It was on 20 September 2018 when Adobe announced that it is acquiring a B2B martech company – Marketo. In the last eighteen months, numerous Adobe Marketo updates have transformed martech offerings to better match Adobe’s larger vision of delivering unified, real-time, and hyper-personalized customer experience. The unique amalgamation of CRM expertise and data science sits right at the center of Adobe’s industry-leading Experience Cloud. And, that’s why we decided to take a magnified look into some of the recent Adobe Marketo updates that every CRM specialist should learn about.
Adobe Experience League Takes Marketing Automation Beyond the Quotidian Routine
Today, customer experience (CX) has become a product in itself. B2B marketing and sales companies brand and sell their various products, solutions and services with CX assurances. But, merely delivering CX is not enough. Adobe recently pitched its vision to completely transform CX deliverables around marketers, data science engineers and AI. These teams work together to help marketers “not only understand their customers but also improve the customer journey across multiple touchpoints.”
According to Adobe’s 2020 Digital Trends report, around one-third of the leading product and services-driven businesses said that their customer journey was a top priority for 2020 closely followed by targeting and personalization.”
Lynne Biggar, Visa CMO had stated¹ —
“From a martech perspective, we have invested an increasing amount in building the right stack over the last couple of years. We’re using our dollars effectively and putting money towards the evolving media platforms that drive the most return and leveraging data to make smart decisions.”
At Adobe, the focus is laser-targeted at delivering customer experiences that surf past benchmarks. The new badge of CRM MVPs go to martech professionals who are adept at handling a mix of marketing, sales and advertising tools, and not just CRMs and Marketing Analytics. It’s a chance for every CRM specialist to become an Experience Maker.
Upgrade Your CRM Skills to Become an ‘Experience Maker’
Adobe is driving the current CX economy by citing top trends in digital marketing, advertising, sales automation, UI UX, document automation, and with Magento’s acquisition, Content Management and Experience systems for omnichannel commerce. In 2017, Marketo’s CEO Steve Lucas had said what every Chief Executive Officer should play a part to become a Chief Experience Manager. Since, then, the Experience Manager tagline has caught the frenzy of many CMOs and Customer Success Officers.
Truly, that’s what Adobe’s recent updates also speak about. Become an Experience Maker in your own right– challenge your skills, your talent and explore new martech destinations that were otherwise mostly limited by budgets and restricted opportunities to access enterprise-level marketing technologies.
Today, you can join Adobe’s Experience League.
Experience League Community, include upgrades offered as part of Adobe Experience Manager; Adobe Experience Platform; Adobe Audience Manager; Adobe Advertising Cloud; Marketo Engage; Adobe Campaign; Adobe Analytics; and Adobe Target.
You can be an Adobe Experience League MVP if you are a community user with 1000+ points or 3 stars. An MVP with CRM specialist background can expand career opportunities by engaging with users and answering their queries.
You can write blogs related to Help Guides and share ideas for the Experience Cloud, speakers at webinars & Meet-ups.
Championing Content Attribution to Build a Fiar and Authentic Digital Marketing
For a CRM specialist, aligning marketing tactics with benchmark content practices is a must-do activity. Day-to-day activities in handling CRM involves working with tons of content originating within your organization and from outside. Content Discovery and Attribution tools can enable digital content marketing teas to verify the true source and validity of any content or document across various CRM functions.
Last month on January 23, Adobe kicked-off the first-ever Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) summit to “advance the mission to develop an industry standard for digital content attribution.” The New York Times Company and Twitter joined Adobe in developing CAI guidelines. Adobe Mareko updates are expected to emphasize CAI’s inspiring mission to reinforce and drive more trust and transparency online.
Training and Certifications
Adobe’s Experience League Community is constantly enriched with insights provided by 17.4 million users. To constantly meet the dynamic nature of customer demands, Adobe has begun an academic revolution for martech professionals. CRM specialists have an opportunity to be part of the academic courses and earn certifications with the highest credentials.
These courses are:
- Adobe Certified Expert Exams
- Marketo Certified Associate Exam
- Marketo Certified Expert Exam
- Magento 2 Certified Exams (for DevOps and Cloud Professionals)
Exceed your Own Expectations in 2020: Watch Adobe Summit 2020 Live
Adobe Summit is one of the biggest annual marketing events in the world. This year, Adobe Summit will showcase a wide range of products and ideas, in addition to setting an ideal scene for CRM specialists to meet, network and hear from industry leaders.
The 5-day event will kick-off with training ((ADLS + Marketo University + Magento U + Certification) followed by Adobe Partner Experience keynote and Magento Imagine.
Keynote speakers at the event include martech, salestech, CX leaders, influencers, and celebrities from all walks of life.
Hall of Fame
Gwyneth Paltrow, Oscar winner & Entrepreneur | goop
Tom Brady 6-time Super-Bowl Champion & Entrepreneur | TB12
Shantanu Narayen, CEO, Adobe
Jeff Weiner, former CEO at LinkedIn
Dr. Albert Bourla, Chairman & CEO | Pfizer
Jane Moran, Chief Technology Advisor, Unilever
Beth McDonnell. EVP & CMO, US Bank
Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President, Retail & Consumer Goods, Microsoft
Gleb Brichko, VP Growth and Demand Marketing, Nutanix
Ted Schadler, Vice President & Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
David Cancel, CEO Drift
Uberflip CMO, Randy Frisch
Uday Kotla, Global Business Head, Digital Experience, Infosys
Tyler Lessard, VP Marketing, Vidyard
Gene Paek, Global Head of Digital Experience + Innovation, HP
John ThieS, CEO and Co-Founder, Email on Acid
Nicole Wieberneit, Global Sales Director – Marketing Solutions, Microsoft
Jason Widup, VP Marketing Operations, Workfront
You can find the Adobe Summit 2020 agenda here.
(To share your insights on Marketing, Sales and Service alignment, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com)
¹The 2019 Digital Trends by Adobe