Adobe forges data partnerships for Experience Platform
Adobe adds bidirectional feeds to Experience Platform to manage post-sale customer data from third-party sources such as customer service and loyalty program platforms.
Adobe has forged partnerships with a number of tech vendors to feed more data into the Adobe Experience Platform.
The new partnerships include Genesys for customer service, Medallia for voice of the customer and Merkle for loyalty programs.
The data sources will feed into Adobe's customer data platform (CDP) and out of the CDP into the third-party applications. The partnerships go beyond traditional APIs in that the Adobe partners are building features inside their applications to use Adobe data to personalize customer experiences on their end, said Ronell Hugh, Adobe Experience Platform head of go-to-market strategy and product marketing.
Incorporating loyalty program data into the Adobe Experience Platform is crucial during this pandemic year, Gartner analyst Benjamin Bloom said. Marketing technology users are holding tight to their regular customers and trying to get the most out of existing technology investments.
"Loyalty is now one of the ways to facilitate an exchange of value for customer data, because some of the tried-and-true ways of reaching customers might not be as easily accessible at the moment," Bloom said.
Bloom added that -- independent of the pandemic's complications for marketers -- the end of third-party cookies over the next few years means marketers need new ways to engage customers. Loyalty programs figure into that new mix as marketers look to gather more of their own data and wean their operations off third-party data they've used in the past.
Customer data platforms such as Adobe Experience Platform's can cross-pollinate many points of the customer experience with data from other parts of the business.
Data beyond loyalty programs
The Genesys data-sharing partnership, Hugh said, gives companies that use both Genesys for contact center and Adobe Experience Platform the ability to pipe data back into Genesys so that agents can see more information about the customers whose problems they're solving.
Loyalty is now one of the ways to facilitate an exchange of value for customer data, because some of the tried-and-true ways of reaching customers might not be as easily accessible at the moment
Benjamin BloomAnalyst, Gartner
Adobe partnered with ICF Next, another loyalty platform provider, and video content provider SundaySky, in addition to the Genesys, Medallia and Merkle partnerships. Adobe also recently released Adobe Experience Platform Activation, which extends customer data management deeper into the enterprise outside of typical customer experience uses such as managing privacy compliance.
CDPs can better manage customer data in real time and provide more relevant marketing and content personalization when they have access to all of a company's data on a particular customer's activity. The Adobe Experience Platform's CDP component is no different from other CDPs in that regard, Hugh said.
The new arrangements with these third-party vendors extend the reach of Adobe's platform into new data pools and extend its customer intelligence into applications users didn't have before.
"It's all about how you engage with the customer across the entire customer journey," Hugh said. "Marketing is one element of that. Sales, post-sales, customer support, loyalty -- all of those elements are a part of that."
