Shining a Spotlight on the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Award Winners

June 24, 2021

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At Adobe, we’re always inspired by the ways our customers are constantly innovating to transform digital experiences. For the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Awards, we’re shining a spotlight on some of this past year’s most groundbreaking, creative approaches to reimagining the customer experience. We received outstanding submissions from every corner of the globe, making it challenging for our judges to select only one standout winner in each category.

Today, we’re excited to announce the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Awards winners, who were recently honored at two exclusive regional virtual galas.

The winners of the global awards are:

The Advocate: Center Parcs

In the hospitality industry, customer experience is everything. By working with Adobe Experience Cloud applications, including Adobe Analytics, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Experience Manager, and Adobe Target, Center Parcs created greatly enhanced customer experiences that increased bookings and drove a revenue lift of £1.6m. The digital transformation enabled richer, more responsive services. It also allowed Center Parcs to react quickly to the unexpected, rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic and keep guests more informed — turning already loyal customers into true advocates.

The Ambassador: Jessica Kao, Senior Director of Demand Operations, F5

A six-time Adobe Marketo Engage Champion, 2018 Adobe Marketo Engage Champion of the Year, and Experience Maker 50 marketer, Jess helps her peers at F5 and across the industry succeed. Whether working to expand Marketo Engage learning opportunities for others, authoring the Marketo Engage Business Practitioner Expert Exam, or participating in podcasts and speaking engagements at Adobe Summit, Jess is always eager to advocate for rethinking the best approaches to digital marketing and engagement and share her expertise with everyone who wants to learn. In addition, she also plays a vital role in F5’s digital marketing success. In just one example of her efforts, she helped increase MQLs from key accounts by 30 percent.

The Analyzer: RS Components

RS Components, a leading global distributor of electronics and maintenance products, demonstrates success by continually finding untapped opportunities in every business. The company mastered the art and science of unifying multiple data sources to obtain real-time insights that constantly inform and improve customer experiences. To gain insights into everything from online browsing behaviors and purchase histories to tapping into offline customer information and machine learning tools, RS Components uses Adobe Analytics, Adobe Audience Manager, and Adobe Target to identify customer pain points, then test and refine every customer experience. The result: a 32 percent year-over-year growth in revenue and a 64 percent increase in revenue per unique visitor.

The Architect: Bose

Bose brought together diverse teams from Engineering, Digital Marketing, Development, and others that don’t often work together to reimagine the customer journey. The company takes advantage of several Adobe Experience Cloud applications, including Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Adobe Audience Manager, and Adobe Experience Manager, along with built-in AI and ML capabilities supported by Adobe Sensei, as the foundation of an integrated customer experience environment. The Adobe applications link to enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and other enterprise applications for a more unified approach to personalizing customer engagement. Using Adobe Sensei (Adobe’s AI technology) with in-house models to analyze data enables Bose to more accurately determine whether customers are interested in headphones, speakers, or other products — and deliver the right experience at just the right time. The highly personalized approach has led to a $2 million increase in revenue from email campaigns and up to a $4.4 million increase in revenue from homepage traffic.

The Changemaker: American Red Cross

The American Red Cross delivers lifesaving services with the help of more creative digital experiences supported by Adobe Experience Cloud. The non-profit, humanitarian organization provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education across the U.S. When disaster strikes, American Red Cross uses Adobe applications to run email campaigns, promote blood drives, and quickly launch as many as several hundred microsites to seek donations. To make it easier for blood donors to sign up and save lives, the organization migrated redcross.org and recrossblood.org onto one platform, Adobe Experience Manager. Additional Adobe applications, including Adobe Analytics, Adobe Campaign, and Adobe Target, along with Adobe Experience Manager, provide full visibility into digital engagement with donors and people in need, enabling executives to determine what experiences have the biggest impacts and continually refine every experience. And when it comes to directly supporting communities in need, services like Disaster Mobile Hub offer geographically targeted, streamlined engagement, achieving a 159 percent lift in visits to local site content, a 71 percent lift in visits to Find a Shelter, and a 72 percent lift in visits to Become a Volunteer.

The Closer: NWEA

Just as NWEA gives educators around the world assessment tools to help measure student growth, it needed help gauging its own growth across multiple channels, field marketing, and live and virtual events. A research-based not-for-profit organization that creates academic assessments for pre-K-12 students, NWEA spent many hours analyzing how to target customers that could help the organization continue to grow. Through sophisticated buyer journey tracking, lead qualification tracking, multi-channel interaction tracking, and progressive profiling powered by Adobe Marketo Engage, NWEA can quickly and effectively measure customer engagement in predictable ways to create more relevant buying experiences. In less than one year, NWEA achieved a 200 percent improvement in the Engaged to Closed/Won rate and a 3X increase in Average Deal Size for opportunities generated through marketing.

