2022 will be a year of digital advancement

It took a pandemic to accelerate e-commerce and focus on digital, but now that customers are fluently shopping across multiple channels, expectations for personalised experiences online is growing.

According to Adobe, businesses must create change at every level of their organisation to compete in a digital-first economy. In Adobe’ Digital Trends 2022 report David Carrel, Vice President, Marketing, Adobe Experience Cloud, says “the pandemic raised the bar on the need for firms to be more agile, collaborative and speed up the time-to-value.”

“It prompted companies to turn to real-time data and insights to handle the unexpected. It also forced them to bridge functional silos – across sales, marketing, product, IT, finance and support – to understand how to run a digital business end to end. As customers f luidly switched between channels of interaction, the need for omnichannel personalisation, automation and scalability took on greater urgency.”

Change Accelerated

The way that customers work, communicate, socialise, shop and consume media has transformed. The relationships between customers, businesses, their employees, partners, suppliers and competitors will never be the same again. As customers’ experience expectations heighten and competition intensifies, it has never been more vital for organisations to build processes around customer needs.

Customer Experience Elevated

Contextual, relevant and helpful personalisation at scale is the imperative in 2022. But customer experiences can only be elevated from a foundation of customer trust and strong fundamentals, from integrated data architecture to insight-focused analytics to effective marketing automation.

Keep up the Pace

In PWC’s Global Consumer Insights Survey, 41 percent of respondents reported shopping daily or weekly via smartphone – compared with 39 percent six months ago – and just 12 percent five years ago. Mobile shopping behaviours are now closing in on in-store shopping – with just six percentage points separating the two. These shifts in consumer behaviour have had a cascade effect on B2B companies, accelerating existing trends in B2B ecommerce and self-service. The global B2B ecommerce market size is now forecast to grow 18.7 percent to 2028.

Demand for Experiences

The cautious reopening of the physical world makes it more challenging to interpret and handle customers' wants and needs. For their part, customers do not care about the logistical barriers between the physical and online worlds. World-class digital experiences in their everyday lives, from retail to entertainment, set the bar and relentlessly drive ever more exacting demands.

Meet Customers when and where they want

Businesses need to reconfigure collecting hybrid interaction data. Then connect the journey dots and create compelling, value-added experiences at each key stage in the path to purchase. What’s more, they need to do this while instilling trust. That means engaging in ways that feel contextual and intuitive rather than invasive or surveillant.

Article source: Adobe Digital Trends 2022 report