Adobe Campaign Puts Competing Solutions in the Rear-view Mirror

Cross-channel marketing success requires automated and targeted delivery.

When Nissan Corp. needed to reach customers across multiple channels, the company tapped Adobe Campaign. This allowed Nissan to tap into Adobe’s rich customer data capabilities to create, orchestrate, and deliver dynamic marketing campaigns that resonate with their loyal customers.

It was a seemingly simple step but, at the same time, it was a big move for Nissan. Adopting Adobe Campaign meant migrating from its existing campaign management system. Their former solution used one-dimensional email targeting “add-ons” to their CRM software, and lacked features essential for implementing cross-channel marketing campaigns. It simply couldn’t keep pace with Nissan’s needs.

Seeking more robust email optimization capabilities, 360-degree views of customer integrations, and, most importantly, native cross-channel functionality, Nissan moved to Adobe Campaign — and this powerful solution delivered.

Reaching drivers, no matter the road

From the very start, Nissan seamlessly integrated with Adobe Experience Cloud, coordinating advertising, content development, and analytics tools, all within a single view. The team was also able to achieve its core goal — reaching customers via email, mobile, direct mail, physical stores, and even through call centers. Anywhere their customers showed up, Nissan could engage and deliver.

Now firing on all cylinders, Nissan is deftly achieving its cross-channel delivery objectives. Using Adobe Campaign, Nissan collects customer email addresses from promotions and contests, tracking them across delivery channels. This enables the automaker to better infer consumer interests and recommend products based on those preferences.

“If we can understand each customer’s needs, we can provide infinite options,” says Moyuru Kudo, head of Japan digital customer experience at Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. “Through digital marketing, we can gain a greater understanding of our customers’ needs and create a custom approach to reach them effectively.”

Benefits of cross-channel delivery

Nissan isn’t alone. Choosing a delivery solution that deeply and diversely engages customers is mission-critical for companies serious about cross-channel delivery.

These companies — companies with effective omnichannel engagement — average nearly 10 percent year-over-year increases in revenue, versus 3.4 percent increases for those with less effective technology. The switch means high consumer engagement, better opportunities, and immediate, measurable ROI — the ultimate marketing trifecta.

Cross-channel technology also builds customer loyalty. One report found consumers who shop on more than one channel have a 30 percent higher lifetime value score than those who use one channel. Meeting the customers where they are is central to creating powerful personalized experiences — simply being where that consumer is shows your brand “gets” them and is poised to deliver.

Opting in for an optimal solution

But, again, many campaign management solutions fall short — they rely primarily on email targeting to reach customers, rendering them inefficient and ineffective.

So the big question — what should organizations be looking for when assessing and choosing a campaign management system? For starters, it’s important to have a system that can deliver cohesive cross-channel experiences.

As consumers channel-hop, they want consistency and context. If your cross-channel delivery system can surprise them, delight them, and meet them wherever they are, you’ll be well positioned for successful, actionable experience delivery. Miss the mark — which too many sales-centric campaign management systems do — and you’ll miss out on engagements, conversions, and revenue.

What’s more, brands need to focus on finding and integrating campaign management systems that are truly cross-channel. Ninety-eight percent of Americans say they switch between devices daily, and more than 40 percent start a journey on one screen and finish on another. Effective campaign management systems need to pivot and react, collecting data, delivering experiences, and driving conversions no matter when, where, how, or on what platform they’re happening.

Rounding out the mix is another essential that today’s businesses need and should demand from top-of-the-line systems: artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, smart enough to automate targeting and message delivery. Going forward, this will be even more of a “need to have” in campaign management systems, as brands look to deliver greater relevance at scale.

Moving past limited — and limiting — technology

It’s clear, then, that the marketplace needs more than these limited campaign management systems. Though common, many focus on email almost exclusively — but even here they don’t excel. There’s a big difference between limited technology that uses list-cutting and batch email-blasting, and technology that is built on fully relational databases.

