Adobe Summit Day 4 - Industry Super Session - Experiences that connect in Financial Services

Hosted By: Christopher Young & Jared Lees ( Adobe ) , Rusty Rahmer ( Vanguard ), Mark Pelletier ( AAA Northeast ),Corby Fine ( CIBC )

This was probably one of the best sessions for me in the Summit – 3 very insightful pieces from financial services all talking about a critical aspect for their digital transformation across the three pillars. People Process and Technology.

The speakers echoed some key themes of the summit and backed it up with hard examples from their own experiences. A great session and I highly recommend watching the playback online accessible from here.

Note: If you'd like to check out my previous posts on Summit, they are Day 3 Part 2 here , Day 3 part 1 here, Day 2 coverage here ( Keynote) and here ( digital transformation sessions ) and Day 1 Partner Day Coverage here.

Here we go.

Disruption and Transformation

Starting with some current trends and industry insights. Based on a recent digital trends survey Adobe presented, while FinTech are major completion , majority of companies believe that the disruption they ‘fear’ will come from Tech Giants like Google or Amazon .

Interestingly, another area as a key source of disruption also mentioned was ,surprise, surprise - THEMSELVES - i.e. companies in the same area - their traditional competitors as they progressed on their own digital roadmap . A lot of respondents also believed that they were well into their way for Digital Transformation, with Targeting & Personalization and Seamless Customer Journey Management as the top two priorities in said transformation.

The use of AI to achieve scale in these and related areas was a common factor that separated top performers from the mainstream. It is estimated that by 2020, nearly half of their sales would be driven through digital channels.

Finally – People and Process were pointed out as the key areas where transformations either progress positively or falter.

Case Study 1 – Vanguard

(https://investor.vanguard.com/corporate-portal/ )

Organizations must check if the experience or offers they are serving their customers is aligned to what the brand stands for. Vanguard realized this by acknowledging and accepting a simple yet powerful concept.

Essentially – Don’t do marketing like Vegas. Don’t simply push the products on high footfall touchpoints hoping to make money on volume based conversion. Instead, shape customer journeys by listening to them customers, reading cues, anticipating their needs.

Watch out for key life signals, our customer’s moments of truth, like a job change, or a new house or a new child. These can be stressful times and our focus to serve their actual needs to navigate those moments will make all the difference.

But to get to that level of maturity of analytics, it is important to establish a Marketing Measurement Maturity Model. 

At one end, focus on whether you can at least figure out what’s happening across your customer touchpoints – forget the good and bad. At the other end, have the capability to read subtle cues , both offline and online and anticipate and predict what the customer may be interested in.

This needs to be matched up by the engine of the organization being able to respond to events with relevance and speed e.g. during a hurricane , Vanguard noticed that desktop browsing stopped and mobile based browsing skyrocketed, presumably due to people being displaced. They responded quickly by first analyzing what pages were being requested and then putting up key FAQs as a front and center experience for anyone visiting the site in that or a nearby region .

This was also a great example of how Vanguard went beyond simple conversion measures and included the qualitative brand experience measures as a part of their KPIs.  

Case Study 2 – AAA Northeast (https://northeast.aaa.com/)

The focus on this case study was on the People and Process side of things. It was extremely important for their transformation to hire people with the right drive and skills not just in technology. One can partner with vendors and train up people on key tech, but digital entrepreneurs that have been in the game for some time and know how to fail fast and recover are going to be key in driving long term transformational programs.

It was equally important to establish a workspace that facilitated open collaboration across departments with feedback loops to course correct on business vision and goals. The workspace and environment is one of the fundamental reasons for high performing people to stay.

Agile was the method of choice in working , and each team had a mix of key skillsets needed by the projects to succeed from Data Analysts, Developers, Content Specialists and Product Owners.

Within 9 months, AAA Northeast went from basic page level tracking to a brand new site on AEM and advanced analytics including real-time audience management, transactional tracking, and connection of personalization insight to the membership system.

Case Study 3 – CIBC

(https://www.cibc.com/en/personal-banking.html )

The focus for this presentation was to have “ Great experiences for everyone”.

It is important to treat prospects and customers as one and the same, the only difference being on where they were in the customer journey and that one has a commercial relationship with you while the other doesn’t.

Through this process, CIBC mentioned that organisations should realise that it’s not about always pushing a product or asking for money , but about creating relevance – helping our customers , giving them assurance that their needs are looked after, and aiming to make their daily interactions with the company as frictionless as possible.

They jumped in with Audience Manager first and fed digital data directly into leads management. They then acted on segments even when they weren’t 100% sure of the conclusion, but they did this in a smart way – by arming their assisted channels with this insight.

This allowed them to continue conversations offline based on customer behavior online. A deceptively simple yet powerful concept.

A few of key capabilities for CIBC in this transformation journey were

1. Finding digital only exclusive that created a real differentiator for the digital channel
2. A universal identifier for their customers across authenticated and unauthenticated, with Adobe device co-op playing a key role.
3. Always on campaigns and measurement for nudge communications either online or providing insight to assisted channels

In my previous blogs leading up to the Summit, I mentioned that it was important to identify marketing use cases that were relevant even if the customer identity wasn’t 100% guaranteed. By channeling that insight to leverage in an offline conversation with a human instead of an computer generated message, CIBC ensured that the fallout for any false positives was minuscule if not nil while at the same time unlocking great value for themselves and their customers.

As a final takeaway from this 3rd and final case study from the Industry Super Session – If what you’re doing is not creating relevance for your customer, then it isn't worth doing!

That’s it for my core coverage of Adobe Summit 2018 – I will be rounding up this series with a final overall set of my personal takeaways in a couple of days.

It’s been great fun putting out all this content – as much as for me as for you all. Let me know what you liked, what you didn’t like. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this or any topic

It was a great conference and I had a lot of fun meeting up with awesome people from across the world. It was a great place to learn new things, confirm ways of working and just generally talk about the future of the industry.

If you haven’t ever been to the Summit, I highly recommend it at least once.