With enhanced Adobe Digital Marketing Suite integrations, the latest release of Adobe Scene7 lends way to a sigh of relief, allowing businesses to easily scale and deliver more relevant and personalized experiences to consumers. As an integral part of Adobe’s Web Experience Management solution, digital marketers can add Scene7 marketing banners into page templates through a simple drag-and-drop configuration. Leveraging comprehensive visitor data from Adobe Test&Target and Adobe CQ, Scene7 will dynamically assemble the right content combination for the visitor on demand.

Additionally, marketers and merchandisers can deliver relevant banners within the site search experience. The new integrated workflow with Adobe Search&Promote streamlines dynamic content assembly based on promotional business rules.  You now have a quick and easy way to cus­tomize and deliver the most relevant marketing offers on search and navigation pages in real time.

Lastly, take advantage of the new HTML5 and Flash viewers, which expand your ability to provide unique, differentiated rich experiences across all channels. These include auto-play image slide shows; auto-spin capabilities; and embedded video content in interactive catalogs and brochures. And of course, we’ll give you that smart URL to deliver the right content, in the right viewing format for the screen or device.

This release also offers enhanced video streaming for desktop and Android, and enhanced internationalization support. Click here for complete details of the latest Adobe Scene7 release.

Embed video in your online catalog seamlessly with the latest Scene7 release

Are you curious about where your peers are investing their digital marketing dollars to grow their businesses?

The answers are here! In our 5th annual quantitative, global survey: the Adobe Scene7 2011 Survey: Digital Marketing in the Next Decade. The survey reveals what businesses worldwide have identified as the most deployed, most popular and most effective online tactics across seven categories:

• Rich media/merchandising features
• Social media-based features
• Mobile features
• Mobile commerce visualization features
• Personalization features
• Digital advertising executions
• Analytics

This year’s survey was expanded and for the first time measured deployment, planned deployment and effectiveness of analytics tools, mobile commerce visualization features and digital advertising. For 2011, social media executions along with mobile initiatives and rich media tactics are among the top planned with more than 25 percent of respondents planning to deploy features in these categories.

Digital marketers validated an ever-growing focus to further tap social media with an emphasis on social media analytics, which respondents cited as the top planned tactic (21 percent) and the third most deployed execution in the analytics category. Also, one out of three of the top planned initiatives and deployed executions are social-media based:

• Building branded social community pages – planned: 25 percent; deployed: 40 percent
• Advertising on social networking sites – planned: 25 percent; deployed: 22 percent

After years of hype and exploration, mobile is becoming a very viable commerce channel as mobile commerce enablement showed the highest year-over-year change in effectiveness (+124 percent) and was one of the top five tactics with the highest year-over-year increase in deployment (+13 percent).  And, for businesses with more than $100 million in annual revenue, four out of the six most effective features were in the mobile category:

• Mobile advertising, promotions and bar-coded coupons to drive in-store or Web purchases (42 percent)
• Mobile product comparisons (41 percent)
• Address book integration for mobile (40 percent)
• Check inventory status on mobile devices, in-store or Web (40 percent)

In addition to social media and mobile initiatives, interactive catalogs stand out as a key tactic in 2011. They were cited as the overall top planned tactic across all categories (27 percent) as well as the top planned for mobile commerce visualization (19 percent), and were ranked as the fourth most effective tactic overall.

How do these strategies line up with your 2011 initiatives?

Scene7 eCatalogs are now optimized for rich viewing experiences across multiple screens, allowing companies to quickly and easily transform print catalogs into dynamic and interactive experiences that reach shoppers on-the-go. Companies already publishing online catalogs with Scene7 can leverage existing eCatalog assets and seamlessly deliver them to iPads and iPhones. With support for multi-touch and gesture interactions, such as pinch to zoom in/out, double tap to zoom in/out, swipe to turn pages, mobile-optimized eCatalog viewers also respond to device rotation to swap between single page, portrait orientation and double page, landscape orientation spreads. These features enable businesses to scale existing rich, immersive experiences to more screens.

Some other highlights of this latest release include:

Tighter Adobe Test&Target integration to optimize relevance and conversion

Improved content synchronization capabilities between Adobe Scene7 and Adobe Test&Target™ enable customers of both solutions to quickly and easily transfer Scene7 images, templates, videos, recuts and Dynamic Banner assets to Test&Target to perform tests and reveal the most compelling and relevant content and executions for conversion lift.

Deeper Creative Suite 5 integration to further streamline desktop-to-Web workflows

A new Scene7 Creative Suite Extension for Flash Professional allows upload, preview and customization of Flash projects to Scene7 directly within Flash Professional, enabling a seamless, efficient workflow for creating Scene7 Dynamic Banners. The new "publish" capability in Scene7 Creative Suite Extension further enables users to publish assets, already uploaded to Scene7, to live image servers directly from within the Creative Suite 5 application.

With this tighter integration, companies can continually optimize their digital experiences in real-time without going back to the desktop to build new variations of creative, enabling customers to extend testing by eliminating high production time and costs.

