Web Analytics & E-commerce (EN): Adobe Summit London 2012

Adobe Summit London 2012

05/20/2012

Day 2 @ Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2012 in London

After a rainy Day 1, the sun was back for the second day of Adobe Digital Marketing Summit in London!

John Mellor, VP of Strategy and business development, Digital Marketing, introduced the morning keynotes. Going back to the concept of the Digital Self, companies, products, brands, events have their own digital selves. According to Mellor, our role as digital marketers is to create relationships between digital selves of brands with digital selves of individuals. Marketers become a sort of digital match makers. Unlike individuals who can chose to be on Facebook or not, brands do not have a choice. Their digital selves exist by themselves. The choice is whether you participate or not. Relationship first companies are obsessed with the 3^rd and 4^th purchase and use digital to tie everything. In the next five years, the focus will be in sub-networks, niche networks giving the ability of consumers to better define who they are. The landscape will become more complex and diverse. We need to rethink approach to marketing and to concentrate our efforts on how to approach this new context, whatever which device and social network wins.

Giles Warner, Partner, Deloitte Consulting, Marketing & Insight, presented the next keynote on the topic: “The Evolving Digital Landscape”. According to him, it is an exciting time of digital explosion, yet some old truths remains:
- consumer tech defies the economis headwinds,
- the 100 $ smart phone reaches its first half billion,
- it takes two to tablet: 10 % of tablet sales to homes who already have already one,
- so many apps and so few downloads: 2 M applications available, but only 20 % brand applications downloaded more than 1 million times,

Companies must embrace new media and integrate with traditional marketing to engage with consumers :
- consumers own at leas 8 devices,
- traditional media remain vital,
– new media complements,
- online recommendation more important than advertising.

Mass media is a conversation starter, while digital media is a conversation keeper.

3 categories of critical ecommerce capabilities:
- critical mass: product search, site performance, social presence,
- on the verge : mobile shopping, market place offerings, personalisations,
- next wave : social engagement, insightful and actionable analytics, consumerisation of B2B.

Rob Giglio, VP Worldwide Retail and e-commerce at Adobe, "dogfooding" presentation was on how his team uses Adobe's products to optimize conversion on the adobe.com site. In 2009, the web site was generating $275 M in revenue and had a 2,2 % conversion rate.

A web site redesign was decided in 2009 to address individual business needs, as well as to enhance the online experience and improve the conversion rate.

First, a decision was made to use Adobe CQ and Test & Target in order to localizing at the content level. QA is now provided at the content level instead of at the local version level.

In terms of personalisation, the focus was made of the following areas:
- first page personalization,
- purchase experience,
- recommandations,
- express checkout

For instance, different check out processes are being presented to the end-user depending on their status (regular, student, teacher, etc...). Also the recommandations engine is used to push related products in the purchase journey. Recognized customers signed in from any Adobe web site have also express checkout. Test & Target is also being used to personalize promotional offers.

After the redesign of the web site and the optimization efforts, the revenue should reach $500M this year and the conversion rate is 5,5 % today on Adobe.com

With the goal to reach $1B of yearly revenues, the next big steps for Adobe.com are:
- truly localizing the site,
- expand relevance for each digital self,
- maximize value and customer loyalty.

Nils Müller, futurologist & CEO at TrendOne, concluded the morning keynotes with a time traveling journey on 2021, with current lab technology. The keynote was mind-blowing and dense and is worth watching on a video when it will be available. According to Müller, there are 5 stages of development for the Web:
- 1.0: web of content attention
- 2.0: web of communication involvement
- 3.0: web of context immersion
- 4.0: web of things connectivity
- 5.0: web of thoughts communications

Over the years, we should evolve to an hybrid reality with digital data, like for instance: contact lenses that recognize faces (and can pull automatically social network data!), devices controlled with thoughts, voiceless phone conversations, etc...

Back to reality, I attended a breakout sessions titled “Adobe Discover 3.0: Bye-bye page pathing, hello sequential analysis” with Giuseppe Sessa, Consulting Manager at Adobe and Tim Lott, Group Programme Manager at Adobe.

