A guide to the Personalisation & Optimisation track at Adobe Summit EMEA 2014

It’s near­ly time for Adobe Sum­mit EMEA 2014, and if you’re a vet­er­an of pre­vi­ous Sum­mits (this is my eighth) or you’re com­ing to your first one this year, you’ll want to max­imise the num­ber of break­out ses­sions you attend and make sure you see and learn about the things that are rel­e­vant for you and your busi­ness. As the cura­tor of the Per­son­al­i­sa­tion & Opti­mi­sa­tion ses­sions, I gave a quick overview in this video, but because I think we’ve got a real­ly well bal­anced, infor­ma­tive and enter­tain­ing track and I want to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to make the case for why you should spend some of your time at Sum­mit in our breakouts.

There are nine ses­sions and I’ve grouped them into three types The­o­ry, Best Prac­tice and Technical.

Best Prac­tice
Our best prac­tice ses­sions draw on the exper­tise of our clients, con­sul­tants and part­ners to share insights on what they’ve found to work in the real world.

Our Direc­tor of Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing for Tar­get, Kevin Lind­say, will be lead­ing a ses­sion titled “Trans­form your dig­i­tal strat­e­gy with always on opti­mi­sa­tion” and he’ll be joined by two of the Dig­i­tal Opti­mi­sa­tion team from Roy­al Philips. this ses­sion will cov­er three main themes: get­ting the busi­ness to under­stand their opti­mi­sa­tion pri­or­i­ties based on agreed-upon goals and KPIs, know­ing how to start and where to focus and final­ly know­ing when to auto­mate; in oth­er words, when and how can tech­nol­o­gy pick up where the human mar­keter leaves off?
Trans­form your dig­i­tal strat­e­gy with always-on opti­mi­sa­tion, Wednes­day 14th May, 1:30pm — 2:15pm

Ray Pun, Adobe’s Mobile Ser­vices lead, will be pre­sent­ing on loca­tion based approach­es to app devel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing in the ses­sion “Loca­tion, loca­tion, loca­tion! Effec­tive mobile tar­get­ing in an app-cen­tric world”. He’ll also be host­ing a pan­el in the ses­sion with Deloitte Dig­i­tal and Danske Super­marked to dis­cuss their approach­es to app opti­mi­sa­tion and the oppor­tu­ni­ties that are made avail­able through loca­tion ser­vices such as geo-loca­tion and iBea­con-based targeting.
Loca­tion, loca­tion, loca­tion! Effec­tive mobile tar­get­ing in an app-cen­tric world, Thurs­day 15th May, 11:20am — 12:05pm

Ana­lyt­ics is the back­bone of many organ­i­sa­tions’ dig­i­tal suc­cess. So what hap­pens when you embrace ana­lyt­ics and use it as a dri­ving force for your opti­mi­sa­tion program? Giles Richard­son from Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and Chris Akhurst from Adobe will be look­ing at this and talk­ing about how detailed insights can help to pri­ori­tise your opti­mi­sa­tion activ­i­ties and improve KPIs in “The pow­er of ana­lyt­ics-dri­ven opti­mi­sa­tion”.
The pow­er of ana­lyt­ics-dri­ven opti­mi­sa­tion, Thurs­day 15th May, 3:30pm — 4:15pm

The­o­ry
The the­o­ry ses­sions take a step back and look at all of the things that you need to con­sid­er when putting opti­mi­sa­tion and per­son­al­i­sa­tion strate­gies in place.

In “Dri­ving per­son­al­i­sa­tion across your customer’s jour­ney”, I’ll be tak­ing a look at the broad range of ways that organ­i­sa­tions can take con­trol of the cus­tomer life­cy­cle and ensure that at each stage, con­sumers receive rel­e­vant, engag­ing and per­son­alised expe­ri­ences. The ses­sion talks through the var­i­ous approach­es to per­son­al­i­sa­tion and gives exam­ples of brands that are already mak­ing per­son­al­i­sa­tion work for them.
Dri­ving per­son­al­i­sa­tion across your customer’s jour­ney, Wednes­day 14th May, 11.30am — 12.15pm

