So I recently attended the Adobe CX forum and while it didn’t dazzle me quite as much as I’d hoped there were still some good takeaways. For starters they talked through the Econsultancy Digital Trends 2017 report which I’ve got a separate article for here.

Some of my favourite points they made were:

• Digital Marketing shouldn’t be producing their own top level performance reporting, it’s impossible to be objective when you’re in effect ‘marking your own homework’.

Instead top level performance reporting should be produced by an external person who can work with those teams to ensure consistency around measurement and define what the correct measurement framework is for each team. Interestingly this is in effect what Joe is already doing so sounds like we’re on the right track!

• Don’t be put off by unsuccessful ventures in to VR, it’s coming, like any new technology people are trying to take a lead in the marketing by getting on board early with little success.

The example they gave of Apple was actually quite good, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the iPhone is one of the most successful ‘smart phones’ out there but Apple didn’t release a phone as soon as smart phones hit the market. Instead they took their time waited for the market to mature and then released when appropriate.

It seems fairly obvious but it’s actually a smart strategy, it’s not a case of don’t invest in something early on but consider the maturity of market and develop with a plan to release something market leading when appropriate. A lot of ‘early adopters’ will be demotivated by failure and potentially struggle to get further investment later on. Waiting until the right moment will not only deliver a better ROI but also build faith in sensible strategy and investment for the future.

• Optimisation is as important as investment, businesses frequently assume the only way to generate higher ROI is to spend more but the reality is you can frequently achieve the same results by optimising your existing spend. Obviously there is a place for both and scenarios where some approaches will work better or worse but understanding the value in both is vital.

• For those of you who love a good a phrase (I’m thinking of you Lucy) in the market today “Not taking a risk, is a risk” which is a great way of summarising the fact the market is changing so fast you can’t afford to not try new things or you’ll end up getting overtaken.

• It’s interesting what a strong emphasis Adobe place on people and this is echoed in the Econsultancy report as well. You can invest and develop all the best technology and software in the world but without the people to use it it’s redundant. At least until AI really takes off and Adobe acquire Skynet (if you get the reference I’m afraid you’re a geek also).

• They also talked about a number of pieces around great customer experience and one of the examples they gave is the new “Atom Bank” which is a completely mobile app based bank, they don’t have branches and everything is done in-app which is gaining a lot of attention and growth. Just goes to show how much you can be an industry disrupter with great customer experience.

You can take a look at the main stage presentation below or download here.

CX Forum 2017 Mainstage

 

A separate session was also held for “Identifying actionable insights from multichannel data at Adobe” which is a great story about how Adobe increased ROI by 10% with a flat budget which just goes to show optimisation is as important as investment. I’ve added that below or again you can download here too.

CX Forum Adobe Customer Intelligence