Utilizing unique personal and professional experiences, Atlanta-based Adobe marketing expert, Jay Jackson, excels in his role as the Director of Perficient’s Adobe Digital Marketing practice. Before Perficient, Jay held various customer marketing leadership roles. With over 20 years of experience aiding Fortune 500 companies to enhance customer satisfaction, drive organizational efficiencies and boost revenue, he understands what truly matters to customers.
In addition to his professional credentials, Jay is a passionate world traveler having visited over 107 countries, most recently Thailand. As Jay was interviewing to join Perficient five years ago, he was on a year-and-a-half sabbatical and had his initial interviews with Perficient in Ukraine and Prague. This personal sabbatical and all his traveling experiences allowed him to immerse himself in diverse cultures, languages and perspectives. His experiences have shaped him into a well-rounded leader who can sensitively and objectively adapt to the varying needs of a global workforce.
Like running with the bulls in Spain, or going on a safari in South Africa, Jay understands that every customer is unique, just like the unique experiences of each country he’s visited. Continue reading to learn how Jay leverages his experiences to grow the practice globally while viewing the implementation of Adobe products as a means to help customers achieve their goals.
Describe your role. What does a day in the life look like?
My role as director of the Adobe Digital Marketing practice is twofold. Half of my responsibilities surround sales support to exponentially grow the business. This involves anything from helping prospective customers understand the “Art of the Possible” from an Adobe solution standpoint to building long-lasting “Trusted Advisor” relationships. The other half is delivering value. It’s one thing to simply sell a solution, but it’s another to deliver it well. This includes project delivery management, solution expertise, sophisticated staffing models, resource hiring/enablement, continuous evaluation/client feedback loops, and ultimately consistent measurement of client objectives to ensure the return on their investment with Perficient.
What makes you passionate about digital marketing with Adobe?
Jay Jackson in Thailand
I have a background as a marketer, and I’m passionate about helping our customers make money. I’m not shy about that, it’s why we’re here. It excites me to help customers realize the value of their investments, but it goes beyond that. A lot goes into each client interaction, and each client has different needs and overall goals. Many of our customers are large, multi-national companies with shareholders who want to see a return on their investment, and strategizing how to successfully execute is another main driving factor behind my passion.
Share some insights about your upcoming speaking session at Adobe Summit, “Done in 60 Days: Driving B2B Personalization with Adobe Experience Platform.”
The days of customer experience being the sole domain of B2C experiences are gone. Relevant, personalized, and real-time experiences are required to drive B2B digital marketing objectives. I believe this session gives us a platform to showcase our expertise alongside a global leader in wireless technology as we discuss how we drove end-to-end implementation and bidirectional integration of the Adobe Experience Platform to achieve personalized experiences at scale.
The work we do and the impact we make, I believe, is why we were selected to present at Adobe’s conference. I look forward to showing the value Perficient brings, in a way that members of the audience recognize our extensive capabilities and expertise.
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In addition to the speaking sessions, what are you looking forward to at this year’s Adobe Summit?
I always look forward to interacting and connecting with existing and prospective customers. Adobe Summit also presents an exciting opportunity to learn new things. There are always announcements of new products and capabilities at Summit, and as head of the delivery arm, it’s important that I’m in the know with the latest information to better inform our roadmaps. Beyond the announcements, the labs at the conference also allow me to understand the technology and remain technically competent from a hands-on perspective, ensuring I’m properly hiring, managing and mentoring team members.
What does it mean to you that we’re seeing more opportunities specific to Adobe in analyst relations?
I believe the increasing opportunities specific to Adobe in analyst relations first and foremost signify enhanced brand recognition. As our brand becomes more prominent in the market, our inclusion in reports from reputable third parties like Forrester, Gartner, or IDC amplifies our brand awareness. In turn, potential customers are becoming more familiar with who we are.
It’s crucial to not only help people understand our brand but also to demonstrate our expertise through these unbiased report inclusions. While advertising is one approach to increasing our brand recognition, having our capabilities objectively outlined by organizations with no stake in Perficient’s or Adobe’s success is another level of credibility altogether. It not only enhances our credibility but, in my opinion, also significantly boosts our brand recognition and exemplifies our Adobe capabilities.
LEARN MORE: Perficient Included in Forrester’s Adobe Services Landscape, Q1 2024 Report
How are you making a difference at Perficient?
I’ve been driving growth and I feel it has several impacts; one simply being that we’re obtaining more business, which impacts Perficient’s overall goals and revenue. In turn, this has an effect on how we hire and retain resources. As we intentionally instill our culture throughout the organization, that could be tied to Perficient regularly being named a Best Place to Work, stemming directly from employee insights. If our colleagues are happy, we’re more likely to make our customers happy, and we’ve seen this create opportunities for future projects.
What made you choose Perficient, and what keeps you here?
The true differentiator was the ability to work with numerous customers within multiple verticals and industries with a vast array of challenges to be solved with individualized Adobe solutions.
As I went through the interview process, it was clear from my new boss that the ultimate goal was to construct a new Adobe Digital Marking practice. Initially starting as Adobe Digital Marketing “Employee #1,” throughout the past five years, I’m proud to say we’ve grown to a team of more than 30 direct colleagues worldwide supporting every solution within the Adobe Experience Cloud portfolio (with hundreds more indirectly supporting data services, QA, project management, etc.). We continue building and expanding our global resources, and our unique growth trajectory year over year allows us to see continued success.
What are your proudest accomplishments?
There have been a lot of great moments at Perficient. Some are very timely like being selected by Qualcomm, Morgan Stanley, and Adobe to showcase our expertise at Adobe Summit in two speaking sessions. In a broader scope, I’m proud of Adobe’s perspective of Perficient, and our recognition as a trusted partner. Also, being named an Adobe Partner of the Year for the Americas last year at Summit was a testament to our outstanding Adobe business unit at Perficient. Most importantly, however, is helping our clients succeed – it’s what contributes to our repeat business rate of more than 94%.
READ MORE: Perficient Named 2023 Adobe Digital Experience Emerging Partner of the Year, Americas
Why are you Proudly Perficient?
I’m proud to be a part of Perficient because of the flexibility and autonomy of my role. There are plenty of companies that do Adobe work, but being at Perficient gives me the autonomy to drive results derived from my experience and do what’s right for our customers and Perficient. Building the practice from the ground up allowed me to create the rules as I went along. There’s a level of trust that’s bestowed upon me to drive results, and I think those results have spoken for themselves. Nonetheless, I couldn’t have gotten here without the autonomy and trust in the first place.
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