Announcing the Adobe Experience Maker Awards Finalists
Check out the best experiences and Experience Makers of 2019
Awards show season is going out with a bang — and we won’t cut anyone’s acceptance speech off prematurely. With Adobe Summit right around the corner, we’ve selected the finalists of the 2019 Adobe Experience Maker Awards. Our finalists are companies that helped define a customer-centric way of doing business, while delivering exceptional customer experiences in a variety of categories, including:
- Best Audience-Driven Experience
- Best Commerce Experience
- Best Data-Driven Experience
- Best Digital Experience
- Best Experience-Driven Campaign
- Best Integrated Ad Campaign
- Best Personalized Experience
- Audience Choice Award
And, for the first time, the awards also include 10 Revvie categories, a program that recognizes and celebrates customers who use Marketo solutions to drive exceptional marketing and customer experiences. You can get the scoop on the 30 Revvie Award finalists here.
We asked, you answered
Without a doubt, this year’s call for submissions delivered. The nominations included stories, strategies, and journeys that highlight how organizations are using Adobe solutions to transform customer experiences.
But, technology is only part of the equation. Our judges were wowed by the drive, ingenuity, and passion reflected in the Experience Maker Awards submissions. Here are the three finalists in each of eight categories — they represent the most creative and committed customer experience-focused teams that truly moved the needle for their organizations.
Best Audience-Driven Experience
Equinox
With email being the company’s sole channel for communicating with former fitness club members – Equinox was limited when email offers didn’t reach all of the relevant people due to unsubscribes. The Equinox team used Adobe Audience Manager to segment and scale their audience and Adobe Target to personalize messaging based on customer’s interactions with the company. The response to this personalization was overwhelming: a 500 percent jump in conversion rates and an 80 percent jump in digital sales over Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
McClatchy
Looking to boost its digital news subscription conversion rates, McClatchy tapped Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe Target, and Adobe Analytics to segment audiences and test variations for call-to-action messaging and offers based on customer history and engagement. The end result showed a 430-percent increase in subscription landing page traffic from former subscribers, and a 46-percent increase in all non-subscriber responses.
Velocity Frequent Flyer, Loyalty Program of Virgin Australia (with CHE Proximity)
To encourage members to move credit card and grocery loyalty points to Velocity Frequent Flyer loyalty program, the company staged “The World’s Biggest Points Exchange Expo” event. The event was promoted with “Antiques Roadshows”-style videos, outdoor media, and personalized journeys, stitched together in Adobe Audience Manager and Adobe Campaign, with an Adobe Experience Manager-based chatbot named Brenda providing real-time, online expert consultations along the way. The audience framework drove a 46-percent reduction in overall CPA and high levels of member engagement.
Best Commerce Experience
Canon Australia (with eWave)
Drawing from extensive research on the way customers experience its products and the power of Magento Commerce, Canon Australia rebuilt, re-platformed and redefined the consumer’s experience on a new application that drives the brand’s online presence beyond its traditional retail channels. The result is a cleaner, guided digital commerce experience that has delivered: a 7.5x conversion rate; a 92-percent increase in on-site sessions; a 61-percent increase in average order value; and earned the company international recognition as a digital commerce leader.
Frontpoint Security (with Echidna)
Frontpoint empowers its customers to take control of their home security and automation services. From purchase to installation to ongoing service, they commit to providing customers with the self-service tools they need to make informed decisions and craft the solution that best meets their needs. Implementing Magento Commerce 2.2, the company meticulously designed the online journeys and user experiences that would be most useful to their online customers. This new channel sells direct to consumers via a responsive website and supports in-store sales representatives assisting consumers with their purchase. Additionally, Frontpoint integrated Magento with its in-house master processing system via API and multiple third-party systems to support digital marketing, A/B testing, analytics, and multi-site integration. Following this effort, the online business saw a 75-percent increase in add-to-cart conversions, a 26-percent increase in cart-to-checkout conversions, and a renewed commitment to continued innovation.
Accent Group (with eWave)
Platypus Shoes (an Accent Group Ltd company) innovated the customer experience it delivers with Magento Commerce to integrate and centralize stock inventory, and connect national warehouses and stores into one multichannel system. This provides customers substantially more inventory availability online and faster delivery options and services. Between 2016 and 2019, this solution drove a 330-percent revenue increase, a 123-percent increase in conversion rate, and a 424-percent increase in transactions.
Best Data-Driven Experience
Esri
Location intelligence and geospatial analytics leader, Esri, used Adobe Analytics to profile which audiences were visiting key web pages in the sales process. From here, the team built a set of rules to generate sales leads, and they created a mini- data management platform to leverage and activate their data. The result? Sourced sales pipeline and closed revenue in the millions.
NVIDIA
To better understand the impact and effectiveness of its marketing campaigns, NVIDIA integrated Adobe Sensei into its workflows, leveraging its machine learning capabilities. This enables the company to determine the impact on sales of affiliate-, email-, and paid-marketing channels, and to use its data to determine what’s working and what’s not by region, sub-channel, and campaign.
Refinitiv (with Tata Consultancy Services)
After identifying an opportunity to refine the company’s online support experience, Refinitiv used Adobe Analytics, Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe Experience Manager, and Adobe Target to launch the MyRefinitiv portal. This custom portal enabled customers to access all 150 of the company’s products via one login. The launch was a success, with customers rating the new portal experience much higher than the old experience — page views grew 39,900 percent in just 10 months, and customer self-service tasks increased by 38 percent.
Best Digital Experience
DuPont (with TCS Interactive)
Wanting to fix flexibility and performance issues while merging a new brand into the company’s web platform, DuPont turned to Adobe Experience Manager. Using AEM, DuPont streamlined the new dupont.com across 54 domains, with a 50 percent annual cost savings, 66-percent turnaround time improvement, and a 150-percent boost in page speed.