The presentation was organized around real-life uses cases with Discover 3.0, which is complimentary to Adobe SiteCatalyst. Here is a summary of the new features of Discover 3.0:

- new fallout reports: ability to do sequential analysis across any dimension and events (creation of a segment with persons who have viewed the internal campaign),

- new visualization of marketing channel interactions across visits,

- integration between Test & Target and Discover: creation of segments based on Test&Target variables,

- easier ability to create pivot tables with table builder,

- ability to copy to clickboard with individual colums and to send by emails,

- ability to define a common timeframe at the project / workspaces / reports levels, but it is still possible to define at the report level,

- time can be used as a dimension,

- custom calendar settings in SiteCatalyst are now taken into consideration by Discover v3.

During the lunch break, I met Aseem Chandra, VP of Product Marketing at Adobe, with other French bloggers to discuss the recent announcement of the "Digital Analytics Package". This new package enables users to have access to the following applications: SiteCatalyst v15, Discover 3.0, Datawarehouse, Genesis, ReportBuilder and Adobe Tag Manager. It has to be noted that there is no-user based pricing and that it is based on server calls, which is a great advantage for Discover and ReportBuilder which are usually billed on a per-user basis.

The minimum commitment for this package is 500.000 server calls per month and the minimum yearly cost is between $10K and $15K. This new package is available immediately on a global basis.

For more info, check out this press release: http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201205/051512AdobeDigitalAnalyticsPackage.html

What’s next with SiteCatalyst ?
- predictive analytics and marketing : DNA on all product line,
- virtual analytist technology : looking at correlation and anomalies of data in an historical perspective on hundreds of variables.

What's next with Adobe Insight?
- statistical models based on historical

What’s next with Datawarehouse ?
- ability to copy queries

In a breakout session titled “Predictive Marketing: no PHD in statistics required”, Bill Gassman, Research Director at Gartner, presented his vision of predictive analytics: finding little things that don’t mean a lot at first, but can help to predict patterns (example : insurance policy, fraud, churn, etc…).

In the supermarket world, different models are being used to organize shelves with different buying patterns. In Web Analytics, we rarely look back on how we did versus the forecasts. Like in supermarkets, some models will be good for some parts only.

With more data, we can better predict consumer behaviours (social + search + clickstream + call center + data agregators + location = score).

The different stages of analytics maturity are:
1. descriptive & diagnostic analytics (Information),
2. predictive analytics (Insights),
3. prescriptive analytics (Decisions)

According to Gassman, Adobe is working on packaged predictive analytics, with pre-determined data understanding, automated data preparation, rapid modeling. Predictive analysis will then be integrated with automated processes, like for instance recommandations and Test & Target.

One of the last breakout sessions was a panel titled “Analytics action heroes: learn digital kung-fu from analytics masters” with Brent Dykes,Evangelist, Customer Analytics at Adobe, Eric Crossfield, Web Analytics at John Lewis and Adam Greco, Senior Partner at Web Analytics Demystified. The panel was organized around the main topics of Brent Dykes' book titled "Web Analytics Action Hero".

Web Analysts should have two main objectives:
1. understand what is important to the business
2. have the company to act on improvements

Web Analytists should be moving from "Setup Land" (KPIs, tagging, reporting) to "Action Land" (optimization). "Setup Land" is like the parking lot of Disneyland (=action land). Analysis is the ticket to "Action Land".

According to Adam Greco, analysts spent too much time in "Setup Land" and data quality issues. Good web analysts need to make sure that they can trust the data (tip: use ReportBuilder to identify issues in data collection).

