GenAI’s new capabilities for marketers 

Adobe and Microsoft announced plans to integrate Adobe Experience Cloud workflows and insights into Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 at Adobe Summit 2024, the world’s largest digital experience conference. This integration will assist marketers in breaking down application and data silos and managing daily workflows more efficiently. These new integrated capabilities will help marketers work with tools like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Word to create creative briefs, create content, manage content approvals, deliver experiences, and much more. 

As the marketing landscape evolves, incorporating generative AI capabilities into existing marketing tools will become increasingly important for businesses seeking to remain competitive and provide personalised customer experiences.

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Adobe has launched Adobe GenStudio, a new Gen AI-first offering that enables marketing teams to quickly plan, create, manage, activate, and measure on-brand content. In addition, the company added new features to its existing family of generative AI models, Adobe Firefly, and introduced Journey Optimizer for improved customer engagement, among other innovations. 

The new tools will help Adobe increase the adoption of its experience cloud business, which is a platform for delivering, measuring, and personalising customer experiences, and is used by 11,000 customers globally across industries, with support from 4,500 global ecosystem members.

Adobe also announced a partnership with Microsoft at Adobe Summit 2024, bringing Adobe Experience Cloud workflows and insights to Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 applications. The collaboration aims to streamline marketers’ tasks by breaking down application and data silos. The integration will deliver marketing insights and workflows from Adobe Experience Cloud applications and Microsoft Dynamics 365 directly to Microsoft Copilot. 

The partnership will help marketers with their daily activities in tools like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Word, facilitating tasks like creative brief development, content creation, content approvals, experience delivery, and more. 

According to Amit Ahuja, senior vice president, Digital Experience Business, Adobe, “The demand for personalised content across social media, mobile, and other fast-moving channels has been exploding, pushing marketers to drive greater efficiency and productivity in their everyday work. Marketers spend a great deal of their day working across Adobe and Microsoft applications, and the partnership provides a unique offering for marketing teams, streamlining daily tasks across planning, collaboration, and campaign execution.” 

“Microsoft and Adobe share a common goal of empowering marketers to focus on the work that’s most important – creating impactful campaigns and enhancing customer experiences. By integrating contextual marketing insights from Adobe Experience Cloud applications and Dynamics 365 within the flow of work through Copilot for Microsoft 365, we deliver on our shared goal while helping marketers streamline their efforts, break down barriers, and deliver exceptional results,” says Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, AI at Work, Microsoft. 

The marketing discipline includes specialised roles that require a variety of tools for designing brand content, managing campaigns, tracking audience insights, and reporting outcomes. Marketers frequently face challenges while working in silos and across multiple applications, which can have an impact on productivity. A recent Microsoft survey found that 43% of professionals in marketing and communications felt that switching between digital applications hindered their ability to be creative.

Addressing the needs of marketers

The first set of capabilities will be centred around meeting the needs of marketers, who frequently manage campaign goals, status, and actions while working with multiple teams both internally and externally. The capabilities will address scenarios, including: 

• Strategic insights into the flow of work: The Copilot for Microsoft 365 experience, which is enriched with relevant campaign insights from Adobe Experience Cloud applications such as Adobe Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Workfront and integrated with Dynamics 365, enables marketers to get quick insights and updates in Outlook, Teams, and Word. Marketers can ask questions to learn about the status of a marketing project, the effectiveness of a campaign, outstanding approvals and actions to take, and the audience and KPIs defined in the most recent campaign brief.
  
  
• Create campaign briefs, presentations, website updates, and emails with relevant context: Marketers can easily become data-driven without having to consult multiple tools or people for information. Marketing insights from Adobe and Dynamics 365 will be available in Copilot for Microsoft 365, allowing you to create briefs, presentations for executive reviews, reports, and updates. Marketers can use Adobe Experience Manager Sites capabilities integrated into Copilot for Microsoft 365 to create imagery with Adobe Firefly generative AI or copy for marketing experiences directly in Word, then publish to channels such as web and mobile.
  
  
• Keep projects moving with in-context notifications and summaries: Marketers frequently have to navigate multiple applications, emails, and chats to gather project status information, ranging from feedback and approvals to work item changes or due dates. With the help of Adobe Workfront, these integrated features can be used across various apps to generate notifications based on pertinent marketing data, allowing users to stay up-to-date on changes and necessary actions.

The way ahead

The partnership between Adobe and Microsoft represents a significant step forward in the integration of generative AI across various product portfolios, signalling Adobe’s aggressive push to expand the audience for its AI offerings. This collaboration is expected to help marketers work more smoothly by directly integrating marketing insights and workflows from Adobe and Microsoft applications into Microsoft’s Copilot AI for Microsoft 365.

As the marketing landscape continues to evolve, the integration of generative AI capabilities into existing marketing tools is likely to become increasingly important for businesses looking to stay competitive and deliver personalised experiences to their customers.