10/07/2024

Unlocking personalised campaigns in the retail industry

Adobe Content Supply Chain Digital marketing Retail & Consumer Goods

Author: Roland Gruber

Graphic design of a white sneaker with abstract shapes and lines on a multicolored background next to a picture of a smiling woman.

Retail marketers are facing intense pressure to deliver highly tailored e-commerce experiences at lightning speed, all while navigating reduced budgets. What if they could do more with fewer resources? Envision a world where they can effortlessly craft, publish, and deliver personalised campaigns in mere seconds, and simultaneously notify customers about new offers. By harnessing the power of cutting-edge generative AI solutions from IBM and Adobe, we're turning this vision into a reality for retailers.

While retailers possess the data to craft bespoke experiences, they often lack the technological power to unlock its full potential. The demand for personalised content outpaces human capacity, creating a significant bottleneck. By adopting gen AI technology, forward-thinking retailers can bridge this gap, gaining a decisive edge over competitors and revolutionising the retail industry.

The quest for tailored content

Retail marketers struggle to create personalised campaigns that truly resonate with their target audience. Despite having access to a vast amount of data from sources like analytics, CRM, CDP, and customer feedback, delivering personalised experiences that meet the growing demands of customers remains a significant hurdle. Managing campaigns from start to finish, including defining target audiences, creating compelling content, delivering it to the right channels, and notifying customers, is a complex and time-consuming process. The key challenge lies in finding a way to increase efficiency without compromising on quality, while also preventing burnout and optimising limited resources.

Demand for personalised campaigns is skyrocketing

As presented in our article “Do more with less: Adobe Workfront and Edge Delivery powered by generative AI”, it is possible to create and publish personalised landing pages in seconds. Marketers are now enabled to reach their diverse targets with hyper-personalised experiences. But what about e-commerce personalised campaigns and storefronts?

Let’s illustrate this with a real-world example. Meet George, a marketer at a retail company that specializes in shoes. George uses Adobe AEP as a central hub to collect customer interactions and perform segmentation. His goal is to promote the new “Planet Love Running” sneaker collection to eco-conscious customers. To do this, he wants to create a personalised storefront that resonates with this target audience, featuring tailored images and text. In the past, George relied on a manual process, sending numerous emails to a design agency and collecting data by hand. However, this approach is no longer sustainable in today’s fast-paced marketing environment, where personalised content is increasingly in demand.

Personalisation at scale

To speed up the campaign management and content creation George introduces Adobe Workfront for campaign management. In addition, the gen AI tools Adobe Firefly and watsonx are used to create compelling content for the personalised storefront.

To streamline the storefront generation process, George uses Workfront to initiate and track the campaign. With a simple request, he can select the shoe collection and target audience (pre-defined in Adobe AEP and seamlessly synchronized with Workfront). Microservices integrated via Workfront Fusion take care of the rest. These micro-service leverages the power of watsonx and Adobe Firefly APIs to generate personalised content in a matter of seconds. The generated storefront is then sent to a publisher for review within Workfront, where they can re-quest changes or approve and publish the page. If needed, George can make manual edits or use an editorial plugin, which utilizes AI to assist in fine-tuning the content. Once approved, the content is instantly delivered online to all relevant customers and devices, achieving a perfect Lighthouse score of up to 100, thanks to Edge Delivery.

Furthermore, all customers who match the target audience receive a timely and personalised notification via email or SMS (using Adobe Journey Optimizer), complete with tailored text and a direct URL to their unique store-front page. This enables customers to instantly engage with the generated content and seamlessly purchase the new shoes, all in one convenient step.

Let’s have a closer look at our video demonstration, which showcases the full capabilities of these innovative tools in action:

Debunking the cost myth: the financial benefits of automation

One concern still lingers: the cost of implementing these innovative tools. Won’t the licenses for Workfront and gen AI put an additional strain on already stretched marketing budget? Fortunately, our calculations reveal a reassuring 3.17 return on investment for every euro spent on implementation and license costs. This demonstrates that, with the right approach, more can be achieved with less.

The solution unlocks a significant productivity boost by standardizing and automating campaign creation, which in turn reduces error rates. By leveraging gen AI tools, marketers can save time and effort on tasks like creating SEO-ready copy and images. This enables them to focus on more strategic, high-value work. Moreover, the excellent page performance and rapid delivery of personalised campaigns can lead to a substantial increase in conversion rates, resulting in revenue growth and higher utilization rates.

Technical foundation

Our solution is built on a robust technology stack, comprising:

Adobe AEP, serving as a real-time Customer Data Platform (CDP) to unify customer insights
Adobe Workfront, which manages and streamlines marketing campaigns
Workfront Fusion, orchestrating the seamless integration of gen AI content creation
IBM watsonx, our cutting-edge gen AI solution generating personalised copy text
Adobe Firefly, another gen AI powerhouse creating tailored, high-quality images
Adobe Commerce, operating as a headless e-commerce system, paired with Edge Delivery for a lightning-fast frontend
Adobe Journey Optimizer, which notifies matching customers about their new, personalised storefronts

Generative AI solutions from IBM and Adobe

The power of gen AI and Edge Delivery Services

This solution empowers marketers to create fully personalised storefronts in mere seconds, eliminating the need for days or weeks of manual effort. By harnessing the power of gen AI and Edge Delivery Services, marketing teams can achieve unprecedented levels of personalization at scale, resulting in a significant productivity boost. This, in turn, enables lightning-fast delivery, mobile performance, and exceptional page SEO, ultimately driving higher conversion rates and organic website traffic. In 2024, we’re poised to transition gen AI from concept to production-ready solutions that will drive tangible business outcomes, aligning with C-suite goals across the organization.

Join us in exploring the vast potential of automation in retail content creation. Together, we can uncover ways to optimize your workflows, reduce costs, and create unforgettable customer experiences. Let’s discuss how our cutting-edge solution can help you streamline your campaign management, increase productivity, and stay ahead of the competition.

Adobe partnership

IBM and Adobe have a strategic alliance spanning both technology and services, building on more than 20 years as an Adobe consulting partner. IBM is the No.1 partner certified in Workfront, AEM and Adobe platforms. In 2023, IBM iX received the Adobe Digital Experience Partner of the Year Award for Central Europe and United Kingdom & Ireland (UK&I).

More about the partnership