MarketingreinventionA crowd of more than 5000 digital marketers, publishers, agencies and technologists from across the world gathered this week at Salt Lake City at Adobe’s 12th annual Digital Marketing Summit 2014, which closes today with the much anticipated ‘Sneak Peek’, where delegates get early looks at pre-release Adobe Tech innovations.

But besides unveiling their newest technology breakthroughs, Adobe’s press department goes full speed as well by releasing one announcement after another this week, such the new Adobe® Experience Manager that includes innovations for simplification of website re-platforming, dynamic asset delivery and mobile app development.

“Digital experiences have extended well beyond the PC to tablets, mobile devices, social channels, digital glass, and even wearables. Whether searching a mobile site, diving into a favorite tablet app, or participating in an online community, consumers expect brands to provide a consistent, personal experience every time. Adobe Experience Manager, as part of the industry’s most complete set of marketing solutions, is uniquely positioned to continue defining the future and helping marketers succeed every step of the way”, states Aseem Chandra, vice president, Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Target, Adobe.

In fact, Adobe’s recently conducted study - Digital Roadblock: Marketers struggle to reinvent themselvesrevealed that marketers agree they need to reinvent themselves to succeed, and nearly three-quarters stated the top driving force behind this need for change is the expanded number of channels and platforms to reach audiences. Well, Adobe has responded to the need for a more expedient development process for both web and mobile app marketing, delivering new capabilities through its Adobe Experience Manager solution for:

Communities—As brands shift focus to building communities—and loyalty—on their own online properties, Experience Manager delivers a full set of capabilities designed to support them at scale. Organizations are now empowered to easily moderate communities and help boost engagement with sentiment analysis. New machine translation provides community members the ability to select their language of choice, and helps marketers overcome communication barriers and grow brand advocates worldwide.

Sites—Touch-enabled interface simplifies the launch of web and mobile sites, and a newly imagined template approach can help reduce project time by up to 50 percent. New dashboards give marketers greater insight into the most effective content on online properties, while support for automated translation helps reach global audiences faster. Through integrations with leading commerce engines, Experience Manager provides organizations the flexibility to build rich experiences that lead to purchase on their commerce platform of choice.

Assets— Dynamic, interactive media experiences, including video, can now be authored and delivered across devices. Advanced video features now include the ability to add annotations and measure engagement. New workflows help streamline tasks such as photo shoots for campaign launches. Experience Manager Assets provides deeper integration with Adobe Creative Cloud, enabling Adobe’s leading digital media tools to store, sync and share assets with Adobe Marketing Cloud. Marketers can then use assets across Adobe’s digital marketing solutions, including Adobe Target, Adobe Campaign and Adobe Social, supporting the delivery of a consistent brand experience across all channels.

Apps—Combined with the new PhoneGap Enterprise, Experience Manager provides the only mobile app development platform for both developers and marketers. Developers can quickly build cross-platform apps, such as for retail and financial services. Marketers can then use Experience Manager’s drag-and-drop interface to edit and add to apps, as well as push content updates from the Web to apps. Marketers can also analyze app performance in real time through new, built-in integration with Adobe Analytics.

Forms—Large volumes of forms can be created, managed and made available as part of web sites, mobile sites and mobile apps, with capabilities to adapt to device types and user responses. Forms can be integrated with business processes, helping government agencies, financial services organizations and others increase efficiency and improve response times.

“The shift to digital requires new technology, new approaches and, in many cases, entirely new roles for marketers,” said Ann Lewnes, chief marketing officer for Adobe. “The good news is that marketers see the change in front of them, and understand they need to embrace data, focus on creating personalized experiences and work across their social, Web and mobile channels. They just need to take the plunge.”

The capabilities of Adobe Experience Manager are built on a unified platform, offering organizations the flexibility to deploy and manage digital experiences themselves or in the cloud via Adobe’s managed services.

Bob Van Beber, senior vice president and Managing Director, SapientNitro explains: "Today's always-on and digitally-savvy consumer demands a connected and personalized user experience that cuts across channels and devices. We rely on Experience Manager to give our global marketers a robust framework and tool to bring their brand experiences to life across platforms in a very effective, efficient manner. We look forward to these enhancements to support our new capabilities and provide increased value to our customers."

The new Adobe Experience Manager is expected to be available on a worldwide basis by the end of May 2014.

By Daniela La Marca