Top Insights from the 2019 Adobe Summit

This year’s Adobe Summit was a huge success as thousands of business leaders came together to network, connect, and learn about the latest upcoming trends in digital transformation and e-commerce. The three-day event in Las Vegas was packed full of influential speakers, inspiring stories of success, and sneak peeks of future solutions that Adobe has been working on behind the scenes.

As an Adobe insider at the event, I had the privilege of attending countless learning opportunities and seeing the newest emerging trends for myself, so I’d love to take the time to share my top experiences from the Summit. These insights include inspirational words from business leaders, unveiled Adobe products, unique Summit experiences, and more. (Perhaps this will even inspire you to join me next year at the 2020 Summit!)

Back to the ‘90s

Adobe devised a truly fun and unique way to show how much their company has evolved over the years with their “Back to the ‘90s” experience on the first day of the Adobe Summit. They decked out three rooms in ’90s decor, complete with old-fashioned Apple Macs, Furbies, and cheesy inspirational posters, to take Summit guests back to when the first digital banner ads were created. The experience was incredibly entertaining as guests who took part in the experience attempted to load the banner ad from a floppy disk, call “clients” from a landline phone, and Xerox the final orders while being overseen by a frenzied office manager. Taking part in “Back to the ‘90s” certainly made me appreciate how far has technology has come since then!

“Retention is the New Growth”

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced this powerful statement in front of thousands of Summit attendees in an effort to inspire business leaders to put more focus on their current customers. Narayen continued, saying that, “If you are not retaining your customers, even at current revenue rates, then you have to run faster and faster and faster.” He explains that many companies put too much emphasis on acquiring new customers instead of giving current clients a reason to stay loyal to the brand. Listening to your customer base, quickly addressing pain points, and actively improving your services according to your customers’ needs will help you improve customer loyalty and retention while naturally attracting more clients.

Account Based Marketing

ABM has proven to be an excellent strategy for B2B companies, with 85% of marketers reporting that ABM efforts performed better than other marketing strategies they utilized. However, the traditional methods of setting up accounts for ABM can take long, tedious hours of careful study and research, so Marketo developed a solution integrated with AI to make the process much less painless. Account Profiling, a component of Marketo Engage, can easily analyze data to create ideal customer profiles in mere seconds instead of weeks. Marketers can save significant amounts of time and eliminate any guesswork by trusting the data-proven results shown to them through Account Profiling.

Artificial Intelligence

Most presentations from Adobe representatives referred to the capabilities of Adobe Sensei, a product that can be utilized within the Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Adobe Document Cloud. Adobe Sensei uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to give every customer a highly personalized online shopping experience. It can sift through large amounts of data in seconds, recognize images, and is designed to make it easier for you to achieve your creative vision for your website. Instead of taking hours, or even days, to evaluate the aesthetics of your site, Adobe Sensei’s Content Intelligence feature can do so in seconds. AI is sure to be the next big thing in e-commerce, and Adobe is already leading the way for other businesses to follow suit.

Forget B2B and B2C: B2E is Next

The phrase B2E, or “Business to Everyone,” was a monumental declaration made by the senior vice president of digital experience at Adobe, Steve Lucas. During his presentation, Lucas stated that keeping B2B and B2C tools separated from each other is far outdated. He strongly believes that companies should begin taking advantage of certain tools, such as Adobe Campaign Manager, to merge the two selling points into one combined effort. Lucas referred to Amazon as an example of a B2E company, citing the vast amounts of products and services they offer. Although some Summit attendees were hesitant to embrace the delineation of B2B and B2C marketing tools, Lucas believes that the future of the two converging is closer than people may realize.

Focus on Empathy and Culture

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made a refreshingly positive business statement during an interview with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, saying that, “Empathy is at the core of all innovation.” He emphasizes that understanding the customer’s needs should always be kept at the forefront of any marketing effort or digitalization transformation. He refers to the adaptive controller that his company developed in order to make gaming a more accessible hobby for people, and stated that even the device’s packaging is accessible! Nadella mentioned another important aspect of growing as a company is to create a collaborative work environment where

“a sense of purpose, mission, and culture are really key.”