Adobe Experience Platform and Real-Time CDP Deep Dive

What is Adobe Experience Platform?

Adobe Experience Platform is the foundation upon which the future of Adobe Experience Cloud is built. Fundamentally, the technology is designed to ingest customer data and content from a variety of sources, and both standardize and centralize it to enable real-time personalized, omni-channel experiences.

Key Capabilities:

1. Real-Time Data Collection – Seamlessly gathers and standardizes data across all channels, keeping information up-to-date while reducing reliance on third-party cookies.
2. Centralized Data Management – Ingest, organize, and store customer data for both real-time and batch processes, making it more actionable for insights and engagement.
3. Data Unification – Integrates data from multiple sources, facilitating a streamlined approach to gathering and utilizing information which supports real-time analytics and decision-making. to create real-time customer profiles, enabling personalized experiences and precise audience segmentation.
4. Privacy & Compliance – Built-in governance features ensure data is used responsibly, supporting privacy regulations and customer consent preferences.
5. AI-Driven Insights – Leverage Adobe Sensei to analyze and predict customer behavior, optimize experiences, and drive smarter decision-making.
6. Extensibility – Open architecture and APIs allow for easy connection to existing systems, enabling custom solutions and enhancing platform capabilities.

What is Adobe Real-Time CDP?

Adobe Real-Time CDP is an application built natively on Adobe Experience Platform which allows for the unification of both known and anonymous customer data from multiple enterprise level sources. This integration of data sources helps create high quality, unified real-time customer profiles and enables increased personalization.

Key Capabilities:

1. Unified Customer Profiles – Combines first- and third-party data into comprehensive profiles for both individuals and accounts, enabling real-time precise audience targeting and personalized engagement.
2. Real-Time Profile Enrichment – Continuously updates profiles with both known and anonymous data, allowing for immediate personalization and insights based on live interactions.
3. Identity Resolution – Manages and reconciles multiple customer identifiers to maintain accurate, unified profiles for seamless cross-channel engagement.
4. Predictive Analytics – Uses AI to analyze customer experience data and forecast behaviors like churn and conversion, helping marketers anticipate customer needs and tailor messaging accordingly.
5. Advanced Segmentation – Leverages multi-source data to enrich profiles and build highly targeted and actionable audiences, with an intuitive UI for easy segmentation.
6. Real-Time Omni-Channel Personalization – Activates real-time insights across email, SMS, push notifications, and more to engage the right customers at the right time on the right platform.
7. Adobe Experience Cloud Integrations – Adobe Journey Optimizer and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics are built natively on Adobe Experience Platform. Adobe Campaign and Adobe Target are additional tools that are seamlessly integrated for enhanced campaign orchestration, precise segmentation, and analytics.

Use Case Examples enabled by Adobe Experience Platform and Real-Time CDP

1. New Customer Acquisition

• • Example: A fashion retailer combines purchase data with third-party insights to create high-value shopper segments. Using look-alike audiences such as those who have spent $500 or more over the past 6 months, they run targeted social and display ads with personalized product recommendations based on seasonally trending styles.

2. Intelligent Re-Engagement

• • Abandoned Cart & Browse
    • Example: A travel site identifies customers who browsed flights to Hawaii but didn’t book or those that added those same flights to their cart but didn’t complete the purchase. Adobe Experience Platform records these behaviours and places them into a “high-intent traveler segment” and retargets them with ads offering exclusive early-bird discounts or price alerts.
  • Order Confirmation & Post-Purchase Engagement
    • Example: A customer orders a hydrating serum from an online beauty retailer. Adobe Experience Platform identifies the customer’s profile based on past behaviors (e.g., skin type, past purchases) and sends personalized messages such as product pairings or skincare tutorials.

3. Onsite Personalization

• • Example: A streaming service leverages Adobe Experience Platform and Real-Time CDP to analyze viewing history and real-time browsing behavior (e.g. adding shows to watchlists, repeatedly clicking on movie trailers) to recommend consistent content across devices.

4. Offsite Retargeting of Unauthenticated Visitors

• • Example: A prospective student visits a university’s website to browse graduate programs but leaves without inquiring. Using identity resolution, Adobe Experience Platform tracks intent signals and Real-time CDP segments high-interest visitors for targeted social ads. If they return and inquire, this past behavior integrates with the known profile data for personalized follow-ups (e.g. emails from admissions, student and alumni testimonials).

5. Contextual Recognition

• • Behavioral Analysis for Content Recommendations
    • Example: A telecom company leverages Adobe Experience Platform to unify customer data, combining known and anonymous insights (e.g. age, purchase behavior, etc.). Adobe’s real-time CDP identifies high-intent behaviors, such as browsing but not purchasing mobile plans and enables personalized recommendations such as product bundles (e.g. discounts for mobile and internet).
  • Identification of Known vs Anonymous Visitor States
    • Example: A video game publisher uses browser data to track anonymous visitors, linking their activity to authenticated profiles (e.g., game progress, past purchases, account preferences). Real-time CDP builds audiences by defining customer interests (e.g. popular game titles). Where an anonymous visitor is only shown generic prompts for account sign-ups or game discounts, upon account creation users will receive personalized offerings such as specific game recommendations and special events fueled by their enriched profile.

6. Retention Campaigns

• • Example: A B2B wholesaler uses Adobe Experience Platform to analyze consolidated customer data (e.g., purchase history and order frequency) identifying at-risk segments such as customers inactive for 30-60 days. Real-time CDP enables automated campaigns, offering high-value audiences like those at risk of churn but with strong relationships (e.g. high LTV, frequent orders), discounts or VIP incentives to boost retention.

7. Customer Conversion Optimization

• • Example: A credit union compiles multiple data sources on Adobe Experience Platform to form a 360-degree view of prospects, such as website visitors interested in loans that are not yet members. Real-Time CDP uses demographic data, interests, and engagement patterns to track intent signals. For example, tracking Atlanta-based customers that repeatedly visit the websites mortgage pages. This data fuels personalized content, including email campaigns and retargeting ads such as offering free mortgage consultations.

8. Turning One-Time Customers into Lifetime Value

• • Data Consolidation
    • Example: A sports organization unifies one-time transactional data (event tickets, merchandise purchases) with social media engagement in Adobe Experience Platform and Real-Time CDP.
  • Driving Re-Engagement
    • Example: To optimize re-engagement, fans are grouped into segments such as “regular season attendee” or “online store purchaser” for personalized offers like early-bird ticket access or discounts at the team store.
  • Building Lifetime Loyalty
    • Example: Unified profiles enable tailored promotions and reminders; this drives lifetime value as they convert fans to loyalty programs through exclusive experiences such as VIP team meet-and-greets or community skates.

Distinguishing Adobe Real-Time CDP from Adobe Experience Platform

Adobe Experience Platform has the functionality to cater towards a much wider array of needs within a large organization, from data management to customer experiences. Whereas Real-Time CDP is a solution tailored towards marketers to help them deliver more personalized experiences by understanding their full customer profiles.

Adobe Experience Platform contains the underlying data infrastructure and has broader services that support multiple additional applications such as those natively built such as Adobe Journey Optimizer and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics or seamless integration with the rest of the Adobe Experience Cloud suite. However, Real-Time CDP provides immediate application to marketing activities through segmentation, real-time data unification and experience activation.

At M2, we help businesses leverage these powerful Adobe solutions to enhance their marketing efforts, improve customer experiences, and drive measurable results.

Ready to optimize your marketing strategy? Contact us today!