Real Time for Real Customers

What’s the biggest disconnect between digital marketing systems and the customers they serve? Customers behave in real time, and marketing systems do not. This creates frustrations and disconnects that are solely based on different time sequences. The most common example occurs when a customer receives a discount coupon to activate a purchase after the purchase has occurred. A positive then turns into a negative, as the customer now feels as if they paid too much.

The impetus to move from a “time-delay” approach to the customer experience (CX) to a real-time approach has only increased as the pandemic changes how customers behave, and this change will continue into the future. Perhaps more importantly, as customers move from brand to brand and have different experiences, brands that can’t interact in real time will be far less attractive.

The most frequently cited problem that precludes a real-time CX is the inability of the myriad systems and apps that make up CX to work effectively together and to move data at the speed necessary for real-time interaction. There are still silos of data, activity, and intelligence about customers that cannot be stitched together in an effective manner. This is the natural outgrowth of the legacy approach to marketing automation that was focused on deploying numerous unique products for “point” solutions. And it takes far too long to move data from the edge or from disparate systems into the platforms that drive CX.

Adobe in the vanguard

As a leader in providing digital marketing tools, apps, and platforms, Adobe is in the vanguard of integrating disparate marketing technologies into a cohesive whole. It starts with Adobe Experience Platform, the first open and extensible platform for data integration that enables marketers to build the comprehensive perspective necessary to support real-time interaction. Adobe has now augmented Adobe Experience Platform with Adobe Experience Platform Edge Network and Web/Mobile SDK. The edge solution makes it possible to integrate and streamline data input from all edge servers via one edge network. The Web/Mobile SDK now provides a single developer kit for integration with all Adobe products. These advances not only support more integrations, but they also support speedier integration, a must for real-time experiences.

Adobe has also announced Adobe Experience Platform Launch Server Side that leverages Mobile/Web SDK. Launch Server Side is an integral part of the data collection and forwarding process that speeds up the delivery of data, another necessity for real-time experiences. Data is shared in seconds, improving page load performance.

The benefits of implementing the Adobe solution are noteworthy. Not only are brands able to stitch together data in ways never before possible, but they can now move this data much more quickly to support real-time responses to customers. The ability to synchronize the speed of both customers and systems results in a CX that is noticeably improved from what is now common.

The trend toward real-time customer experiences is unstoppable. It’s also necessary, as the ability of systems to respond at the speed of the customer has become one of the most obvious points of differentiation between “old school” digital marketing and modern efforts. Adobe’s delivery of a platform that is designed for integrations, coupled with the tools to quickly move data into that platform, will form the foundation for the future.

For more information about Adobe Experience Platform, click here.