What’s more, despite offering limited solutions and outdated approaches, these systems often drill down on email delivery to a fault, ignoring critical touchpoints in the customer journey. Given the fact that nearly seven in 10 Adobe customers use three or more channels to reach customers, any system that isn’t best in class on cross-channel — any system that’s all about email over everything else — is already behind.

If you aren’t gleaning data points from every stage and every platform of your customer’s journey, you simply can’t deliver those spot-on experiences. And if you can, chances are you’ll spend a tremendous amount of time wrangling data and trying to connect the insight dots.

With these limited campaign management systems it’s often possible to get a more unified customer view if you’re willing to pour the time and talent into getting that all-important view. This process is tremendously labor-intensive and inefficient, and keeps your brand from delivering meaningful real-time experiences.

Investing or continuing to invest in feature-limited solutions means pouring your resources, budgets, and people-power into an approach that falls short of the competition. And, as your business grows and scales, these solutions likely won’t be able to keep pace and support that growth, at least if history is any indicator. That means if you haven’t already outgrown your campaign management system’s narrow capabilities, you will soon enough. When you do, you’ll see that a limited campaign management system can stifle your evolution and push your business up against the proverbial ceiling over and over again.

What to consider when considering your next move

These are all key considerations for companies weighing their campaign management system options. If you’re in the process, or if these ideas gave you pause, consider the options your organization needs now and in the future. From there, consider the pervasive shortcomings of many common sales-centric campaign management systems.

Specifically, see where solutions engage consumers and whether they’re truly cross-channel — as in email, web, call centers, and in-store, among other key touchpoints. Make sure your campaign management system doesn’t excel at email experiences but falls short on web and social, for example, or that it ignores any “live” customer interactions in favor of virtual touchpoints only. Ask about tools and channels and see if there’s any disconnect or fragmentation that could lead to choppy, unappealing brand experiences.

From there, see what analysts and industry experts are saying. Read the Forrester report on cross-channel campaign management. Check out Gartner’s Magic Quadrant: Multichannel Marketing Hubs report, which ranks the world’s leading multichannel marketing hubs. See what third-party entities have to say who have dug deep and analyzed every option side by side.

Above all, ask solutions providers about single customer views. See if your current campaign management system can deliver a unified, actionable customer view that taps into truly cross-channel engagement and preference data.

That last piece is essential. Now, more than ever, to deliver cross-channel consistency and relevance at scale, brands need to convert data into action — and that action needs to be instep with the customer’s wants, needs, and goals.

The best solution? It’s simple

When it comes to cross-channel marketing and delivery, Adobe Campaign is the standard-bearer — period. Many sales-centric management systems lack sophisticated segmentation capabilities, while, on the flip side, Adobe Campaign readily facilitates cross-channel delivery that ensures measurable results.

It’s something our customers see over and over again — and the reason more than 1,000 of the world’s largest and most sophisticated companies use Adobe Campaign to deliver targeted, cross-channel messages that resonate with consumers.

And there’s a reason many of these powerhouse brands ditched other sales-driven solutions in the process.

With Adobe Campaign, anytime a consumer engages with your brand, they’ll receive a message tailored to their wants and needs. Using Adobe Campaign, it’s easy to build a unified view of customers, tapping into engagement and preference data from across every channel.

But it doesn’t stop there. By leveraging Adobe Sensei, Adobe’s AI and machine-learning engine, Adobe Campaign cross-channel delivery capabilities pack a punch, turning data into information into insight into action. That’s power that not only drives sales, but also creates experiences and builds loyalty. And that’s just another example of what competing systems can’t do — at least not to the level of sophistication possible with Adobe.

Don’t sacrifice your brand, your customer relationships, or your cross-channel capabilities to stick with the status quo. Your company deserves better. Your company deserves Adobe Campaign. Adobe Campaign powers marketing automation at scale, enabling brands to use analytics for continuous customer experience and ROI improvement.

It’s time to re-evaluate the tools you’re currently using to orchestrate campaigns. Make a smart decision and settle for nothing less than a true cross-channel solution — Adobe Campaign.