The Illuminator: U.S. Census Bureau

When COVID-19 stopped field operations, the U.S. Census Bureau had just launched the 2020 Census online option. Using Adobe Experience Cloud, the Bureau created landing pages in 59 languages to support the massive national outreach campaigns. With Adobe Analytics, the Bureau got a clearer picture of how visitors arrived to its census.gov and 2020census.gov websites. It then used this information to make those sites easier to navigate and access for mobile visitors via Adobe Experience Manager. Simplifying participation was crucial to success since mobile visitors accounted for 80 percent of traffic to the campaign site. Participation in the Census has a short window, and the Bureau used Adobe Target to optimize the ad content that best encouraged digital census participation. Reacting swiftly and effectively, the U.S. Census Bureau reached more than 67 percent of U.S. households online and created a new digital standard for handling future surveys.

The Magnifier: Sky

As Europe’s leading direct-to-consumer media and entertainment company, Sky uses personalized and multichannel marketing on a huge scale — 800 million contacts across five targeted channels. However, there was no centralized planning and message coordination, and customers received messages about products they were unlikely to buy. Sky orchestrated a complex effort to create 1:1 personalized, automated multichannel experiences at scale. Using Adobe Campaign with Adobe Analytics, Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe Target, and Adobe Workfront, Sky achieved a click-through rate for a 1:1 email campaign that was more than three times greater than the average click-through rate for all campaigns.

The Mastermind: Topps Tiles (nominated by Tom & Co.)

Topps Tiles is the UK’s leading tile specialist, with 1,500 specialist experts and more than 300 stores, yet it operated off a limited bespoke e-commerce platform that couldn’t effectively scale to support digital traffic. Online sales are now more crucial than ever, so Topps Tiles used Adobe Commerce to re-platform its site to a headless set-up that bridges the digital shopping experience with personalized assistance delivered through the 300 retail locations. This high-performance, progressive web app-enabled website has increased customer engagement: shoppers report an 80 percent satisfaction level, and trade sales have experienced a 100 percent uplift.

The Maverick: Doorstep Market (nominated by Netsmartz LLC)

Doorstep Market helps small businesses compete at a global scale. To provide small businesses with the technology and marketing power of larger brands, Doorstop Market built a multi-site, multi-vendor platform that delivers customized recommendations to shoppers based on 2,700 local products from 500 regional retailers. The site is built on Adobe Commerce Cloud Pro supported by Adobe Sensei (Adobe’s AI technology) to share granular regional knowledge and connect multiple regional markets to offer people a national shopping experience. The Adobe Sensei AI-powered experiences enable shoppers to “travel” between regions as they shop, providing sleek, seamless experiences that drive sales for small businesses.

The Orchestrator: Workday

A company known for providing leading enterprise cloud applications to thousands of global organizations can’t afford to have its own critical marketing data stuck in siloes. Workday wanted to break down data siloes with a unified customer data platform to better respond to changing digital habits related to COVID-19. Using Adobe Experience Cloud, Workday built a dashboard that analyzes audience interests across channels. The dashboard was the launchpad for a cross-channel marketing campaign that spanned paid search, display advertising, native advertising, paid social, SEO optimization, on-site personalization, email, and social listening. Armed with better data and smarter approaches, Workday boosted website visits from targeted audiences by 10x its previous levels. The company also achieved a 74 percent reach across its defined target market.

The Transformer: Fiserv (nominated by Capgemini)

To execute an always-on marketing approach, global fintech and payments company Fiserv had to enable digital experiences that clients would want to engage in everywhere, any time of the day. The company switched to Adobe Experience Cloud to cut its online presence from over 500 sites down to 200, delivering more relevant content, consistent branding, and smoother, more efficient customer experiences. Fiserv revitalized its entire go-to-market strategy by transforming its approach to content, customer journey management, commerce, and lead management. Across its broad range of sites, the company achieved 37 percent faster updates and quicker localization. At the same time, the cost savings from streamlined web maintenance totaled about $1M annually. And the company’s more effective email campaigns are on track to support potential year-on-year sales growth of 200 percent.