National Car Rental (with Isobar US)
To upgrade the brand’s websites to match customer expectations, National rolled out an entirely new front- and back-end web platform using a React single-page application powered by Adobe Experience Manager. This process included API integration with Adobe Target and intelligent optimization with Adobe Analytics via live multivariate testing. This combined process resulted in improved overall site performance, a significant uptick in global site engagement, increased European Emerald Club Membership enrollment, and increased usage of content authoring across thousands of locations.
T-Mobile (with TCS Interactive)
To boost the customer satisfaction ratings for its website, T-Mobile integrated Adobe Experience Manager 6.1 content management system, AngularJS, and its associated library to create a better customer experience. The massive overhaul consisted of 645 new web pages, 1,400 user stories, and a new end-to-end cart checkout production flow to optimize the customer shopping journey into a simple single-page application that boosted engagement and conversion. These changes contributed to T-Mobile receiving first place in the 2018 J.D. Power Wireless Purchase Experience Study.
Best Experience-Driven Campaign
Hilti (with EPAM Systems)
Because of its legacy email marketing platform, before May 2018 Hilti Corporation was unable to effectively engage customers through its campaigns. To address this, Hilti integrated Adobe Campaign and Adobe Experience Manager with other tools in their ecosystem to build and implement a unified, multi-channel campaign management platform. Using agile methodology, the team rolled out the platform across 61 markets for email and SMS channels — a platform that resulted in a 30 percent accelerated time-to-market with a 55 percent increase in team productivity. Customer acquisition grew by 18 percent as email volume expanded to 6,000,000, all with 50 percent decreased platform costs.
IAG (with CHE Proximity)
Driven by their purpose to ‘make your world a safer place’, Australia’s leading insurance group, IAG looked to proactively help their customers take control of their safety before a disaster occurred. Customers were rewarded for completing a series of personalised tasks through the ‘NRMA Safety Hub’, an interactive app that integrated Adobe Campaign and Adobe Analytics. The launch was a success: thousands of safety tasks have been completed, thousands of dollars of damage have been prevented and 81 percent of customers surveyed say they feel more prepared to face and recover from an unexpected event.
Redtag.ca
Wanting to bring more personalization to the company’s travel websites, Redtag used a combination of Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Campaign to build audience segments and deliver more personalized experiences to each customer. This resulted in increased bookings, lowered pages per visit, and a lower PPC spend.
Best Integrated Ad Campaign
Barclays US Consumer Bank
Seeking a more holistic way to manage their ad campaigns, Barclays ran several campaigns leveraging multiple Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, taking advantage of Adobe Analytics, Adobe Advertising Cloud, and Adobe Audience Manager integrations. As a result, cost per approved application has stayed well below the company’s benchmark while conversions went-up significantly.
Dollar Shave Club
To reframe its brand in the minds of consumers as a “grooming company,” Dollar Shave Club’s marketing and programmatic ad departments capitalized on the deeper Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Advertising Cloud integrations to drive home their new brand focus while delivering better customer experiences. The result: conversions skyrocketed while the average CPA dropped from $269 to $9 — shaving off 98 percent.
MGM Resorts International
Wanting to provide more personalized experiences to attract high-value guests for longer stays, MGM utilized Adobe Advertising Cloud, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Audience Manager. The resulting campaign yielded strong results — generating a 5.2-percent increase in average order value throughout the experience, and also observing a 3.5-percent increase in room nights booked, and 3.0 percent room conversion rate via mobile users.
Best Personalized Experience
AARP
Facing a demographic with varying levels of digital savvy, declining direct mail response rates, and burgeoning online advertising costs, AARP turned to Adobe Target. The goal was to test the hundreds of touchpoints in the AARP membership journey and, from there, automate personalization for a more targeted, relevant user experience. Since the start of the program in 2015, the company’s online conversion rate has tripled, and just in the last year, conversion rates have increased by nearly 59 percent.
Caesars Entertainment (with Bounteous)
Eager to address points of friction along the digital guest journey, the Caesars Entertainment Digital eCommerce team leveraged Adobe Experience Cloud and, specifically, Adobe Target. Caesars transformed static homepage components into dynamically populated, personalized touchpoints based on user segmentation, product offerings, previous browsing history, and booking activity. Together with Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Advertising Cloud, Caesars is able to create and scale digital experiences at multiple touchpoints throughout their ecosystem, including targeted dining and entertainment recommendations, reminders, and more.
TELUS
TELUS receives millions of calls from customers each year. These calls can be time consuming for frustrated customers who want to perform simple tasks. It became apparent that TELUS needed to find a solution to empower their customers with the knowledge of self-serving quickly and easily through the My TELUS app. Through Adobe Target’s personalization power, TELUS is able to solve this challenge by driving awareness to the right customer, at the right time across its site. The resulting flood of positive customer feedback and 2.3-times growth in active app users over two years is a surefire sign TELUS made the right call.
Celebrating the best experiences — and the best of us
Beyond these awards, we’ll also be honoring one nominee with the Audience Choice Award. Now through Friday, Mar. 22, you’ll have the opportunity to vote for your pick from a field of innovative, diverse finalists spanning industries such as sports, entertainment, finance, and more. The finalist with the most engagements (retweets and likes) will win.
At Adobe, digital experiences are at the heart of everything we do, and our customers constantly remind us just how far the possibilities of that experience can stretch. At Summit, we’ll reveal the winners — and the winner of our Audience Choice Award — and celebrate their successes, together.
Check back for the Adobe Experience Maker Award and Revvie Award winners.
