Adobe Experience Manager 6.4: Defining the Next Wave of Content Driven Experiences

Have you ever been to a restau­rant, looked up from your plate, and realised that you’re sur­round­ed by fam­i­lies tuck­ing into their own dish­es and look­ing down, not at their food, but at their phones? With so many pub­lish­ers, brands and social media chan­nels at our fin­ger­tips, this sit­u­a­tion is becom­ing more and more common.

Iron­i­cal­ly, you’re prob­a­bly read­ing this on your own phone, or at least some sort of con­nect­ed device. In fact, whether you’re read­ing this on a smart­phone, desk­top or tablet, this arti­cle is no doubt one of many that you’ll read today. But the amount of time we actu­al­ly spend engag­ing with content—whether it’s from friends, fam­i­ly, pub­lish­ers or brands—might just sur­prise you.

Accord­ing to our lat­est research on the UK’s con­tent con­sump­tion habits, Mil­len­ni­als are spend­ing 8.5 hours—over half of the aver­age wak­ing day (53 percent)—reading, watch­ing, lik­ing, cre­at­ing and shar­ing con­tent across their devices, while Gen Z are clock­ing in a stag­ger­ing 10.6 hours dai­ly. The total aver­age across the UK is 6.9 hours, with smart­phones tak­ing the lion’s share of con­tent consumption.

The vast vol­ume of time spent online means that brands have more oppor­tu­ni­ty than ever to reach their audi­ences. But as the results found, con­tent mar­ket­ing comes with its own set of challenges.

The dou­ble-edged sword

While the rise of fake news and “click­bait” means that three quar­ters of the con­sumers we sur­veyed (77 per­cent) are more cau­tious of the con­tent they choose to engage with, our research revealed that rel­e­vant, authen­tic, and well-designed con­tent can bol­ster brand loy­al­ty. Just under half of our respon­dents (46 per­cent) said that well-exe­cut­ed con­tent would inspire them to make a pur­chase, a quar­ter (24 per­cent) would share it with their friends, while a fifth (21 per­cent) would sub­scribe to a brand’s email database.

So far so good, but how do con­sumers respond to con­tent that doesn’t improve the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence? In short, brand­ed con­tent that is irrel­e­vant, poor­ly writ­ten or bad­ly designed has an adverse effect—so much so that it would pre­vent 71 per­cent of those we sur­veyed from mak­ing a purchase.

For mar­keters, brand­ed con­tent is the ulti­mate dou­ble-edged sword. Get­ting a con­tent strat­e­gy right results in an uplift in cus­tomer loy­al­ty, but brands that miss the mark will inevitably watch as cus­tomers switch off.

Con­tent 101

So how can brands refine their con­tent strate­gies to ensure that their blogs, emails and social posts are includ­ed in the 6.9 hours’ worth of con­tent that the UK reads each day? Using our research, we’ve pulled togeth­er our con­tent “Dos’ and ‘Don’ts” for brands.

• Looks count: Whether it’s a web­site, app, or email, con­tent must dis­play well on all devices. This was the biggest pri­or­i­ty for three-quar­ters of those tak­ing part in our research. This means ensur­ing that images are quick to load and are suit­ed to the device type, that the lay­out is respon­sive to dif­fer­ent screen sizes, links work across dif­fer­ent for­mats, and text is snap­py enough to engage mobile read­ers, while sat­is­fy­ing those on a desk­top. Bear in mind that smart­phones are con­sumers’ favourite way to con­sume con­tent, but keep the expe­ri­ence con­sis­tent across desk­top and tablets, too.
• Give the audi­ence what they want: With con­sumers receiv­ing brand­ed con­tent on a dai­ly basis, brands must ensure that they’re serv­ing con­tent that is relevant—half of those we sur­veyed (49 per­cent) cit­ed rel­e­vance as their biggest pri­or­i­ty. Brands must use data in order to achieve this, and ensure that the data they have on file is gen­uine. For exam­ple, don’t share pro­mo­tions that are tak­ing place in one city if the con­sumer is based in anoth­er, and don’t send offers based on in-store pur­chas­es if they’ve his­tor­i­cal­ly pur­chased online. Like­wise, if you know that a con­sumer has been eye­ing up a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct, send them a per­son­alised pro­mo­tion, but make sure you con­nect the dots. There’s noth­ing worse than receiv­ing a tar­get­ed offer for some­thing you’ve already purchased!
• Be authen­tic: While cus­tomer acqui­si­tion and sales are the end goal of many con­tent strate­gies, this does not mean that con­tent has to be over­ly pro­mo­tion­al. Whether it’s an infor­ma­tive guide on how to choose the best prod­uct, or a blog post inspir­ing con­sumers to try some­thing new, mar­keters should con­sis­tent­ly ques­tion how the con­tent improves the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and goes beyond sell­ing products.

Intro­duc­ing Adobe Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er 6.4

With brands increas­ing­ly chal­lenged to pro­duce rel­e­vant, per­son­alised con­tent, we’ve intro­duced sig­nif­i­cant updates to Adobe Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er 6.4. These inno­va­tions include a new tool enabling brands to use Arti­fi­cial Intelligence—powered by Adobe Sensei—to gen­er­ate per­son­alised web lay­outs and con­tent to indi­vid­u­als at scale; a Flu­id Expe­ri­ence offer­ing that allows brands to adapt mes­sages to sit­u­a­tion­al con­texts; as well as Smart Imag­ing capa­bil­i­ty which can detect a customer’s avail­able band­width and device type to stream­line the deliv­ery of experiences.

While the chal­lenge for mar­keters has nev­er been high­er, we’re excit­ed by these lat­est inno­va­tions, and how these will define the next wave of con­tent dri­ven expe­ri­ences. To find out more about Adobe Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er 6.4, click here.