion as customers are more likely to engage when the brand presents them with personalized experiences. 

According to the “Future of Marketing Research Series, Adobe 2021” study only 25 - 50% of marketing content from brands is currently being personalized.

There is no doubt that personalized experiences are good for business as digital experiences provide:

  • Brand awareness,
  • Customer retention,
  • Repeated visitors,
  • Customer lifetime value,
  • Others

As personalization at scale becomes more relevant to companies, many executives start to ponder what can be done in order to deliver to the consumers what they expect, and how to measure the “value” to the company that comes out of this exchange. How to determine when to respond to signals, and when not to, as they attempt to deliver customized experiences to the right customers on the right channel at the right time, making sure that experience carries on with them as part of their journey.

The challenges that comes with personalization at scale:

  • Data silos
  • Privacy and security
  • Content velocity
  • Cross-channel coordination
  • Knowing the right next step

When it comes to technology, companies might be using a Data Management Platform (DMP) for audience enrichment. They also might be on the on-site personalization based on behaviours. But new challenges are upon us:

  • The many changes happening because of data regulations (GDPR, CASL, CCPA), etc.
  • As well as browsers that has been restricting 3rd party cookies and
  • Customers that expect personalization with trust (respect their preferences)

Because of it the following items start disappearing for the DMPs:

  • Cookies and devices IDs
  • 3rd party data
  • Because of (1) and (2) then the value around audience building and Ad focus activation reduces. Therefore this has a negative impact to the uses cases of acquisition, targeting and suppression

Therefore, the considerations for Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are rising. Multiple types of data sources, such as CRM, POS (Point-of-Sale), Sales, surveys, behaviour, etc., provide the CDP with the capabilities of profile building, with embedded governance, allowing to unlock use cases of consolidation data management and multi-channel orchestration and real-time experience activation unlocking.

“Continuous Intelligence” is made possible when as part of your systems to bring known and unknown data the companies start leveraging products such as the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) in order to learn from those signals received from the customer’s interactions, processing those learnings in order to properly understand and respect the wishes for those trusting us with their data as we are reacting by serving them content, services and/or products.

In AEP, the customer profile is dynamic in nature. The data from the different sources comes in the Experience Data Model, providing the normalization in order to get this into the customer’s profile. That includes many attributes, including the customer’s preferences that are a “big deal” as we live in an era where data privacy matters thanks to the data regulations within the different regions and countries.

Adobe Summit - S401 - Real-time CDP

CDP orchestration. Activation towards email nurturing:

In our article Adobe Summit 2022 - Email nurturing takeaways we mentioned six (6) nurture tracks. We also highlighted the importance of sending the right content to the right person at the right time, therefore curating email content considering the consumers’ position in the marketing funnel.

We will focus only on the two (2) following items and see how a CDP can help to achieve the campaign goals:

  1. The Gopher track: The objective of this track is to pop up to the users at a set cadence and stay relevant even if the user is not ready to buy right now. This track can create a fertile environment for future leads to generate
  2. MOFU: User is in the mid-funnel, close to making the buying decision

A CDP permits the Continuous Intelligence cycle by building a “deep understanding around the consumer” in order to deliver impactful and engaging experiences.

ESPs were never built for having a single view of the consumer. CDPs on the other hand can achieve the 360 view as they are a central location that feeds on different sources. The combination of CDP and ESP allows marketers to orchestrate their email campaigns, delivering to consumers the type, and amount, of communications they are expecting to drive higher conversions. 

To put it altogether here is the following scenario:

  1. A marketer from one of the biggest comic books in the Americas has been looking at the reports on their dashboard (powered by the CDP) noticing a group of customers that got converted into known a year back during one of their promotions displayed via their social media related to collectional editions owned previously by famous actors. In that period they did a second (2nd) purchase, but then never did another again. They still have maintained in their email list, with occasional open click events captured (this is our “Gophers”)
  2. The company has received a group of well preserved used comics owned by a group of European celebrities, famous in the late 90’s. They are planned to be sold at premium price
  3. Knowing all this, and based on its early analysis, the marketer decides to create a segment called “Gophers May - August 2022” within the CDP, planning to use it for its campaign that will run before summer ends
  4. The designers and email author teams work on the campaign with a couple of variations:
    • Regular customers
    • Newsletter customers (has never purchases)
    • Gophers standard
    • Gophers re-target (for a flow in case the Gophers do not react after a few days of receiving the Gophers standard)
  5. The marketer sets for the CDP to send the segment “Gophers May - August 2022” with profile IDs, so the ESP can do it’s thing
  6. Within the first week the Marketer starts seeing in the CDP how that dormant/”occasionally-see-emails” consumer has been active by engaging with the email and looking at the product pages of the campaign while being logged in. It also has noticed that those consumers have started the shopping path but without fulfillment
    • The marketer brings the team to start hypotheses on what to do in order to help this potential buyers commit to the purchase  (The users in our MOFU)

Summary

  • Consumers are looking for personalized experiences. At the same time, they are looking for companies that respect their preferences, and that can be trusted with their data
  • Think on how you are architecting the solution for the purposes of segmentation and activation  
  • The CDP allows for all of the data to reside in one place, allowing an easier orchestration
  • Data management has a positive impact on hard and soft (vanity) metrics
  • CDP systems are a control centre for orchestrating marketing across different channels (email, web, e-commerce, display)
  • A movement to better data management and systems such as a CDP requires a structural and cultural change in the companies
  • A CDP without a strategy, is just another tool that will yield little to no success

References

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