Recently concluded Adobe Digital Marketing Summit in Salt lake city was clear indication of how Adobe is aligning its marketing offering for the future.

In today's world, marketing does not end after influencing the customer to buy a service and product. It is actually extending to E2E customer lifecycle and the experience individual goes through in each touch points. And Digital marketing principles need to be applied to all Customer touch points.

Velocity at which customers interact with brand is increasing, and this not only creates an opportunity to impress customer, but at the same time it also an threat because of increase probability to disappoint customer.

Highlighting some the emerging trends extensively discussed in the event and also key products launched.

Transforming the product into marketing

Anywhere anytime marketing is transforming the product into marketing. For example, UBER or AirBnB website is a product, but it's also a marketing platform.

Continuous and consistent and E2E experience

For example, Coco-cola launched "Liquid and linked" campaign  during last football world cup. The idea was to create the moment of happiness with the people who could not be there physically & make them feel part of the event. Participants across 150 counties co-created a flag of people.  

Coco-cola also set up vending machines/Booths across India and Pakistan border. People come and see each other and be happy and go back with Coke. 

Another example came from STARWOODs and how they are creating a E2E experience. Things like mobile check in and digital room Keys enhancing customer experience. Room experience is fully addressable, it can remember your past preference and will be able to personalize room experience. They are Introducing technologies to ensure when a customer approaches front desk, he is recognized. They are in the process of implementing Apple watch to open room etc. They did not stop there, they have recently announced partnership with Uber and Delta airline to provide 360 travel experience.

Focus on mobile experience - Build, manage, optimize mobile business

Time warner cable shared experience about how they developed a mobile strategy around "Always connected customer". They have built a start-up mentality in the developers community and transitioning from "mobile also" to "mobile 1st" to "Mobile only" paradigm.

National Australian bank stressed on the idea of "experience centric economy. NAB's 90% of the digital customers use mobile and have ability to participate in IOT ecosystem.

Data Driven marketing

Fivethirtyeight.com shared how they are deriving insights and predictions from data and blogging and journalism services. In fact they are working on prediction of Hilary Clinton winning the next USA election or not. 

Adobe Product Strategy

In-line with the above emerging trends, Adobe announced few new products which will further strengthen its portfolio.

New products announced mainly addressing personalization (better audience or target segment), Optimizing smart device experience, interactive asset management services, centralized cloud services. 

Adobe Prime Time

This product is targeted for video content. It measures video consumption, segment audience and optimize content and advertisements. It has introduced a technique called "Cross device frequency capping" which allows Advertisers not to repeated same add when you move channels and devices.

Audience Manager

It is a Data management platform. Can power your audience to be connected and extended in programmatic advertising. Improve and extend audience by adding data from 3rd party; And create look alike audience at larger scale.

Adobe Document Could Services

Although its launched just after Adobe summit, I thought its worth mentioning.

Document Cloud is the 3rd “cloud” of Adobe offering. It now joins Creative Cloud and Marketing Cloud as major growth vectors for the company. At the heart of the new service is a reimagined version of Acrobat, now named Acrobat DC (for document cloud). PDF can now be stored, tracked and managed through the new Document Cloud service. Document CLOUD will also have integration with 3rd partly CLOUD storage providers. eSign capabilities is also integrated into Acrobat DC let you store images of your signature as well as write it fresh. 

AEM Screen (DEMO version)

It is a large display device which can enhance in-store, in-venue, in branch experience. Using this touch screen device, which can interactively create right content for the web.

FS embracing the change

Every Financial institute must take a note of the trends in the digital marketing and align its strategy. As we immerse into Internet of experience. The right branding and marketing strategy will make FS organizations move from providing Core services to more broad-based value added services allowing them to engage customer upstream and tap into revenue streams well in advance.