Adobe Summit 2021 is on April 27-29, 2021 and this year’s theme is “The future of customer experience is waiting for you.”
Although we can’t meet in person in Las Vegas again this year, the bright side is that many more people can attend since this year’s Summit will be a free virtual event in which to engage and learn. Also, a lot more people can attend sessions that typically would have filled-up fast due to seating limitations.
I have been attending Adobe Summit since 2015, and for anyone that is new, let me tell you that the conference can be overwhelming! With so many speakers and events, most attendees are trying to figure out what sessions they should attend. It is exciting to hear from celebrities and famous authors, in addition to Adobe and industry speakers. This year’s list of guest speakers includes Serena Williams, Malcolm Gladwell, Rachel Botsman, and Susan Cain, to name a few.
Another area I am really excited about this year is Braindates. This is a new initiative from Adobe that will allow attendees to connect with other Summit attendees in either a one-on-one meeting or small group conversations. As an ambassador, I will be hosting sessions to share my knowledge of Adobe Marketing cloud and Experience platform.
To learn more, join me on the following Braindate sessions:
- Where does AEP fit in your Architecture?
- Considering purchasing, or have recently bought AEP? What to focus on first in your Roadmap
- 1:1 Ask me anything on Adobe Campaign Management, Marketing Cloud Integration, AEP
How should you plan your agenda?
1. Plan ahead
It is best to block out the three days on your calendar so you will be able to fully concentrate on the sessions. If you are not able to, or have conflicts, try blocking out time later to revisit the recorded sessions.
2. Register ahead and review the agenda early. (Link to register)
At times, due to overlapping sessions, you will need to make choices. I suggest you pick the session that is most relevant to your immediate needs. Since recordings will be available, you can go back and listen to sessions you might have missed, or if you have team members attending, you can divide and conquer the sessions.
3. With over 200 sessions, you can choose your focus areas.
Here’s the Session Catalog.
Pick one, or a few, of the 11 tracks:
- Adobe Experience Platform
- Analytics, Insights, and Activation
- B2B Marketing and ABM
- Campaign Management
- Collaborative Work Management
- Content Creation
- Developer Ecosystem
- Digital Commerce
- Digital Document Productivity
- Personalization
- Trends and Inspiration
As an example, I am really excited about two tracks related to the Customer Experience theme: Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) and upcoming innovations in Campaign Management.
Here are some of my personally recommended sessions that might also be of interest to you:
Adobe Experience Platform:
1) Get Introduced to AEP
If you are new and looking to learn more about AEP, this one-hour training workshop led by Adobe Learning Services expert instructors will provide an introduction to the Adobe Experience Platform, its capabilities, and how it can work with Adobe Experience Cloud. As this workshop is meant to cover conceptual introductory topics, it will include demos to reinforce topics.
TW103 on Tuesday Apr 27 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM EDT
ANZ113 on Wednesday Apr 28 8:30pm - 9:30 pm EDT
2) Live Q&A with Adobe Experts: Experience Platform
This will be a great opportunity to drop into a LIVE session with Adobe consultants and product experts to ask questions and get answers, in minutes. You will be able to chat directly with Adobe’s consulting and product experts.
Some of the areas covered in this session:
- Get tips on implementing, integrating, establishing best practices, and delivering better experiences with Experience Platform
- Ask questions directly with Adobe’s consultants, enterprise architects, and solution consultants
OH1 Tuesday Apr 28 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM EDT
OH13 Wednesday Apr 28 1 PM – 3 PM EDT
3) Create and Manage Personalized Next-Best-Offers
Adobe has recently released Offer decisioning, which is built natively on Adobe Experience Platform. This will be an opportunity to learn more about how it works and how it can enable your organization to define and manage personalized next-best-offers across customer interactions.
E135 Wednesday Apr 28th 9:30-10 AM EDT
S406 Tuesday Apr 27 4 - 4:30 pm EDT
Campaign Management:
1) The Future of Customer Journey Management
This session will share trends driving the future of customer journey management. The session will provide a preview into upcoming version changes to Adobe Campaign classic and some of the new product features coming out.
S404 Tuesday Apr 27th 3-3:30 pm EDT
E133 Wednesday 28th 6:30 AM – 7AM EDT
Third-Party Cookies and Beyond:
Big changes are on the horizon as Google announced on March 3 that third-party cookies will be removed from the Google Marketing Platform ecosystem. Here are some sessions to help you look ahead.
1) Data-driven Customer Experiences: The future is here!
Customer experience management is changing rapidly with market forces like dynamic privacy regulations and changes to the use of third-party cookies. More than ever, brands need to adopt a future-ready customer data platform and build a durable foundation for how data is collected, analyzed, managed, and activated across B2C and B2B. Discover how Adobe innovations can help brands to know and respect their customers, transform data into powerful experiences, and continuously learn and optimize at every customer interaction.
SS11 Tuesday Apr 27 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM
ESS11 Wednesday 28 6 AM – 6:30AM EDT
AISS11 Thursday Apr 29 2Am – 2:30 am EDT
ANZSS11 Wednesday Apr 28 8pm – 8:30 PM EDT
2) Personalization at Scale without Third-Party Cookies
S858 Tuesday Apr 27th 5 PM – 5:30 PM EDT
New privacy regulations, the demise of third-party cookies, and the progressive obsolescence of third-party cookie data are hindering brands’ ability to understand the customers they interact with and to provide value to them across their journey. Brands understand that delivering a total customer experience is the key to success in a hyper-connected world, but without being able to identify customers and prospects, this vision cannot be realized. Learn how Merkury, Merkle’s identity resolution platform, and its Adobe Experience Platform integration can protect your vision and keep you connected to the customer journey.
Learn how to:
- Cleanse and unify disparate data sources into a single person-based ID
- Enhance Adobe Experience Platform audience profiles for analytics and targeting
- Deliver personalization at scale across channels without the use of third-party cookies
I hope you have a wonderful time this year at the virtual Adobe Summit, and I’m looking forward to next year, when we will be able to see each other in-person at the Summit.