Regional award winners

This year, we also celebrate the Adobe Experience Maker of the Year, Executive of the Year, and Team of the Year from each of our four regions. The 12 regional winners are:

Americas

Experience Maker Executive of the Year: Matt Harker, VP of Global Marketing Strategy and Transformation, Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA)

Matt Harker spearheaded initiatives to unite the marketing and tech teams at WBA and selected Adobe Experience Cloud to power millions of individually personalized experiences across a complex landscape of health, privacy and geographical challenges. Matt brought together the Chief Privacy Officer of WBA and Adobe to review appropriate data usage and develop an approach that supported individualized messaging at scale while honoring preferences and protecting customer privacy. His innovative work and passion for public health prompted Adobe to invite him into its Lighthouse Program. Matt was an early champion for Adobe Experience Cloud within his organization and showed stakeholders how a modern, unified experience platform could capitalize on their massive customer base and first party data to derive behavioral insights and deliver omnichannel, personalized experiences and offers in real time — experiences that boosted the net promoter score by more than 40 percent versus the previous Walgreens loyalty program and powered 41 percent growth in myWalgreens membership in just one quarter.

Experience Maker Team of the Year: Bose

Creating an in-house augmented reality (AR) experience that isn’t just a first for a company but for an entire industry is a monumental undertaking. It required Bose experts across teams that previously hadn’t worked together to collaborate for the first time to build Bose Audio Sunglasses, a unique virtual try-on (VTO) experience. The diverse teams formed new working relationships between front-end development, AR development, system architecture, and digital marketing. Integrating the VTO experience into Adobe Experience Cloud meant tapping into the insights of Adobe subject matter experts in the Bose/Adobe Center of Excellence. These first-time collaborators achieved big results, increasing customer engagement on audio sunglasses product pages by 11 percent and seeing conversion among customers who engage with this experience jump by 52 percent.

Experience Maker of the Year: Enrique Negrete, Senior Director Direct to Consumer Services LATAM, Coca-Cola (nominated by Bounteous)

During the COVID-19 lockdown, Mexican consumers needed ways to get life-sustaining products, like milk and bottled drinking water, without leaving their homes. Under the leadership of Enrique Negrete, Coca-Cola worked with partner Bounteous to launch a consumer-facing website built on Adobe Commerce and Adobe Experience Platform. The website did more than let customers purchase Coca-Cola products 24/7, it helped Mexican customers get essential goods faster through recurring subscriptions, details about purchases from product listing pages, referral programs, and conventional routing, along with delivery estimates. Customers valued this kind of continuity in uncertain times, and the site garnered six million sessions in a year. The new e-commerce experience supported Mexicans during the COVID-19 crisis, and it has the power to be a crucial resource for people for years to come.

APAC

Experience Maker Executive of the Year: Thiagaraja Manikandan, President and CIO, OLAM

As President and CIO of OLAM, a leading food and agri-business supplying food ingredients, feed, and fiber to global businesses and small farmers alike, Thiagaraja “Mani” Manikandan is bringing new digital innovations to one of the world’s oldest industries: agriculture. Mani helped take global agriculture and food systems out of brick-and-mortar centers to AtSource, a revolutionary sustainability insights platform that uses Adobe Experience Cloud to triple farmer registrations. He has led a multi-year, multi-phase approach to digital transformation that prioritizes customer experience while balancing the complexities of dealing with a large multinational supply chain, several adjacent businesses, and buying groups. After establishing a Center of Excellence for Adobe Commerce, Mani created the first experience-driven B2C commerce portal in APAC, growing commerce revenue 350 percent in three years. The portal aims to reach $1 billion in sales by 2022. The farmers that OLAM serves are clearly benefitting from these new experiences: more than 50 percent of customers made repeat orders.

Experience Maker Team of the Year: Tabcorp

Australian horseracing fans have trusted Tabcorp, one of Australia’s leading gambling companies, to make it easier to place bets on the sport they love. When Tabcorp underwent a merger with Tatts Group, it needed to maintain fan enthusiasm through digital channels and its over 4,000 in-person venues. Tabcorp assembled a cross-functional team of experts in content delivery, data science, campaign management, business analysis, and digital marketing to integrate two customer databases on two CRM systems on a platform focused fully on fans. With Adobe Experience Cloud, the team created a unique, fun digital campaign that recognizes whenever a customer walks into a geofence at a venue and triggers a real-time message encouraging them to place a bet via the app. The team’s work carried Tabcorp over the finish line of delivering 1.1 million personalized fan engagements. The personalization has already led to 15 percent year-over-year customer growth through digital with more than 75 percent customer retention.

Experience Maker of the Year: Ingrid Ferreira, Senior Manager Digital Analytics & Search, AMP

Ingrid Ferreira has helped 170-year-old financial services company AMP move into the modern age. A champion for data-based decision making, she trained a diverse group of internal AMP stakeholders in how to use Adobe Experience Cloud applications including Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target to create rich, customized customer journeys across the often-fraught process of applying for home loans, achieving impressive results for customers and AMP.

