Have you ever dialed into a meeting and thought to yourself, “What the heck are these people talking about?” You know your business. You know your objectives. You know marketing. So why do you sometimes feel like your advertising agency speaks a different language?

While consumers are busy having hot girl/guy summers, brands are already in the thick of holiday planning because it takes time to get the strategy correct. But now isn’t the time to use previous years as a rigid model. Flexibility and agility are two important traits for your team to possess – especially with holiday content – so your messaging, approach, and priorities can pivot as rapidly as consumer behaviors evolve.

Why content is important

Merkle’s recently released Q3 2022 Performance Media Report surveyed marketers to understand trends across the industry. It uncovered several key trends that spanned media channels, as well as the latest on privacy and inflation. One of the report’s findings highlighted the importance of areas outside of traditional media channels to today’s marketing organizations. Let’s dig more into what the data showed and some of the reasons behind this shift.

While companies continue to win with customer experience, not every platform or piece of technology is created equal when it comes to meeting consumers in the context of their commerce journey. Even the best technology for your company won’t get you there right out of the box. Critical roadblocks to success include a siloed approach to commerce environments and capabilities, as well as complacency toward customer experience management (CXM) best practices.

Salesforce Connections 2022 – the first in-person CNX in three years – was one for the books. From listening to visionary speakers to learning about what’s next for digital experience and commerce from Trailblazers, we hope you walked away with inspiration to take to your team.

With more than 50 of our own Salesforce experts in attendance at the event, we saw three major themes we want to share.

Merkle’s recently published whitepaper, Setting the Analytics Stage for Tomorrow’s Consumer, laid out the six key analytics pillars needed to serve shoppers of the future. How does that approach need to change when your organization’s consumer is a B2B buyer? Which tenets hold true, and which ones need adjusting?

We have all seen the news lately about the recent surge in US inflation and the lingering supply chain issues related to COVID-19. It is easy to get caught up in the bad news and get a feeling of helplessness, unable to control this inflationary pressure.

Given today’s digital landscape, consumers have come to expect a more immersive experience when it comes to the content they consume. Whether on social media, at the gym, or even watching television, consumers have grown so accustomed to personalization that the concept of choice has become table stakes for brands when trying to acquire and retain consumers.

Digital sellers and shoppers have a good idea of what to expect on Amazon Prime Day, as this year marks the 8th annual Prime Day in the US. Amazon continues to be tight-lipped on when in July Prime Day will be, though they started preparatory conversations with partners as early as March.

Over the past several years, the Adobe Product Team has been working rigorously to develop Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) as the solution to enable a more unified implementation engine for Experience Cloud customers. Complexities with implementing multiple Adobe experience technologies on a website have been a constant challenge for new and existing clients.