AI, machine learning and WFH innovations

Adobe employees, working from home, were exposed to a digital-only reality that spurred new ideas on what would help brands stay ahead of the curve.

In any other year, we would be on stage at Adobe Summt in front of over 20,000 people, presenting some of the best work from Adobe’s research labs. During a mainstage event called “Sneaks”, we showcased projects submitted directly by employees around the world. They would spark the imagination of Summit attendees, as many were responsible for building great customer experiences — the innovations helped them look around the corner. In past years, Adobe has showcased the potential of marketing in augmented and virtual reality, as well as how AI could be used to suggest high-performing website layouts and detect anomalous activity online.

This time around, Sneaks is happening virtually, as Adobe hosts marketing, IT and eCommerce leaders for what has become the largest conference for digital experience. With celebrity host Dan Levy of “Schitt’s Creek”, we put our most deserving ideas to the test. Narrowing it down to the final seven Sneaks proved challenging, as we had record submissions this year. Adobe employees, working from home, were exposed to a digital-only reality that spurred new ideas on what would help brands stay ahead of the curve.

Our finalists leaned on Adobe Experience Platform for inspiration as well, and it expanded the aperture of what is possible. As the foundation of Adobe Experience Cloud, it empowers our customers to get an accurate pulse on how consumers interact online to offline, so that brands can build services that drive loyalty. With our recent acquisition of Workfront, we will also present a Sneak that promotes work-life balance through streamlining professional and personal commitments.

Innovations that drive the most excitement and customer feedback can be fast tracked into existing products — in the nine years of Summit Sneaks, many of the of projects have become product features and services that our customers use every day.

Here are the seven finalist Sneaks for Adobe Summit 2021:

Catchy Content

Brands are having to create more digital content for marketing campaigns, websites and apps, but they lack deeper insights to inform the creative process. In most cases, marketers focus only on topline metrics such as views and clicks. Project Catchy Content uses Adobe Sensei’s AI technology to “read” content and measure how aspects like color, objects, composition and writing style affect performance with different audiences. Brands can then feed these insights into Adobe Experience Platform to enrich their audience profiles and support personalization. A brand could see that ‘millennial males on the west coast’, for example, respond best to blue tones and more formal writing — and apply those insights during the creative process.

Daily Shuffle

The lines between home and office have blurred in the last year. What we know as work/life balance has evolved into more of a work/life tapestry. Project Daily Shuffle is an AI assistant in Workfront, that provides employees a helping hand when work and personal commitments collide. Consider a scenario where a working parent suddenly has to run an errand for their child. Daily Shuffle takes on the task of “re-routing” their day. It assigns delegates for important meetings (delivering a recording or notes at day’s end), while turning lower priority calls into tasks. It also surfaces the most important priorities and sends notifications to ensure it gets done within deadlines. Over time and with user inputs, the AI becomes smart and more intuitive (turning off notifications during an afternoon workout, for instance).

Account Ace

With remote workforces requiring new tools like video conferencing (along with IT leaders needing to reinforce their technology stacks), B2B marketers have seen an increased demand for their products. But without traditional face-to-face interactions, teams have had to improve the experience they deliver online instead. With Project Account Ace, marketers can use Adobe Sensei’s AI technology to manage these journeys and engage customer accounts in new ways. Several features encompass this Sneak, including “Account AI”, which can be used to analyze user signals (web visits, email engagement) to rank and prioritize accounts. “Buying Circles” can then visualize key personas and identify missing stakeholders. Account Ace can also be used to trigger marketing activities via Journey Optimizer in Adobe Experience Platform, creating custom, account-based journeys for high-priority opportunities.

Segment Tuner

Project Segment Tuner is an AI-powered cleansing and repair tool for data. Brands are having to collect more signals across channels like websites and mobile apps, especially during the recent surge in online traffic driven by the pandemic. An AI scoring model, powered by Adobe Sensei, can be used by brands to measure the trustworthiness of cross-channel data used to generate segments in Adobe Experience Platform. The model uncovers data quality issues in segments such as invalid emails or missing profiles. Segment Tuner can also enable brands to visualize opportunities as it looks for connections between data sets, including suggesting new customer attributes that could increase a segment’s reach, while focusing on conversion for a specific campaign or promotional offer. The tool helps ensure brands are creating high-quality audiences that drive better performance. For customers, it means content and experiences that are more personalized and relevant.

Dimension Builder

Project Dimension Builder is a simple, drag-and-drop tool for fixing data on the fly. With more on their plates, analysts and data scientists are becoming more prone to human error as they report insights to their organization — driven in part by data quality issues. In some cases, it may be a simple mistake such as a misspelled or omitted character within a data set. But with brands these days dealing with billions and even trillions of data points, a manual fix is not always the easiest or time-efficient way to address an issue. By leveraging Adobe Sensei’s machine learning technology, Project Dimension Builder provides a retroactive fix. It can be used by brands to comb through billions of cross-channel data points in Customer Journey Analytics (powered by Adobe Experience Platform) for instance, allowing users to create simple rules that address the problem in only a few seconds.

Live Wired

With more intense competition online, the needs of marketers are shifting. Adobe customers are finding that their challenges are not always addressed by out-of-the-box integrations and interfaces. As a result, brands have begun building custom marketing applications that link Adobe technologies through APIs, but it can sometimes be a time-consuming and slow-moving process. Project Live Wired changes the narrative by bringing together the same APIs with the power and simplicity of Adobe XD. Live Wired turns Adobe XD into a drag-and-drop interface that is linked directly to Adobe apps via a developer-friendly, low-code web app. Customers can build marketing applications that include links into assets and analytics, to orchestration and optimization. With Live Wired, marketing, design, and engineering teams can seamlessly work together to build applications that solve their biggest challenges.

Savvy Search

Adobe Experience Cloud customers often use multiple apps to deliver great experiences online. This can include Adobe Analytics for reporting, Adobe Target to drive personalization, and Adobe Journey Optimizer (powered by Adobe Experience Platform) to orchestrate customer journeys. Project Savvy Search delivers an actionable search bar that sits across all of these apps, helping customers find what they need to take certain actions. Consider the possibilities for a marketer interacting with Adobe Experience Cloud through natural language, where users can ask questions in an open-ended fashion. For instance, if a marketer needs to know about journeys for a live campaign (while they are currently in Adobe Analytics), Savvy Search can provide details such as the related events, conditions, and actions from Journey Optimizer. It can also provide an option for the marketer to edit that customer journey, driving better conversion through personalization, without the user ever having to leave their Adobe Analytics interface.