Open Viewer Platform for Flash SDK to create innovative customer experiences with custom viewers

Companies can achieve flexibility and creativity to extensively customize Scene7 Flash viewers and uniquely brand viewer look-and-feel and interactivity with a new Flash component-based framework. Additionally, reusable performance-optimized components lower the overall cost of viewer development and accelerate custom development.

Video search engine optimization and libraries to maximize discoverability

To improve video discoverability, Scene7 now automatically generates and updates a sitemap/mRSS of the videos for submission to search engines, ensuring that companies are able to maximize the ROI on their video investments. Additionally, companies can create video libraries that consolidate videos in one central location within their site or as a separate microsite, establishing a destination where consumers can go to find valuable video searchable by title, description, keywords, category and related videos.

Fresh off the presses is our latest whitepaper, Top 10 Tips for Optimizing ROI with Dynamic Content, that identifies 10 key strategies and tactics to help you build rich experiences that yield results. From to scaling rich media through automation rather than manual production to socializing your rich media to engage fans, the tips in this guide can help you maximize results across multiples channels.

Get your copy today and let us know what tips you will try first.

This year, U.S. mobile commerce revenues are expected to hit $5.3 billion, up 83% from a year ago, according to Barclays Capital. To help you capitalize on this burgeoning channel, we are pleased to deliver the Adobe Scene7 Mobile Commerce Survey: Mobile Shopper Insights for 2011. This report is the second installment based on key findings from our survey of 1,200 consumers and takes a deep dive into mobile commerce from the shoppers’ perspective.

Get your copy to gain actionable insights on mobile shopping behavior and preferences, including:

• Who are mobile shoppers?
• What are they buying?
• How much time and money are consumers spending on mobile shopping?
• What features and tools are most important for them to make a mobile purchase?

P.S. – In case you missed the initial report, Adobe Mobile Experience Survey: What Users Want from Media, Finance, Travel & Shopping, that measured mobile user characteristics, behavior, preferences, satisfaction levels and other experiential factors across four key consumer categories: 1) Consumer Products/Shopping; 2) Financial Services; 3) Media & Entertainment; 4) Travel; click here for your copy.

Now, to help you get the most out of online video, we recently published a guide entitled Nine Easy Steps to Online Video Success. This paper contains best practices to help you realize rapid ROI, including how to streamline production and choosing the right products to spotlight.

The guide is written for merchants in any stage of video deployment. Whether you’re just getting started in video or have already deployed, we think you will find some useful tips here. Get your copy today and let us know what you think.

For the last 4 years, our annual customer experience quantitative survey has correctly anticipated where the online marketing and commerce trends are headed. This year, expect no less. In fact, with more tools and tactics in social media and mobile that online marketers can tap, next year is shaping up to be a very exciting year where we will see a lot of clever and innovative campaigns and user experiences.

So, take the Adobe Scene7 2011 Survey: Customer Experience in the Next Digital Decade and benchmark yourself against your peers and find out which tactics are in next year’s toolbox for driving profitable shopping experiences and building loyalty.

By completing this survey by December 17^th, you will be automatically registered to receive the results. All responses are confidential.

Last year, our survey, Online Customer Experience in the New Decade, drew nearly 550 responses from retailers, agencies, media, manufacturers, and high-tech companies worldwide. A sample of our findings:

• 75% of respondents said they were planning customer experience projects in 2010
• More than one-third of respondents cited multi-media viewing (combinations of videos, zoom imagery, or animations) as the most effective tactic across all features
• Mobile and personalization features were the least deployed but had the highest planned growth rates
• Personalization features ranked the highest in conversion impact

Don’t miss the chance to contribute to next year’s results. Please complete the survey by December 17^th!

Thanks in advance and happy holidays!

Now, we are pleased to present our first mobile consumer study, a comprehensive, first-of-its kind quantitative study that measures mobile user characteristics, behavior, preferences, satisfaction levels and other experiential factors across four key consumer categories: 1) Consumer Products/Shopping; 2) Financial Services; 3) Media & Entertainment; 4) Travel.

As the mobile user experience improves amid advances in wireless devices, growing numbers of users are migrating to the mobile channel to do everything from reading news to playing games to shopping. As a result, the mobile channel is becoming increasingly important as a key customer touchpoint.

The survey confirms some generally accepted thesis about mobile, including that most consumers prefer ad-supported mobile content to paid subscriptions (but that’s an easy extrapolation from our PC Internet experience).  But the survey does reveal some surprises, one being that users are not showing a preference for apps over the browser experience in most areas, despite the hype over apps and their reputation for delivering rich experiences. Intrigued? There are a lot more golden nuggets in this survey, including:

• When do users actually prefer an app experience over a browser experience?

• What are mobile consumers buying and spending?

• What’s the profile of an active mobile consumer by age, gender & device?

• Where are they spending their time? Which industry draws the most satisfied users?

Ultimately, we commissioned the survey with an eye to helping you gain actionable insights on how to improve the mobile user experience, as this channel continues to gain momentum in our multi-screen world. Let us know what you think.

