Content management systems are a critical component of the modern marketing stack but aren’t the only puzzle piece. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a comprehensive content management solution for building websites, mobile apps, and forms.

By integrating AEM with other marketing tools, enterprises can streamline workflows, enhance content delivery, and improve overall digital marketing effectiveness by building a robust ecosystem that spans the entire marketing lifecycle.

In this article, we’ll explain the right approach to accomplish this, the critical tools to include, and the benefits of doing so.

The Need For a Robust Adobe Ecosystem

According to a survey of Marketing Ops professionals, the most important criterion for 80% of organizations when evaluating new marketing software is the ability to integrate with new and existing technologies.

Enterprises must have tools that can successfully integrate with each other because, in the current business environment, having a robust marketing ecosystem is essential, both for the benefits that having one can bring and the drawbacks of not having one.

Why Enterprises Build a Marketing Ecosystem

Marketing ecosystems offer benefits to enterprises that build them correctly. However, for many businesses it is almost like a necessity.

Orchestrating Digital Experiences: Managing digital experiences requires more than just content and a CMS. Analytics to measure the impact of content on the customer experience, a CRM to keep track of customer information, an eCommerce platform to handle digital store sales and product inventory levels, and the list goes on.

Adaptability & Flexibility: A marketing ecosystem offers businesses the flexibility to introduce new tools to help manage the digital experience, adapt to changing business conditions by introducing modern technologies, or adjust their approach to meet changing customer expectations based on new feedback. 

Omnichannel Customer Experiences: Today’s customers want businesses to provide them with experiences that span multiple channels and are consistent and seamless as they move from channel to channel. In order to provide these omnichannel customer experiences, businesses need the tools to map the entire customer journey.

What Happens When an Ecosystem is Fragmented

Enterprises also need to consider what happens if they don’t have a marketing ecosystem that is properly integrated.

Communication and Data Silos: Without proper integration between systems, teams frequently struggle with communication and data silos. Departments cannot properly share information resources and content, and other assets end up stuck. This creates further issues when businesses need those assets to enhance personalization and drive campaigns.

Inconsistent Messaging: Fragmented systems can result in inconsistent messaging as multiple departments develop campaigns independently, resulting in mixed or contradictory messaging. These inconsistencies can confuse customers, create more silos, and diminish the overall effectiveness of marketing efforts.

Disjointed Customer Experience: When customer interactions are not seamlessly coordinated across different touchpoints, it can result in a fragmented and frustrating experience for the customer. Without a properly integrated marketing ecosystem, the chances of this happening increase, which can see customers turn toward competitors instead.

Reduced Scalability: Scaling includes expanding to new channels, reaching broader audiences, and handling increased volumes of customer data. A fragmented ecosystem may not quickly adapt to such growth, leading to bottlenecks and missed opportunities.

Setting a Strong Foundation with AEM

A strong foundation is essential if organizations want to create a robust marketing ecosystem, and Adobe Experience Manager has the full-featured capabilities to provide that strong foundation.

Enterprise-grade Features: As an enterprise digital experience platform, AEM enables businesses to create and manage digital content across channels with a powerful CMS, DAM, and other capabilities. AEM also provides the workflows, internal processes, and security features that enterprises need daily.

Extensibility: AEM offers extensibility and customizability so that it can be integrated with both Adobe and non-Adobe products. Adobe provides these extensions but can also be created by developers using self-built customizations and applications.

Robust Ecosystem: The Adobe Experience Cloud offers an array of products that include Real-Time Customer Data Platform (CDP), Adobe Commerce, Analytics, and several other modern marketing tools. This collection of tools can be integrated with AEM to give enterprises an integrated ecosystem to manage the entire digital experience.

Building a Curated Ecosystem with Adobe Experience Manager Integrations

Enterprises ready to build their own curated ecosystem with AEM should follow the right process to select tools and then pick from the tools that will integrate the best.

Selecting the Right Tools

The first step to building a curated marketing ecosystem is to select the right tools. To do that, enterprises should follow these steps:

1. Define goals

The first step is defining the business goals before embarking on a mission to create a marketing ecosystem. Every technology investment decision should map back to the organization’s goals, whether that entails improving personalization for current customers or building a localization strategy for expansion into new continents.

2. Assess current tech stack

The state of your current technology stack will determine the tools that need to be included in the rest of the marketing ecosystem. Many organizations think they already have the right types of tools to build an ecosystem. However, in some cases, these tools can’t be properly integrated, which results in problematic silos and a poor user experience.

