Digital Marketing Has Come of Age, and Adobe is Leading the Way

On October 21, 2014, Forrester Research released their inaugural report on Enterprise Marketing Software Suites. To download a copy of the report, click here.

Today is an exciting day for Adobe as the results from the very first analyst report on marketing clouds was released by Forrester Research, Inc. The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Marketing Software Suites, Q4-2014 is the first comprehensive study of the digital and marketing technology landscape. I am delighted to share that Forrester declared Adobe the clear leader with the highest overall scores in this inaugural marketing cloud report.

This news validates what our customers and partners already know—that they are working with the company that tops the charts in customer satisfaction, current product offering, strategy, market presence, and dozens of other areas. Brands recognize that as the discipline of marketing evolves in a world dominated by disruptive technologies like mobile and IOT, Adobe is here to help.

Why We Lead

As brands race to meet the needs of a demanding, empowered consumer, the technologies and systems of the past simply won’t cut it. Businesses need a platform that:

  1. Creates a complete picture of the individual across transactional, behavioral, digital and enterprise systems, not just a snapshot that is heavily reliant on batch-based CRM data.
  2. Unifies the content value chain – from content creation, design, syndication, distribution, and measurement. In an age of shrinking attention spans, consumers are drawn to storytellers and brands that deliver relevant, contextual experiences. This doesn’t happen without content, marketing, and execution working in lockstep.
  3. Orchestrates and delivers contextual experiences across channels. We feel strongly that delivering isolated experiences is a recipe for failure. Focusing on email or social or CRM alone won’t suffice. The ability to operate in all channels and work across them is crucial.
  4. Emphasizes algorithms. Marketing is, increasingly, a game of choice and tradeoffs. We advocate that marketing clouds must help marketers optimize decisions, analyze tradeoffs, and course correct with the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence but without losing business and marketing context.

We take great pride in focusing on the needs of digital marketers. Every year, our product teams conduct hundreds of client interviews and we consistently hear that marketers want it all: a platform that unifies best-of-breed solutions to provide integrated functionality and value that point solutions cannot touch. For example, the report calls out Core Services, something uniquely offered by Adobe. These Core Services are tools that are centralized and shared across the cloud, available to any Adobe Marketing Cloud customer, whether they have one solution or all six. These services are intended to provide additive value to any single solution and to provide the connective tissue that is at the heart of the “better together” value proposition of the Adobe Marketing Cloud itself.

Some examples of core services include a “profiles and audiences” service that provides marketers with a single view of their customers across solutions—allowing for the creation of truly informed, relevant user experiences across channels. Other examples include mobile services, centralized asset sharing, dynamic tag management, and contextual experience activation—all designed to help marketers meet the real-time expectations of consumers.****

Forrester picked a great time to evaluate marketing clouds and the ecosystem that supports the needs of marketers. This business and marketing transformation requires not only technology but also new business processes, change management, and new systems of engagement and measurement. We are lucky that multiple partners like Accenture, Deloitte Digital, Epsilon, MRM, Publicis Groupe, PwC, Sapient, SAP and WPP, among others, share this vision and believe that Adobe is best positioned to deliver against it.

Digging into the Results

Here’s my favorite quote from the report: “Adobe distanced itself from the pack with a combination of an innovative, detailed vision and in-market functionality designed solely to provide marketers with a clear incentive to use multiple solutions within the Adobe Marketing Cloud.”

That pretty much sums it up!

In this inaugural Wave report, eight total vendors were measured across 46 categories and subcategories, and Adobe achieved the highest overall score, claiming the uppermost right corner of Forrester’s chart in the report’s “Leaders” section. Adobe Marketing Cloud ranked highest in 11 of the 14 Forrester Wave Report categories, including: Current Offering (alignment to the needs of customers), Strategy (approach to suite creation and vision for the future), and Market Presence (size of business). Being a leader in these three areas highlights the overall strength of the Adobe Marketing Cloud in comparison to other offerings in the marketplace.

Adobe also received perfect scores (5 out of 5) in five of 14 core categories, which included EMSS Prerequisites, Application Usability, Partnership Strategy, Customer Satisfaction, and Financials—and ours were the only perfect scores in those categories out of all competing vendors.

Adobe has carefully built out the Adobe Marketing Cloud over the past five years, and it’s extremely gratifying to be acknowledged by Forrester with scores that reflect our ongoing, focused efforts to meet the needs or CMOs and marketers around the world. Rest assured, this is only the beginning.

Want to see for yourself? Check out the Forrester Wave results here.