Click here for your copy of Adobe Mobile Experience Survey: What Users Want from Media, Finance, Travel & Shopping!

P.S Keep checking this space, as we will be publishing a supplementary report on mobile shopping based on additional detailed findings derived from this study.

As your customers shop in more channels across more devices, you need to be where they are—especially over the upcoming holiday shopping season. As you devise your game-plan for the holidays, here are some rich media tips to rev up your holiday planning.

1. Optimize your mobile site. The game-changer this holiday season is mobile. Shoppers will be using their cell phones to research, comparison-shop and browse as they navigate between the online and offline experiences. Thus, you need to engage your customers in mobile, so be sure your imagery is optimized for the small screen.

Rich, full-screen image zoom and videos are the most effective ways to browse or display products in mobile, according to a majority of the respondents in our mobile survey published in July.

2. Socialize your rich media. Social media is the other channel set to make waves this holiday season. Last year, comScore found 27% of US shoppers said social media has influenced their purchases, and this year that number should rise. Add depth and richness to your social media initiatives. We’ve seen merchants like Soft Surroundings post their online catalogue on Facebook to great effect; make your dynamic viewer sets embeddable in blogs to make your product pages go viral. Check out how Niche Modern did it.

3. Cover all the rich media bases on your PC commerce site. From full-screen imagery to zoom capabilities, dynamic rich media can deliver an all-around great online shopping experience. Offer great visualization tools from start to finish, beginning from the home page, to search-and-filtering and through checkout to support. Don’t forget to post your online catalog to help those in search of ideas. These shoppers love the product bundles or entire wardrobe ensembles to spark gift ideas. Beyond that, your site’s dynamic viewing capabilities should enhance and deepen the shoppers’ understanding of the product.

On category pages, layer on more interactive visual information, such as click-views, rollover alternative views and colorization. The key is to give shoppers as much product information as possible to give them the confidence to purchase. If they can examine the details of the bracelet, they will appreciate and understand the product craftsmanship and intricacies that much more. The more visual and textual information you can provide, the more you can also help set expectations, resulting in greater satisfaction and lower return rates. Check out our customer experience survey to learn which rich media and merchandising tactics has delivered for online retailers.

4. Enrich your online ad campaigns. Today, the challenge for marketers is to break through the noise and clutter with engaging and relevant offers and experiences so they can convert their audience into buyers. One way to do this is to increase the relevance of your online ads and promotions with a customized, dynamic experience. From animated banners to video ads, connect with your audience using rich media, and don’t forget to tie your offers to CRM to deliver the relevant content to the right audience at the right time. Personalizing ads with relevant information related to geography or weather can also score big points

5. Use videos to convert. Shoppers love online videos, and their popularity continues to grow. That’s good news for retailers because video’s persuasive powers are indisputable—conversion improvements can be as high as 140% after shoppers view a product video, according to data from our customers. Moreover, video can help to close the gap between the touch-and-feel store experience and the web. So, let online videos tell your product stories: Use them for product reviews, demonstrations and merchandising. Get our eVideo paper to learn more best practices.

6. Invite user generated content. The voice of real customers lends credibility and authenticity to your brand like nothing else. With 64% of social media users somewhat or completely trusting blog posts by people they know, compared to 36% for posts by a brand, the path to building trust in your brand should involve actual customers. So, invite your customers to share their experiences with videos or pictures.

7. Let shoppers have fun creating a one-of-a-kind gift. One of the hottest trends in retail continues to be the growing trend of co-creation or mass customization—letting customers design and customize their consumables using online product configurators. These intuitive visualization tools guide users through each design decision, allowing shoppers to see what they’re getting before the product is made. They create a memorable experience for the buyer and one-of-a-kind gifts for the receiver. To learn more about product configurators, download our paper.

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[1] Invoke Solutions study, as cited by eMarketer, July 29, 2010

Did you know Scene7's dynamic sizing capabilities allow you to serve rich experiences across key digital channels, from web to email to mobile—all using a single set of imagery?

This means even the smallest brands can put themselves on equal footing with their larger competitors and reduce their time to market, whether kicking off an email campaign, or launching a downloadable mobile app. The beauty of dynamic sizing is that with one high-resolution image source, you can create all the derivatives for every need across your digital portfolio. By making a simple change to the image source URL call, you can instantly optimize the image for the digital media you’re working with.

K2 Sports, the ski manufacturer, for instance, uses Scene7 to serve high-impact imagery on its website. To ramp up its mobile presence quickly, it dynamically re-sized its master source images for optimal display and faster loading on the small screen.

Using dynamic rendering capabilities, you effectively eliminate the incremental image production costs associated with launching new digital properties or campaigns. The other benefit of rendering single source image is brand consistency; by using only one master image, there are fewer quality control issues to contend with.

To learn what your peers are planning and doing in mobile, we invite you to download our newest survey: Adobe Scene7 2010 Mobile Commerce Survey: Are You Dialed In?

And don’t forget to tell us how you’re using Scene7's dynamic sizing to get your digital initiatives off the ground quickly!