At MagentoLive 2019, European brands are making experience their business

As I look for­ward to tak­ing the stage at Magen­to­Live Europe for the first time, I’m struck by how many busi­ness­es of all shapes and sizes are set­ting the stan­dard for expe­ri­ence-dri­ven com­merce. From Direct-to-Con­sumer brands, like the Nether­lands’ very own Strauss Cof­fee, to retail­ers like France’s Rossig­nol, Europe’s ecom­merce land­scape is full of com­pa­nies that are not just grow­ing, but thriv­ing and mak­ing their mark.

Adobe acquired Magen­to in 2018 with a sin­gu­lar aim – to help brands of all sizes take own­er­ship of the entire cus­tomer jour­ney in an increas­ing­ly frag­ment­ed envi­ron­ment, from aware­ness through to a trans­ac­tion. Today, Magen­to Com­merce as part of Adobe Com­merce Cloud is help­ing com­pa­nies to make every moment per­son­al and every expe­ri­ence shoppable.

Take Beer Hawk, the UK’s lead­ing online beer mar­ket­place. Beer Hawk’s founders, Mark Roberts and Chris France, launched the com­pa­ny in 2012 with a unique busi­ness mod­el – to make the world’s best craft beers avail­able online and deliv­er them direct­ly to people’s homes. After grow­ing 110% in a short space of time, Beer Hawk begun using the Magen­to plat­form to fuel its agile mar­ket­ing and real-time ana­lyt­ics, help­ing it to deliv­er even more per­son­alised cus­tomer expe­ri­ences and dri­ve fur­ther suc­cess. Crit­i­cal­ly, suc­cess of its online store led the way to an expe­ri­en­tial phys­i­cal pres­ence in the cen­tre of Lon­don and a futur­is­tic cold-beer sub­scrip­tion ser­vice — curat­ed by skilled beer con­nois­seurs. It result­ed in online and offline touch­points that cre­ate an emo­tive, per­son­al cus­tomer experience.

The take­away here is that expe­ri­ence-dri­ven com­merce is not just about deliv­er­ing the best prod­ucts or ser­vices – it’s about deliv­er­ing the best over­all cus­tomer expe­ri­ence from start to fin­ish. With Magen­to, Adobe has added the cru­cial “last mile” to our end-to-end expe­ri­ence. We are rich­er for it, and we believe our cus­tomers are rich­er for it as well.

Beer Hawk is not alone. More than 2,000 atten­dees from over 50 coun­tries have descend­ed on Ams­ter­dam for Magen­to­Live this week to see how their peers have tak­en their dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence to new heights. They’ll also learn more about Adobe and Magento’s joint vision and get a sneak peek at the lat­est fea­tures of Magen­to Commerce.

We’ve brought a range of enter­prise-lev­el capa­bil­i­ties to Magento’s already robust plat­form, help­ing busi­ness­es to build a plat­form for both growth and inno­va­tion. For instance, users can now ben­e­fit from an Ama­zon Sales Chan­nel Exten­sion for the Ama­zon UK Mar­ket­place, with sup­port for more Euro­pean mar­kets com­ing soon. In Decem­ber, we’ll be launch­ing our Ear­ly Access Pro­gramme for AI-pow­ered prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions in Magen­to, fueled by Adobe Sen­sei, a major dri­ver of con­ver­sions and per­son­alised cus­tomer experiences.

As I’ve said before, the best cus­tomer expe­ri­ences are built on the per­fect mix of art and sci­ence, com­bin­ing the emo­tion­al pow­er of cre­ativ­i­ty with the val­ue of data-dri­ven insight to cre­ate con­tent that res­onates with the right peo­ple at the right time. Adobe’s plat­form has always helped brands draw on their cre­ativ­i­ty to attract audi­ences, and to dive deep into cus­tomer data to bet­ter under­stand them. As we build new capa­bil­i­ties into Magen­to Com­merce and Adobe Com­merce Cloud, we are adding an essen­tial third fac­tor to the equa­tion – the abil­i­ty to close the loop by turn­ing great cus­tomer expe­ri­ences into shop­pable ones.

It’s been eigh­teen months since Magen­to joined Adobe, and our com­bined team has nev­er been stronger. The most impor­tant part for us is that the com­mu­ni­ty comes with our part­ner­ship. Above all, we are com­mit­ted to grow­ing and sup­port­ing our cus­tomers as they con­tin­ue to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves in today’s com­plex dig­i­tal age. I for one look for­ward to see­ing the inge­nu­ity and inno­va­tion they have in store for us.