In other cases, their current tools are legacy systems that lack the right features to build a modern experience. Determining which tools can be salvaged and which must be retired will help businesses know where investments must be made.

3. Determine additional needs

After assessing the current tech stack and which existing tools should be replaced , the next step is identifying the additional tools that need to be integrated into the marketing ecosystem. The tools chosen will depend on the goals the business is striving to achieve.

Read More: Digital System Evolution: A Guide to Reinventing Your Digital Experience Ecosystem

Typical Tools for a Functional Marketing Ecosystem

• Customer Data Platform (CDP): A CDP consolidates customer data from various sources to provide a unified view of the customer and foster better targeting and engagement. Adobe Real-time CDP offers this capability.
• Experimentation: Experimentation tools like Adobe Target facilitate A/B testing and optimization, allowing marketers to refine their strategies and see what resonates with customers the most.
• Analytics: Analytics tools like Adobe Analytics track and analyze user behavior, providing valuable insights that empower marketers to measure performance and make data-driven decisions.
• Commerce: Adobe Commerce and similar eCommerce tools streamline are used to provide a seamless and secure shopping experience for customers.
• Marketing Automation: Marketing automation tools automate repetitive tasks, nurture leads, and personalize communications, enabling teams to deliver targeted and timely messages to the right audience. Adobe’s Marketo Engage offers these capabilities.
• Digital Asset Management (DAM): DAM solutions like AEM Assets organize and centralize digital assets, ensuring consistency in brand messaging, improving collaboration, and expediting content creation processes.
• Additional Tools: Several other tools might make up a marketing ecosystem depending on the enterprise and its particular needs, including translation tools and social media management solutions. AEM offers integrations with translation software such as RWS Worldserver, social media management tools, and other marketing solutions.

Benefits of AEM Integration with Multiple Marketing Tools

Organizations can achieve several benefits by integrating AEM with various marketing tools and building a connected ecosystem.

• Centralized Source of Truth: An integrated marketing stack consolidates data from various tools into a centralized platform, providing a single, reliable source of truth. This enhances data accuracy and ensures marketers can make decisions based on consistent and unified information.

• Streamlined Workflows: Enterprises can streamline workflows by integrating AEM with other tools to build a marketing stack. This can improve communication and collaboration between departments, reduce the formation of silos and enable marketing teams to improve time to market when creating campaigns.

• Customized Integrations: Through AEM’s robust APIs other legacy or internal tools can be integrated into the wider ecosystem using an existing connector or via custom development.

• Enhanced Personalization: Integration improves customer data aggregation across various touchpoints, giving marketers a comprehensive view of customer preferences and behaviors. This enables more accurate segmentation and targeting so that businesses can create the personalized experiences customers expect.

• Improved Content Delivery: AEM enables companies to deliver content headlessly. With the support of connected tools in the marketing ecosystem, businesses can ensure that the right content reaches customers on the right channels.

Creating an Integrated Tech Stack

An integrated technology stack with Adobe Experience Manager at the center of it can help enterprises build an omnichannel experience for customers and allow them to adapt to new conditions if required. To create such an experience, enterprises need the proper support.

Content Bloom is an enterprise digital consultancy and Adobe Experience Manager partner. We offer content management and digital marketing expertise. We can support businesses in building a marketing ecosystem, from creating the right digital strategy to selecting the tools to pair with AEM.

Our services encompass implementation, integration, AEM training, hosting, installations, upgrades, and continuous business support, ensuring our customers derive optimal value from their investment.

Improving Engagement with a Modern Marketing Ecosystem

A Texas-based energy retailer had been struggling with the pitfalls of a 10-year-old CMS implementation, including inflexible templating, poor SEO performance, and a poor user experience on mobile devices.

The company reached out to Content Bloom for assistance with solving this challenge. Content Bloom assisted by helping them to migrate their content to a new CMS, Adobe Experience Manager.

We also facilitated integration with Adobe Target and Analytics, providing the energy retailer with a robust marketing ecosystem that allows them to deliver personalized experiences to their customers. This has resulted in 2.6x more traffic capacity and a 118% increase in engagement.

Learn more about how Content Bloom drove these results by reading our case study, or contact us for assistance if you’re ready to start building your own integrated marketing ecosystem.