With technology maturing faster than ever before, companies are exploring different avenues to get ahead of the curve. According to McKinsey, roughly 65% of executives are increasing their investments in automation and AI. In fact, marketing software companies are striving to create a ‘best-in-show’ product to help their clients succeed.
It comes as no surprise that everywhere you turn another upstart MarTech startup is setting out to disrupt the way that the business world uses tech. However, while many solutions integrate, each new platform meant a new set of metrics, terminology and proprietary features. To remain competitive, some of the more established platforms focus on acquiring startup competitors to protect their industry position. While some companies merely bring acquisitions under their umbrella, Adobe has been strategic about acquisitions, working to ensure seamless transitions to fill gaps and create a horizontally integrated experience.
In my opinion, what makes Adobe stand out is its ability to holistically integrate campaigns, which allows users to seamlessly collaborate on a single project across multiple platforms or access points. This integration started with Adobe developed applications such as Target and Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) and expanded to acquisitions like Marketo, ensuring the best possible experience and results for users. These three programs individually provide robust user experiences, but when used together, they provide a seamless experience, making the ecosystem greater than the sum of its parts. Let’s dive in.
Bucking the Piecemeal Trend
Within the last 20 years, we have witnessed an incredible tech boom and have more options than ever before when it comes to MarTech solutions. In fact, there were 9,932 marketing technology solutions available to the market in 2022.
Marketing teams looking to get ahead may start building an extensive stack, only to find they’re spending a lot of time learning the programs and working manually to reformat and restructure their data from each platform to create accurate reports.
On the other hand, companies like Adobe prioritize making their collaborative ecosystem an essential part of their brand, rejecting the piecemeal trend to create a cohesive experience for their users.
Strategic Acquisitions for a Stronger Platform
For years, Adobe dominated the B2C market with digital marketing solutions and integrations, and it was only a matter of time before diving into the B2B space. In 2018, Adobe made its B2B debut, acquiring Marketo for $4.75 billion, which marks one of Adobe’s biggest purchases. However, it’s also one of relatively few.
To date, Adobe has only acquired 35 companies thanks to its selective buying strategy. After the acquisition, Adobe worked to incorporate Marketo into their ecosystem to provide a horizontally-integrated experience for their users. To understand how they work together, let’s take a look at Marketo, Target and AEM. I’m also including Analytics so you can see how another aspect of the Adobe ecosystem builds on its foundational database.
Marketo
Marketo is a marketing automation software that provides teams with solutions for lead generation, email marketing and multi-touch attribution so teams can scale their marketing efforts, while spending less time and fewer resources. Marketo also features AI that can build predictive audiences and segments making it simpler to customize campaigns.
Target
Target is a testing and personalization platform that supercharges Marketo’s capabilities and takes the guesswork out of optimization. It features AI-powered testing, personalization and automation at scale. Through various testing features, marketing teams are able to customize their user experience based on what performs best. Using omnichannel personalization, Target allows teams to create a unified experience throughout the customer’s journey, potentially resulting in a higher conversion rate.
Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)
Both a content management platform and asset management platform, Adobe Experience Manager has the added benefits of digital enrollment, forms and cloud service. Teams can scale their content creation and customize their assets through AEM to provide users with the right experience across any device. AEM’s digital and enrollment features allow teams to customize their experience across acquisition and retention.
Analytics
Analytics allows you to analyze customer journey data at any point in the process. It provides reporting tools and predictive intelligence to help you create the best possible customer experiences. Teams can use the attribution tools to properly gauge ad spend, media buys and other metrics. Because Adobe’s ecosystem is built on a single database, teams can use Analytics to analyze and report on that data without having to manipulate any information offline.
One Database to Rule Them All
If you’ve ever integrated platforms from different companies, no matter how well the integration works, chances are you’re still pulling from multiple databases to create apples-to-apples reports.
Unfortunately, that’s one of the hidden costs of creating a piecemeal tech stack, instead of choosing a horizontally integrated ecosystem like Adobe. Regardless of the team, goal or platform, a single database can reduce the time your team spends on any given project and increase productivity by eliminating repetitive offline work.
What’s more, piecemeal stacks and databases can make it tricky to gauge your team’s KPIs, since not all platforms may be using the same metrics. While they might be similar conceptually, different platforms frequently use different language, formulas and measurements.
The CRM Factor
While we’re on the topic of databases, there’s one thing I always coach clients to consider—the Adobe ecosystem doesn’t fully replace a CRM. While Adobe’s integrations and add-ons compete with many of the options provided by some CRM companies, Adobe in and of itself does not currently have a CRM platform. With that said, their other platforms are quite robust and worth looking into even if your current CRM service offers similar options.
The Sometimes Hidden Reasons to Adopt Adobe
The Adobe ecosystem can be incredibly beneficial to marketing teams, but there are some misconceptions about Adobe that often stand in the way of making the leap. If you’ve come close to adopting the Adobe ecosystem into your business, but have held off because of the price, learning curve or because it might be more than your business requires, here are a few things to consider:
While it can be tempting to find a less costly solution, all too frequently, clients come to me because the tools they’ve purchased don’t meet their needs. Instead, Adobe has decades of product improvement under its belt with platforms that frequently set the industry standard.
What’s more, even though adopting any new tech can be intimidating, Adobe offers a wide range of tutorials, trainings and even certification programs. And, many times, I can get clients up to speed in as little as an afternoon.
Finally, yes, the Adobe ecosystem is robust. However, you don’t need every module or application to start with, and as your marketing efforts mature, your marketing software tech should scale with your needs so you don’t have to continually adjust your tech stack. By choosing something with baked-in room for expansion, you can be sure your tech stack doesn’t hold you back during periods of rapid growth.
Is it Time to Upgrade Your Marketing System or Risk Getting Left Behind?
From my perspective, yes. Is it an immediate all-hands-on-deck need? Perhaps not. After all, it’s critical to make major decisions like this for the right reasons.
However, as companies prepare for the future, it may be less about being the cutting-edge leader in their industries than it is to provide an exceptional customer experience and do so as efficiently as possible. That probably includes implementing a fully-integrated MarTech stack like Adobe, instead of settling for a piecemeal situation.
Instead of waiting until your competitors have already made the move and playing catch up, it’s a good idea to find and integrate a solution well in advance. The best example I can give is that the companies that were already taking strides toward digitization and remote work were better positioned during the initial pandemic lockdowns than those that had to scramble to find solutions.
Implementing an ecosystem like Adobe’s can be an involved process, certainly. However, bringing on the right partner to help you with setup and migration can make adopting the new system and best practices both seamless and effective for your team. BDO Digital would love to be that partner.
Contact us to learn more about how BDO Digital can help you adopt and leverage the Adobe platforms and ecosystem to establish a MarTech foundation that will grow with your needs.
Jay Schwartz is an Adobe Certified Master in Marketo Engage with additional certifications in Adobe Target and Adobe Experience Platform who specializes in next-gen MarTech system architecture development, end-to-end journey orchestration, and lead management. As a seasoned Solutions Architect, he works closely with clients in areas including stack development and integration, program alignment, nurture development, relationship management, resource planning, reporting and more.
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