For Eric Crossfield, web analysts should have a wide range of skillsets:
1. knowing digital marketing
2. having the technical understanding
3. being able to manage stakeholders

Usually, Web Analysts don't have the time to do enough analysis and need to prioritize what's important to the business. Five key factors that influence priorization:
1. business goals
2. ability to influence
3. potential impact
4. level of effort
5. context

HEROIC analysis approach:
- Have a hit list
- Evaluate data and its context
- Recognize opportunities
- Obtain deeper insights
- Inspect monetary value
- Choose the best option

Congratulations to Neil Morgan and his team for organizing a great event around digital marketing and digital analytics! Many thanks also to Adobe France for gathering a great French blogger team with Carole Da Silva, Edouard Austin, Florian Giudicelli, Fred Cavazza, Laurent Evain and myself.

05/16/2012

Day 1 @ Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2012 in London

For the first edition of its Digital Marketing Summit in London, Adobe has chosen the charming Battersea Park, right on the South Bank of the Thames, with joggers and tennis players nearby. 1,700+ attendees from 36 different countries gathered for keynote and breakout sessions on digital marketing, digital advertising and digital analytics. I was pretty lucky to attend the first day with a group of vibrant French bloggers.

At Adobe, the Digital Marketing division makes up a total of 1 billion dollars of revenue (25 % of total Adobe revenue), with a 20 % year-over-year growth.

Brad Rencher (@bradrencher), Senior Vice President & General Manager for Digital Marketing at Adobe, was the Master of Ceremony for the morning keynotes. Brad started to explain the theme of the Summit: the Digital Self.

Digital self is the combination of signals that consumers are constantly emitting: read, buy, post, etc... The more we - as customers - interact, the more deposits we make in the system, the more we expect back from brands in terms of relevance and real-time personalization. The power of digital self is small things that bring big meanings. This is the contract that we should hold with consumers. At the end of the day, the consumers will be the judges of how well we do as marketeers.

We keep sending signals on Spotify, Yelp, Linkedin, etc… Signals depict the picture of who we are. Privacy is taking a critical role. Transparency and ability should be provided to customers in order to protect their data. Privacy is a global issue. Adobe is agressively developing best in class solutions around privacy. For instance, the Adobe Tag Management solution has just been enhanced by integrating Evidon technology, so that control can be given to users on how their data is used online.

Personalization remains the focus of what we do in digital marketing.

In Adobe's vision, the Digital Self has gone from academic to actionable, with 3 core elements:

1. Data: at the core of every digital system

2. Content: elements that bring experiences to life

3. Optimization: making content relevant to the end user in milliseconds.

Adobe focuses on 4 main areas for its digital marketing solutions:

1. building personalized experiences

2. managing digital advertising

3. monetization

4. cracking the code on social marketing

Analytics is the basis and living data for all 4 areas, as well as what bring the web to life.

After this introduction, Chris Popple, Managing Director at the Royal Bank of Scotland, shared some very interesting insights on how to better manager customer experience and relationship in the digital world:

1. Combining transactional data with digital touchpoints: each interaction is an opportunity to decide whether this signal should be reused in another channel or not.

2. Making a difference by listening to consumers comments and complaints on social networks

3. Appointing "Journey managers", who own the customer experience from end to end for key patterns.

Regarding the latest innovations, several demos and announcements were made during the morning:

Adobe Digital Index: tablet devices will generate more web traffic than smartphones by early 2013 and consumers find browsing websites on tablets nearly as engaging as on PCs. You can check out the full report here.

Adobe CQ Cloud Manager: a Software-as-a-Service application that provides enterprises the ability to easily and quickly launch marketing initiatives in the cloud, as well as deep integration with SiteCatalyst. More info here.

Discover v3: this new edition provides path analysis on any custom variable.

Adobe Insight: ROAS by marketing channels, both on and off-line.

Predictive analytics: acquired in January 2012, Efficient Frontier provides recommandations on how to spend budget on different channels according to budget objectives.

Adobe Social: creation of a single platform for social advertising, monitoring, management and reporting with Adobe SocialAnalytics + ContextOptional + Efficient Frontier.

Adobe Cloud Creative Services: all Creative Suite products and new services provided on a service model with 20 GB storage. Enables collaboration with others ; social community around. 49 $ a month. Still able to buy Creative Suite on a traditional lifetime licence model.

