M+E Daily

Adobe used its online Adobe Summit opening keynote on April 27 to introduce new and enhanced features across Adobe Experience Cloud, unveiling new enterprise applications with Adobe Journey Optimizer and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, its next-generation Real-time Customer Data Platform (CDP).

The company also touted new Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) capabilities to deliver real-time personalization at scale, and announced new content and intelligent commerce capabilities, including a strategic partnership with FedEx.

The company has launched the Adobe Journey Optimizer enterprise application, which was “built natively on” AEP, according to Anil Chakravarthy, EVP and GM of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business and worldwide field operations. It is “tailor-made for marketers to manage the customer journey end to end, from broad general campaigns to in-the-moment, real-time mobile engagements at speed and scale,” he said.

Adobe Journey Optimizer was “designed to help marketers optimize the customer journey across any outbound or inbound customer touchpoint,” according to the company. “Brands can now actively listen to customer signals and use intelligent decisioning to anticipate and deliver the most relevant journey at scale by bringing together audience-based outbound marketing with one-on-one engagement,” Adobe said.

Also new is integration between the Adobe Marketo Engage end-to-end customer experience management solution and the Adobe Sign cloud-based e-signature service. “As a result, we’re making it easier than ever to include document approval and signature workflows directly in your marketing automation,” according to Chakravarthy.

Adobe is also introducing “several innovations in our flagship application Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) to help you create, manage and optimize the content your digital business requires and at the velocity you need,” he said.

New innovations within AEM will help “brands create, manage and optimize the content businesses require at the velocity needed to stay ahead,” according to Adobe. That includes Headless Content Management System (CMS) capabilities that it said “deliver immersive content as data over” application programming interfaces (APIs) and bring advanced AI to content automation.

AEM “now supports a complete set of Headless content management capabilities, which is immersive content with API-first delivery,” Chakravarthy said.

Adobe also “reimagined Headless to make it smarter with Adobe Sensei” AI and machine learning (ML) services “to optimize content for commerce and to support rich media content automation,” he said. Headless content allows content managers to manage and reuse content from a single repository.

Also new is AEM Assets Essentials, a scaled-down version of AEM, that Chakravarthy said “will be the default asset management experience integrated into our apps starting with Adobe Journey Optimizer and coming later this year with Adobe Workfront.”

The integration of Workfront into Adobe’s operations is “off to a fast start,” he said. Adobe recently acquired that firm and its work management platform for marketers.

Following Adobe’s acquisition of Workfront, Adobe previewed its new Marketing System of Record, which “will be the single source of truth for connecting and managing work across the entire marketing lifecycle, from strategy and planning to execution and measurement,” it said.

Adobe has seen “explosive growth of AEM cloud service over the past year,” Chakravarthy said.

Also new are Intelligent Visual Recommendations, which he said “utilizes imagery to display visually similar items unlocking new ways for customers to discover your catalog.”

“Companies are increasingly relying on digital commerce as the dominant channel to drive business growth,” according to Adobe. Powered by Adobe Sensei, Product Recommendations in Adobe Commerce now “unlock new ways for customers to discover products and Live Search delivers fast and hyper-relevant results and search experiences on the merchant’s site,” it said.

Live Search is a new, intelligent real-time search service that Chakravarthy said is powered by the Adobe Sensei AI and ML platform.

The new collaboration with FedEx, meanwhile, will let Adobe Commerce merchants integrate their storefronts with FedEx ShopRunner, allowing them to offer consumer benefits including free two-day shipping, seamless checkout, easy returns and the ability to access FedEx post-purchase logistics intelligence, according to Adobe.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that brands that “put a laser focus on customer experience management come out in front,” according to Chakravarthy. “Adobe Experience Cloud with its new innovations released today is bringing businesses closer to their customers—enabling them to deliver the best digital experiences at speed and scale.”