Marketing as an innovation engine.
The Adobe.com team builds richer audience segments using Adobe I/O Runtime and Adobe I/O Events to extend Adobe Audience Manager.
Introduces new opportunities
to extend Adobe Experience Platform capabilities
Objectives
Empower marketers to drive greater personalisation for B2B customers
Create audience segments combining enterprise CRM data with behavioural analytics
Make it easy for developers to deploy customised code to extend Adobe Experience Cloud capabilities
Results
Enables marketers to configure sophisticated audience segments in minutes rather than days
Supports more personalised digital experiences for account-based marketing
Allowed developers to deploy customised code in less than a week and go live in less than a month
Introduces new opportunities to extend Adobe Experience Platform capabilities
Customer Zero takes the lead with new features
Marketing teams at Adobe are on the leading edge of personalisation, constantly testing the boundaries of what’s possible to make Adobe the leader in Customer Experience Management (CXM). The drive to innovate is baked into Adobe culture and products and marketers are in the rare position to use the products they promote.
“Adobe marketing teams are known internally as ‘Customer Zero’ because we’re typically the first to delve into new features of Adobe Experience Cloud,” says Fred Kuu, Group Manager, Marketing Applications and Architecture on the Adobe.com team. “It’s a great opportunity to experiment with new use cases for personalisation and influence product direction.”
One exciting opportunity for innovation arose when Adobe I/O Runtime was released into beta. Adobe I/O Runtime makes it easy for developers to deploy customised functions that respond to events from anywhere in Adobe Experience Cloud—and execute code in the cloud, without setting up servers. The serverless environment is a powerful complement to Adobe I/O Events, which surfaces events such as asset uploads, page publications and abandoned baskets—and makes them available as web hooks and APIs for automated workflows.
There are virtually infinite possibilities with Adobe I/O Runtime and Adobe I/O Events, but in this case, the Adobe.com team wanted to drive personalisation for account-based marketing (ABM), using enterprise data to form more sophisticated audience segments. When people visit Adobe.com, marketers want to know not only what they view and how long they stay, but also where they work, whether they’re existing customers, which products they use, where they are in the sales pipeline and more.
“Adobe.com marketers wanted to bring CRM attributes into Adobe Audience Manager for richer audience segments,” says Kuu. “We were using behavioural data from Adobe Analytics to drive personalisation on the site, which was a great start but there was definitely an opportunity to go deeper with enterprise account information.”
“Accessing CRM attributes in real time and sharing to Adobe.com with Adobe I/O Runtime solved what had been one of the biggest pain points in our personalisation efforts.”
Fred Kuu
Group Manager, Marketing Applications & Architecture, Adobe
Developing an elegant solution to account-based personalisation
Before Adobe I/O Runtime, the team spent a significant amount of time and energy in Adobe Audience Manager creating Derived Signals and mapping signals such as company name to CRM attributes. This process of creating and updating Derived Signals could take hours or even days.
Adobe I/O Runtime offered a powerful way to automate the data flow and set the stage for more extensive personalisation. Developers created a real-time lookup function that taps into enterprise account data every time someone visits Adobe.com. The function returns all the relevant attributes—including industry, account status, products in use and sales interactions—feeding them into Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager.
“Accessing CRM attributes in real time and sharing to Adobe.com with Adobe I/O Runtime solved what had been one of the biggest pain points in our personalisation efforts,” says Kuu. “With the function we built, we can create segments in minutes and start to deliver highly personalised account-based experiences.”
New opportunities for personalised customer experiences
With the ability to dynamically pull enterprise account information into the realm of Adobe.com, marketers see a new world of possibilities for personalising digital experiences. The marketing team can now recognise valuable customers—or potential customers—when they visit the site. It can better understand what these customers need in the moment and deliver relevant experiences on the spot.
“Finding new ways to deliver personalised digital experiences is a top priority for Adobe and the key to strengthening our leadership in Customer Experience Management,” Kuu says. “By unifying our B2B customer data with Adobe I/O Runtime, we’ve taken a big step toward personalisation at scale for our enterprise customers.”
The Adobe.com team has other plans in mind as well. For example, the team is working on a solution to create audience segments in Adobe Audience Manager based on real-time behavioural events, such as when a website visitor abandons a basket or form. Combining Adobe I/O Runtime, Adobe I/O Events and Adobe Analytics triggers, the powerful capability will enable marketers to respond immediately to customers’ actions through automated workflows.
“Instead of worrying about complex integration builds and releases, teams can focus on developing simple functions and microservices that can be plugged in.”
Fred Kuu
Group Manager, Marketing Applications & Architecture, Adobe
Deploying customised code, faster
For developers, the time savings are important. The process of creating segments and updating attributes has shrunk from days to just minutes. And developing the lookup function itself was fast and easy.
“We had the function up and running on Adobe I/O Runtime in less than a week and launched the proof of concept on Adobe.com in less than a month,” explains Kuu. “Our developers didn’t need to learn a new language or deal with infrastructure set-up.”
“Instead of worrying about complex integration builds and releases, teams can focus on developing simple functions and microservices that can be plugged in,” Kuu adds. “This is significant for marketing organisations as there can be much more rapid development.”
Adobe I/O Runtime opens the door for new features that extend the capabilities of Adobe Experience Cloud. The Adobe.com team sees it as a new tool in the toolbox and a powerful way to approach problem solving, with the hope that other Adobe Experience Cloud customers will follow its lead.
Recommended for you
https://main--bacom--adobecom.hlx.page/fragments/customer-success-stories/contact-footer
