A week after the Adobe Summit in London, I had the chance to speak with François Laxalt. François has an atypical profile for the position he holds today (Marketing and Innovation Manager). After studies that should have led him to a position that today would be called "Data Scientist", he cut his teeth at Axa before spending a few years at SAS. A few years later, he became Customer Marketing Manager at HSBC, at a time when communication channels were multiplying. It was here that he realized the importance of data mining tools. campaign managementand decided to go to Neolane following a product demonstration. It was 2006 and there were still only about 20 people working at Neolane.
- Jonathan Loriaux: One year after the acquisition of Neolane by Adobe, what is the status of the integration of the two worlds?
François Laxalt: The marriage between Neolane and the Adobe universe is an amazing one. Until today, Adobe Marketing Cloud products (excluding campaign) have been designed to optimize the experience of anonymous visitors to websites, a world where there is little possibility of identifying a consumer or a company.
Neolane fills a gap, because the basic principle is based on a marketing database where everything is identified. The integration of the two universes brings coherence and makes it possible to follow the entire sales path, with identification as a bonus. This results in a more relevant and accurate marketing and allows a better management of the marketing pressure.
In terms of the integration itself, the interfaces of the various products are in the final stages of harmonization. But this is not just a cosmetic integration. Adobe's Marketing Cloud offering, which centralizes data from the various Adobe tools in the cloud, is now available. As soon as you buy one of Adobe's marketing services, the Cloud offer is automatically integrated.
For example, this allows the push notification offer toAdobe Campaign to be integrated into the Adobe Marketing Cloud mobile SDK.
From a cultural point of view, the integration is going very well given the common marketing axis. A series of "use cases" have been set up to try to develop the integration of the different structures. The French market is also a pilot since the different sales structures sell all Adobe Marketing solutions.
- JL: How was the integration perceived by your existing customers? What did they get out of it?
FL: Adobe was the right choice. This integration is a good thing to help marketing decision makers, there is a real logic that reassured everyone. Both clients and employees. Already today, some clients who came from Adobe Campaign have decided to move on and acquire other bricks of Adobe's marketing solutions.
- JL: Last week was the Adobe Summit conference in London. What are the main trends that are emerging around Adobe's Marketing Cloud offering?
FL: The first announcement is predictive. This new feature touches all layers of the Marketing Cloud. The integration into Adobe Campaign will follow quickly. The second announcement is the Adobe Exchange, a platform for exchanging applications connected to the various Adobe solutions. The creation of Adobe Exchange was made possible by the complete integration of the APIs and the framework between the different bricks of the offer. Several Apps are already available.
- JL: What will be the next evolution of Adobe Campaign?
FL: The next version will be 100% marketing cloud and will have a fully web-based interface. This change will be a major revolution of the interface since it will take the standards of other Adobe solutions. But beyond a change of appearance, it is the logic of campaign creation that will be modified, for example on the creation of emails which will be entirely based on graphic assistants.
On the other hand, with the next version, it will be possible to share audiences created in other tools of the suite. It will therefore be possible to do targeting in Adobe Campaign from web browsing filters created in Adobe Analytics. The remarketing scenarios will also be packaged to work in real time.
Finally, among other things, improvements will be made on AB testing and there will be more reporting on deliverability.
- JL: When is this new version of Adobe Campaign scheduled?
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FL: It will be available in beta in August 2014 and in final version at the end of the year.
- JL: Are the various teams that use Adobe Campaign sufficiently educated in campaign management today? What are the areas in which there is the most education to be provided?
FL: It's a big job! When we talk to customers, we see that they need assistance on best practices for setting up marketing campaigns. Business support is not the development priority for us; we focus primarily on developing the best possible software for marketers. But education and sharing of best practices is something that needs to be improved and that we are working on.
- JL: One of the biggest challenges for campaign management teams today is freeing up enough time to do optimization. How can Adobe Campaign help?
FL: In marketing, there is always more and more to do. Facebook data, cookies, mobile, etc. Platforms are chasing a complexity that is an eternal headlong rush. So yes, we automate, but can we free up time for optimization, that's the goal, but not everyone can do it. Our role is to simplify and automate this complexity as much as possible.
However, with the integration in the marketing cloud, there is really time to save. If the data goes from Web analytics (Adobe Analytics) to Adobe Campaign, and is cross-referenced with data from Facebook, all other things being equal, yes, productivity is improved. But marketing is becoming more and more complex and it's not clear that the workload of teams will be reduced in the next few years. The goal is to get more done.
- JL: How do you see the future of campaign management and eCRM? What will be the challenges in the coming years?
FL: The work on data is not finished. We need to combine the worlds of real time and anonymous data with CRM. We are moving towards a rebalancing of the use of data, and in doing so, we will be able to give ourselves the tools to create an increasingly direct link with users.
It will also be necessary to rebalance strategies and budgets between acquisition and retention. Today, acquisition is a very - too - important item in marketing budgets, and it is not uncommon to see a company pay several times to acquire the same prospect. A refocusing on customer and prospect loyalty is necessary because it is more efficient and less expensive. This includes email, which is once again becoming a central point of communication between the brand and its customers.
Content management is also one of the major challenges of tomorrow. We are in a real time marketing, with many different channels and devices. The marketer cannot adapt all the content to the different communication channels. We have to manage content that can be personalized, that adapts to the device, that automatically manages the offer, the marketing pressure, ...
On personalization, the consumer is more and more aware and more and more demanding. Brands have to adapt to consumers' desires. They are the ones who will always push the brands in this direction. They are also the ones who will punish brands if they do not individualize their messages enough.
- JL: Since this is an interview conducted for Badsender.com, what is the place of email in cross-channel? Do you see this place evolving?
FL: We've seen Facebook pop up, we've seen a lot of articles saying that email is dead. Not only is email not dead, but it is becoming increasingly important. The opening rate, when you have good practices, has not dropped as some people said. And when compared to the organic reach rate on Facebook, email is still very effective and very profitable. According to the annual study of the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) in the US, email is even the most profitable with an ROI of 40$ per dollar invested. The other channels are far behind.
Finally, the only channel that could compete with email is mobile notification. However, the notification will necessarily come from an App, ... which will probably be pushed via email.