CMO.com European Edition: launched today and available here.

In spite of careful planning and significant investment (100 Mbit/s pipe and 100+ hotspots), the Internet connection was unexpectedly slow during the morning keynotes and the wifi had to be shut down for at leat one hour in order to ensure smooth operation of the demos. It was not planned this way by Adobe, but it was a great moment of realization from the audience on how dependent we have become from the digital world. Later in the day, Arianna Huffington reminded us on how important it is to disconnect from our digital life in order to recharge.

In the breakout sessions in the afternoon, Shar VanBoskirk, Vice President and Principal Analytics at Forrrester, made a strong performance on the theme "How to thrive in the era of digital disruption". She started with a parallel between Henry Ford and Mark Zuckerberg, who have both revolutionized their industries. Disruption has always been part of business, but digital disruption is better, stronger and faster. In this new context, differenciating ideas expire quickly and are easy to replicate.

Marketers need to be customer obsessed: age of manufacturing (1900 – 1960)-> age of distribution (1960 – 1990) -> age of information (1990 – 2010) -> age of the customer (2010 - ?). In the age of the customer, empowered buyers demand a new level of customer obsession. Marketeers must invest in interactive tools to become customer obsessed.

How can you differenciate in the era of digital disruption?

1. shift to a customer focused orientation: thinking customer first instead of channel (search manager, affiliate manager, …). Instead : most loyal customers, new customers, etc… Customers specialists instead of channel manager. Metrics : customer engagement across channels instead of results from channel campaigns

2. prioritise multichannel automation and data support-> central hub & automation for optimization

3. focus you agency partners on the three "I": ideas, interactions and intelligence

4. manage digital employee lifecycles, not just hiring or recruiting. Attract (win top interactive marketers into you organization), Nurture : keep existing talent inspired and loyal, Activate : leverage value from former employees. Igniting an interactive marketer’s life cycle at your firm will encourage current and former employees to help recruit new ones.

After this presentation, I attended a panel on "Privacy vs Personalisation" with André Germinent, New Technology & Innovation team manger at Crédit Agricole, Meme Jacobs Rasmussen, Chief Privacy Officer at Adobe, David Dean, senior partner & managing director at the Boston Consulting Group and Dave Evans, group Manager, Business and Industry, ICO. All participants agreed on the need to be more transparent on how and why personal data is getting collected. While no one wants to be tracked, everyone wants to have a more personalized and relevant experience. Consequently, privacy and personalisation do not have to be necessarily in conflict, as long as we tell people what is going on. There is a huge gap between the perception of value of data between the marketing industry and end users. The latter should be getting more value if they give more personal data. On the Adobe side, privacy management is currently being built in the core of its products. Whatever the regulations, the bigger pressure may come from customers themselves. If nothing is being done regarding privacy, the current 8 % yearly growth of the Internet economy may be at risk in the coming years.

Scott Ulrich, Chief Marketing & Sales Officer at Responsys, keynoted on the “New School of Marketing”. According to him, there are two main types of companies: Acquisition First vs Relationship First. Acquisition First companies are obsessed with first purchase and use digital mainly to drive traffic. This implies cross-channel permission capture, in order to trigger lifecycle programs using web behavior. Automation and optimization become key with this approach.

Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief AOL Huffington Post Media Group, performed an unexpected and moving keynote, on the need to learn to disconnect from technology to reconnect to ourselves. Peace of mind is required to be creative, and sleep is required to have peace of mind. Never sleep with your smartphone next to your bed and buy an alarm clock if you need one.

The day ended with a cocktail and a party until late!

04/25/2012

5 questions to Neil Morgan on the upcoming Adobe Digital Marketing Summit in London (May 15th-16th, 2012)

In replacement for the Omniture Summit, Adobe organizes its first Adobe Digital Marketing Summit in London on May 15th-16th, 2012, with an interesting blend of Digital Marketing, Digital Advertising and Digital Analytics.

Neil Morgan (@neil_morgan_uk), EMEA Sr Director, Digital Marketing at Adobe, sheds more light on this new event in the 5-question interview below.