EMEA

Experience Maker Executive of the Year: Gemma Sherrington, Executive Director of Fundraising & Marketing, Save the Children UK

Making the world a better place for children requires the generosity and support of donors. Fortunately, Save the Children Executive Director of Fundraising and Marketing, Gemma Sherrington, is leading the charge to deliver customer-centric experiences that inspire donor support. Under Gemma’s leadership, the non-profit uses Adobe Experience Cloud to learn more about donors and reach them with experiences that will open their hearts and wallets. Gemma’s advocacy for Adobe Experience Cloud has made it easier for the organization to raise funds in emergencies. Donors can contribute quickly via PayPal and Apple Pay. As Save the Children experimented with Experience Cloud applications, it increased revenue per view by 83 percent and donation conversion by 85 percent. Crucially, it enhanced the number of recurring donors by 58 percent.

Experience Maker Team of the Year: MANN + HUMMEL (nominated by Merkle)

MANN+HUMMEL is a global leader in filtration technology, with a broad range of equipment manufacturers and aftermarket customers in the automotive, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and semiconductor industries, as well as municipalities. The company has several business units serving customers, and the units create their own digital content tailored to their customer base. The MANN+HUMMEL digital team was tasked with creating web templates and online tools that business units could use to achieve greater consistency across the entire brand, while providing the level of customization each group requires. Through Adobe Experience Cloud, the team could incorporate input from all stakeholders not only to standardize digital experiences, but to make them more relevant for customers. Now, business units have the flexibility to build their own sites and experiences while benefitting from a set of standard and customizable web templates and other online tools. Thanks to the digital team’s hard work, the company went live with a new white-label approach for websites in just four months.

Experience Maker of the Year: Klaus Fiedel, Head of IT, Investitionsbank Berlin (nominated by eggs unimedia GmbH)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB) became a lifeline for Berliners who needed pandemic aid. Klaus Fiedel knew that for workers who lost their jobs or experienced temporary layoffs receiving a payment as quickly as possible was essential. He rolled up his sleeves and in less than a week, created a taskforce to process 246,000 applications using Adobe Experience Manager Forms, which resulted in helping over 650,000 people. With Adobe Experience Manager Forms, the site processed claims faster and avoided time-consuming, error-prone manual processes. Under his leadership, IBB ultimately disbursed about €2.69 billion in aid, giving Berliners some peace of mind in uncertain times.

Japan

Experience Maker Executive of the Year: Hiroko Murata, Manager DX Design Division, KDDI CORPORATION

Hiroko Murata is an evangelist for providing better, more relevant experiences to customers of the Japanese telecommunications company KDDI CORPORATION. She turned to Adobe Campaign as a foundation for marketing automation that integrates customers’ online habits across the web and apps with data about their offline interactions with stores and call centers. It paints the whole picture of a customer, across the 40 million customers that KDDI CORPORATION serves. Expanding its cross-selling and up-selling campaigns raised the profile of the company’s unique “life design” services, such as financial and video services, with a 5x increase in campaign conversion rate.

Experience Maker Team of the Year: CASIO COMPUTER CO., LTD.

The G-SHOCK series released by Casio are the most durable digital and analog watches in the industry. These watches are enjoyed by customers all over the world. The company’s digital experience team performed a magic act: compressing the painstaking work of overhauling the company website, a process that could have taken many years, into just 10 months. They did it by working with Adobe Experience Cloud applications, including Adobe Analytics, Adobe Commerce Cloud, Adobe Experience Manager, and Adobe Target to completely reimagine the site, switching from a product catalog-centric approach to a customer-centric approach based on input from frontline service staff to better address the questions and challenges any customer might face. Casio has also transformed its organizations to best suit digital marketing activities for all customers and is updating websites in dozens of countries.

Experience Maker of the Year: Yuto Ueda, Senior Associate Director, Mizuho Bank, Ltd.

Like financial institutions worldwide, Japanese financial companies can take a more conservative approach to business. But Yuto Ueda found a way to make even the most standardized procedure, like a loan application, technically innovative and much easier for customers. Using Adobe Marketo Engage, he created a highly personalized email and web campaign that guides customers step-by-step through the lengthy loan application process. The system was so sophisticated, it could even identify when a customer had an incorrect email address to avoid customer drop off and helped increase applications. This success sets the stage for a new era of personalized customer experiences supported by Adobe Marketo Engage.

Congratulations to our winners and thank you to all Adobe Experience Cloud customers around the globe who shared their stories and successes with us this year. We’re inspired by you and honored to spotlight the unique, innovative ways you are transforming digital experiences worldwide.