One of the best attend­ed and received ses­sions that we ran last year was on the theme of the opti­mi­sa­tion organ­i­sa­tion. This year we’ll be address­ing a sim­i­lar ques­tion in the ses­sion “How does your opti­mi­sa­tion pro­gram mea­sure up?” and we have a pan­el of experts from Adobe, Avi­va, Danske Super­marked and the agency DBI, that will debate the best ways to build an opti­mi­sa­tion pro­gram and evan­ge­lise its val­ue and suc­cess, among oth­er topics.
How does your opti­mi­sa­tion pro­gram mea­sure up? Wednes­day 14th May, 3.45pm — 4.30pm

In “Max­imis­ing your mar­ket­ing impact in the B2B world”, two of Adobe’s con­sul­tants will look at a mix­ture of the­o­ry and best prac­tice when it come to con­tent mar­ket­ing — what it is and how to do it — as well as how the most effec­tive B2B sites dri­ve offline sales with site-dri­ve marketing.
Max­imis­ing your mar­ket­ing impact in the B2B world, Wednes­day 14th May, 2.30pm — 3.15pm

Tech­ni­cal
The tech­ni­cal ses­sions take us both hands on and under the cov­ers, to see exact­ly how the tools can be used for opti­mi­sa­tion and what’s hap­pen­ing behind the scenes with the mod­el­ling and data engines that dri­ve our per­son­al­i­sa­tion solutions.

In “Math­e­mat­ic mod­el­ling mat­ters in last mil­lisec­ond tar­get­ing”, Pradeep Javan­gu­la, Adobe’s Head of Engi­neer­ing for the Adobe Tar­get solu­tion, and Daniel Shein­berg, Head of Prod­uct Man­age­ment for Adobe Tar­get, will explain how Adobe Tar­get solves per­son­al­i­sa­tion pit­falls with auto­mat­ed behav­iour­al tar­get­ing and rec­om­men­da­tions, and how the math­e­mat­i­cal mod­els are con­stant­ly being improved to deliv­er the right expe­ri­ence at the right time to your audi­ence — these are def­i­nite­ly the right guys for the job!
Math­e­mat­ic mod­el­ling mat­ters in last mil­lisec­ond tar­get­ing, Thurs­day 15th May, 2.15pm — 3.00pm

Andrew Hawkins of Adobe and Nico­las Meriel from Swiss­com will be tak­ing us through “The big reveal: Test­ing and tar­get­ing sim­pli­fied with Adobe Tar­get”. In this ses­sion they’ll be demon­strat­ing how opti­mi­sa­tion and tar­get­ing per­son­alised expe­ri­ences is doesn’t have to be hard and show­ing specif­i­cal­ly how this is done with Adobe Tar­get. Nico­las is a long-time user of the Adobe opti­mi­sa­tion solu­tions and has a vast amount of valu­able knowl­edge and exper­tise to share.
The big reveal: Test­ing and tar­get­ing sim­pli­fied with Adobe Tar­get, Thurs­day 15th May, 1.15pm — 2.00pm

Our final ses­sion will very inter­est­ing to those atten­dees that wish to learn more about the Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud Shared Pro­file that we recent­ly announced (and that you’ll be hear­ing a lot more about at the event). Join our evan­ge­list Gina Casagrande, and Prod­uct Man­ag­er Dave McNamee as they ask “Are you talk­ing to me? Using robust audi­ence pro­files for per­son­al­i­sa­tion”. You learn how how the Shared Pro­file is archi­tect­ed and how to lever­age your online and offline data for advanced per­son­al­i­sa­tion and tar­get­ing strategies.
Are you talk­ing to me? Using robust audi­ence pro­files for per­son­al­i­sa­tion, Thurs­day 15th May, 3:30pm — 4:15pm

You can view the com­plete list of Per­son­al­i­sa­tion & Opti­mi­sa­tion ses­sions here and we’ll soon have an app for Android and iOS that you can down­load and then use to mark the ses­sions you’re going to attend as favourites. Hope­ful­ly there’s some­thing for every­one in track and I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to wel­com­ing you to Adobe Sum­mit EMEA 2014 and hear­ing about your own opti­mi­sa­tion expe­ri­ences and ques­tions — remem­ber that net­work­ing and meet­ing oth­er dig­i­tal mar­keters with sim­i­lar chal­lenges is one of the great ben­e­fits of the event.