Nicolas Malo: If you had to explain briefly the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit's concept in an elevator, what would you say?

Neil Morgan: The Adobe Digital marketing Summit is the most important event for digital marketers and advertisers in Europe in 2012! If the elevator got stuck, I‘d add that the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit is Europe’s largest event focused solely on digital marketing and advertising. May 15th and 16th will see 1500 digital marketing professionals from across the whole of Europe converge on London to hear from some of the leading experts in all areas of digital marketing. Whether they are interested in digital advertising, mobile marketing, using the social channels to connect with customers, web experience management or pure analytics, this event is perfect for them.

Nicolas Malo: Compared with last year's, what's new and what's the same with the 2012 edition?

Neil Morgan: Over the last year, Adobe has been building out it’s solutions and products in digital marketing – and the 2012 Summit will reflect this wider focus. For example, in 2012 we have added ‘Advertising’ to the agenda, with content that will help advertisers understand which of the many digital advertising channels are working best; so attribution, mobile and social will feature strongly at Summit.

Nicolas Malo: What are the hot topics for this edition?

Neil Morgan: The theme of Summit this year is The Digital Self, the concept that we - as consumers - are constantly emitting digital signals that represent who we are. We search, we read, we shop, we publish - all via a range of devices and channels. The more consumers 'pay into the digital system' – the more they expect back. As marketers, this means delivering more personalised and meaningful experiences to drive business impact. Summit 2012 will aim to show how our clients can rise to these challenges, by sharing the latest best practices from our consultants, and the experiences of the best digital marketers in Europe.

We expect other hot topics to include Mobile and Social marketing. That said, the growth in – and reliance on – data and analytics in today’s marketing world is also incredible important – and we will be showing technologies and solutions around analytics, attribution and personalization that will leave people speechless.

Finally, areas such as personalization, digital advertising performance and mobile analytics are topical, today’s customers are mobile, social and demanding – and the 2012 event will reflect that.

Nicolas Malo: Who are the top speakers lined up?

Neil Morgan: We have an incredible range of speakers presenting at Summit. From Adobe we will have Brad Rencher (Senior VP, Digital Marketing Business Unit), Kevin Lynch (Chief Technology Officer), David Nuescheler (VP Enterprise Technologies) and David Karnstedt (General Manager of the Efficient Frontier business).

In addition, we will have sessions from industry analysts and luminaries including Martha Lane-Fox (founder of LastMinute.com and UK Digital Champion), Nils Muller (futurologist), Bill Gassman (Research Director, Gartner) and Shar VanBoskirk (Principal Analyst, Forrester). As well as keynote and track sessions including a host of Adobe partners and customers.

Finally, we are really excited to welcome Arianna Huffington (President and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post) who will be keynoting at the event on May 15th.

Your readers can find a full line-up of the speakers, sessions, tracks and much more information about the event at http://summit-emea.adobe.com

Nicolas Malo: What type of takeaways should expect attendees?

Neil Morgan: We hope that attendees at the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit will come away feeling educated, energized – and a little exhausted. The number of opportunities to learn and connect with digital marketing experts is amazing, and we hope that all attendees will both deepen their understanding around their specialties, and take the opportunity to learn something new.

The final thing they will leave with is a wealth of new contacts from across the European digital marketing community. We really believe in fueling the ecosystem that drives digital marketing across Europe.

I encourage your readers to sign-up, to spend 2 days with Adobe in London and I promise they will not be disappointed.

MORE INFO AND REGISTRATION AT : http://summit-emea.adobe.com

If you've never been to an Omniture Summit, you will find below a recap of the main topics discussed in the previous editions:

http://www.nicolasmalo.com/web_analytics_ecommerce_e/omniture-summit-london-09/

http://www.nicolasmalo.com/web_analytics_ecommerce_e/omniture-summit-london-10/

Posted by Nicolas Malo on 04/25/2012 at 09:27 PM in Adobe Summit London 2012 | Permalink | Comments (0)