First steps with Adobe Campaign Standard? Learn its key concepts

[#1]

You are new to Adobe Campaign Standard and would like to know how to start using it? This topic is made for you. Let's have a look on the first things you need to know to use Campaign's core features.

If you want to learn about Adobe Campaign Classic, go to this post: First steps with Adobe Campaign Classic - v6/v7? Key concepts

.1. Getting familiar with user interface and key concepts

• Accessing Adobe Campaign Standard​
  To access Adobe Campaign, simply go to marketing.adobe.com and log in using your Adobe ID. To be able to log in, you must have received an email invitation to access Adobe Marketing Cloud. Once in Adobe Marketing Cloud, you will be able to open Adobe Campaign Standard and any other solution that is available for your account. The Marketing Cloud platform is the central place of your ecosystem, providing you with access to solutions and to core services that help solutions to work with each other (audience and asset sharing, etc.).
  Access management is carried out by a functional administrator of your Adobe Marketing Cloud platform.
• User interface​
  This interface is intended for web browsers. It is completely resizable and therefore automatically adapts to the media on which it is used: desktop computer or tablet. Every element is compatible with the use of a mouse or touchscreen. The navigation principles are common to all of Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions. They are detailed in the presentation of the latest general platform update: https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/mcloud/whatsnew-spring-2016.html.
• Profiles​
  In Adobe Campaign Standard, profiles are one of the core elements. Thanks to the profile data stored in the database, you will be able to filter the target that will receive any given delivery and to add personalization data in your delivery contents. Other types of profiles exist in the database. They are designed for different uses. For example, test profiles are made to test your deliveries before they are sent to the final target.
• Audiences​
  An audience is a set of individuals (or of resources) who match the same segmentation criteria. Depending on the way they are created - file import, workflow segmentation, etc. - audiences can be dynamic or static. They can be reused in deliveries, workflows, and in some cases shared with your other Marketing Cloud solutions.
• Query editor tool​
  The Adobe Campaign query tool can be found on multiple levels of the software: to create a target population, segment customers, extract and filter resources, build filters, etc. Using drag & drop, you can set conditions on fields of the database and filter the data you want to extract by adding and combining rules. You can the collect, sort and display results based on your needs.

.2. Marketing campaigns

• Programs and campaigns
  Several tools are available to help you organize your deliveries.  From programs to calendars, you can plan your future campaigns, see what are the ongoing campaigns, and keep track and compare the results of your past campaigns.
• Targeting​
  The first step of sending a delivery is targeting the right population. This operation can be done directly by performing simple queries within the delivery or by creating audiences that can be reused later. You can achieve complex targeting by querying not only data from a single resource but also from linked resources. You also have the possibility to create segmentation workflows to combine different sets of population (unions, intersections, exclusions, etc.).
• Email delivery​
  The email channel is the main and most used channel in Adobe Campaign. It allows you to mass deliver personalized electronic messages to your customers. To do that, you have many options available to help you define the content, personalize it with recipients or related data, supervise delivery execution and track its results through logs and reports.
  Other channels are available, each one having its own specificities, such as mobile (SMS) and push notifications.
• Email delivery templates​
  Each delivery is based on a predefined template. Templates can be used to define parameters that will be common for a set of deliveries. This way, it's not necessary to go through all parameters every time a new delivery is created, and, as most of them are advanced, it is easier for non-technical end users to focus on content and target recipients. For example, different editing modes can be used for the content: Adobe Campaign and Adobe Experience Manager. Depending on how this parameter is set, content edition will be different and will require different knowledge or solutions. By setting this in the template, you can save precious time.

.3. Reporting and managing non deliverables

• Delivery indicators and tracking​
  For each delivery, indicators show you how many messages were sent, how many were actually received, etc. Numbers can differ from the initial target count because of typology/pressure rules, opt-outs, black-lists, quarantines, etc. Being able to track deliveries is the key to measure success and learn more about your customers. Tracking information is stored in a dedicated table and allows you to monitor how many times an email was opened, which recipients clicked a specific link inside that email, etc. These indicators can be found from the delivery dashboard or in the delivery logs.
• Reports​
  A lot of different reports are available to help you measure not only individual deliveries but sets of deliveries and campaigns as well. This way you can compare overall performance between different campaigns or between similar campaigns over quarters or even years for example.

.4. Subscriptions and Services

• Services​
  Adobe Campaign enables you to create and administer information services such as newsletters and to manage the subscriptions to these services. Several services can be defined in parallel, for example: specialist newsletters for certain product categories, themes or areas of a website, subscriptions to various types of alert messages and real-time notifications. Recipients will be able to subscribe (opt-in) and unsubscribe (opt-out) to services through Web forms and you will be able to monitor and track these subscriptions.
• Landing pages​
  Adobe Campaign integrates a graphical module for defining and publishing Web forms to create pages containing input and selection fields, and which may include data in the database. This lets you design and post web pages which users can access to view or enter information, such as registration or subscription pages.

.5. APIs

Manage profiles and subscriptions to services using the Adobe Campaign REST API, available on Adobe I/O.​

[#2]

where can I find the list of functionalities included in the classic version and not supported in the standard version?

[#3]

Do you have any details on the transition path between Classic and Standard?

[#4]

Hi Tom,

There is no direct transition path as they are 2 different solutions. Because of the current way ACS is implemented (hosted only, PostgreSQL only, etc.).

However, if you are using Campaign v7, there is a connector that allows to leverage some of your v7 data into ACS, to start implementing some of your use cases in ACS and have a better experience. If you'd like more information about this connector, please have a look at the following docs: Principles and data cycle

Let me know if you have additional questions,

Florent

[#5]

Hi Ines,

There is no official "comparison" document that lists all functionalities, mainly because in ACS each functionality is re-worked to provide a better experience and might work slightly differently than in AC Classic.

I think there is a thread covering the most important differences between the 2 solutions: What is Adobe Campaign and what are the differences between Adobe Campaign V6.11 and Adobe Campaign ...

Hope this helps,

Florent