Meet Customer Zero — How Adobe Marketers Push the Limits of Personalization with Adobe Experience Platform

Delighting customers through personalized experiences is increasingly essential for business success, and marketers are leading the charge. At Adobe, marketers have the rare opportunity to use the solutions we promote and even contribute to product innovation. Our goal is to solidify Adobe’s position as the leader in Customer Experience Management (CXM) — and we’re constantly looking to push the limits of what’s possible.

“Adobe marketing teams are known internally as ‘Customer Zero’ because we’re typically the first to delve into new features of Adobe Experience Cloud,” says Fred Kuu, Group Manager, Marketing Applications and Architecture on the Adobe.com team. “It’s a great opportunity to experiment with new use cases for personalization and influence product direction.”

We think big but focus on incremental progress, and with the beta launch of Adobe I/O Runtime this spring, the possibilities are virtually limitless. As part of Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe I/O Runtime is a serverless development environment that, in combination with Adobe I/O Events, allows us to build custom functions that respond to events anywhere in Adobe Experience Cloud.

From idea to innovation — personalization at scale for enterprise customers

For the Adobe.com team, Adobe I/O Runtime sparked an idea — perhaps the new tool could provide an elegant solution to the challenge of bringing account-based marketing into the digital sphere. The team had been looking for ways to combine enterprise CRM data with Adobe Analytics to create richer audience segments and enhance personalization on the website.

Within a week, developers coded a lookup function. In a month, they launched a proof of concept. The solution was simple and effective.

“Accessing CRM attributes in real time and sharing to Adobe.com with Adobe I/O Runtime solved what had been one of the biggest pain points in our personalization efforts,” says Kuu. “With the function we built, we can create segments in minutes and start to deliver highly personalized account-based experiences.”

Now, when people visit Adobe.com, they’re even more likely to encounter content that suits their industry, business needs, and stage in the buying process. The marketing team can zero in on its audiences, and customers and prospects find what they need sooner.

“Finding new ways to deliver personalized digital experiences is a top priority for Adobe and the key to strengthening our leadership in Customer Experience Management (CXM),” Kuu says. “By unifying our B2B customer data with Adobe I/O Runtime, we’ve taken a big step toward personalization at scale for our enterprise customers.”

As Adobe marketing teams look for new ways to use Adobe Experience Cloud and deliver more personalized experiences, one powerful motivating factor is the hope that other companies will follow in their wake. By tapping into the success of “Customer Zero,” other Adobe customers can uncover new possibilities for innovation and also establish themselves as CXM leaders.

_Adobe uses Adobe Experience Platform, including Adobe I/O Runtime and Adobe I/O Events, and Adobe Analytics to enable greater personalization for enterprise customers on Adobe.com. Learn more here.
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