Adobe Target: To Personalize and Enhance your Customer Experience

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Author: Indar Kumar

Digital advertisement has become more prevalent and efficient, it has placed the buying power back into the hands of buyers and customers, making it an absolute necessity for marketers to get more creative.  

Customers now have started connecting with companies through various digital platforms like social media pages, mobile applications, etc., which increases the need for personalized experiences and customer segregation according to their behavior.  

A customer’s journey today needs to be enhanced on a personalized level, this can be useful in ways like providing ease of customer journey, improving customer purchase patterns, and many more. A new question arises as to how should we personalize the experiences of customers and analyze the behavior of customers, to convert them into a profitable source for the company.  

This is where Adobe Target comes to the rescue. 

What is Adobe Target? 

Adobe Target is the Adobe Experience Cloud solution that provides everything you need to tailor and personalize your customers’ experiences. Target helps you maximize revenue on your web and mobile sites, apps, social media, and other digital channels. 

History of Target: Test&Target was originally created by Omniture, which was then acquired by Adobe on October 23, 2009. Features from Test&Target were combined with Omniture SiteCatalyst as SiteCatalyst NetAverages, which was included with Adobe Creative Suite 5 and CS Live in May 2010.

Experiences and Page Designs in Target:

An experience, sometimes called a recipe, defines the content that is displayed on your page, and other page elements, such as links, depending on user behavior.  

Experience determines which offer is to be displayed at a certain location when specific targeting conditions are met. For example, the experience determines that when a visitor visits your site more than once, an offer for two-day shipping displays at the top of the page. The experience also determines that, when a visitor, lands on your page for the first time, a 10% discount offer appears at the location.

An experience consists of the offers, image assets, or other HTML elements (such as links) that appear on the page to help drive the visitor toward the result you desire. Target helps to combine locations, offers, and experiences that determine what content is to be displayed on your site during a specific test. 

A page design is also considered as an experience. For example, having a set of links across the top of the page or the same link arranged in a different order. Testing the image placement for an ad, to check the highest propensity for clicks can easily be taken care of through Adobe Target.  

Target optimizes experiences for every visitor across your digital platforms, to test and determine the most successful user experience. Through optimal targeting, your customers can be redirected to the most relevant offers, and pages, hence improving your CX.  

How does Adobe Target Work?

A request is sent to the targeting system every time a visitor requests a page that has been optimized for Target. The request aids in determining what content should be served to that particular visitor. This procedure is carried out in real-time. A request for content is made and fulfilled by the system every time a page is loaded. The material is tailored to the particular site visitor and is governed by the rules of marketer-controlled activities and experiences. Each site visitor is provided content that they are most likely to respond to, interact with, or purchase. Response rates, acquisition rates, and revenue can all benefit from personalized content.

Each piece on the page in Target is part of a single experience that spans the full page. On the page, each experience can include numerous elements.

The content that is shown to visitors is determined by the sort of activity you design, such as an A/B test or an X/T test (Experience Targeting).

A/B Test

In a basic A/B test, the content displayed is picked at random from the experiences you designate to the activity. For each experience, you can assign traffic allocation percentages. As a result of the random traffic splitting, it can take a large quantity of traffic to equal out the percentages. If you create two experiences, for example, the first one is chosen at random. It's probable that if there's limited traffic, the percentage of visitors will be skewed toward one experience. As traffic grows, the percentages even out.

For each experience, you can set a percentage target. In this situation, a random number is created and utilized to select the experience to be displayed. The percentages that result may not perfectly match the targets, but more traffic means that the experiences should be split closer to the desired outcomes.

1. A client requests a page from your server, which appears in the customer's browser.
2. To store customer behavior, a first-party cookie is placed in the customer's browser.
3. The page sends a request to the targeting system.
4. Content is shown according to your activity's rules.

Experience Targeting (XT)

Experience Targeting (XT) is a method of delivering content to a specified audience based on a set of rules and criteria defined by the marketer.

Experience targeting includes geotargeting, which is useful for designing rules that target a particular experience or piece of content to a certain audience. In order to send distinct content variations to different audiences, several rules can be set in an activity. When people come to your site, Experience Targeting (XT) assesses them to see if they fulfill the criteria you've set. They enter the activity if they fulfill the criteria, and the experience created for qualifying audiences appears. Within a single activity, you can design experiences for multiple audiences.

Objective/Advantage of Adobe Target 

Adobe Target is an easy-to-use interface for creating and running omnichannel tests, audience segments, and content targeting. Furthermore, cutting-edge technology allows for AI-powered customization as well as machine-learning-based recommendations. 

The following are some of the most important Adobe Target testing advantages: 

• Quick Learning - A/B testing, MVT, segment, and 1-to-1 are just a few of the common testing and targeting methods that may be used from a single application, removing the need for multiple-point solutions. 
• Providing relevant information - At all client touchpoints on the website and across online channels, personalize content and boost relevance. 
• Creating visual tests- Using an on-site visual interface, create and implement content testing and targeted campaigns right on your website – just as visitors would see them — without any specific configuration. 
• Improving Targeting- Create visitor profiles to send targeted creative, offers, campaigns, banners, and promotions. 
• Creating visitor information- Create automated views of visitor interactions that are comprehensive and anonymous, and then utilize them to deliver appropriate material to visitors. 

How can Marketers Benefit from Adobe Target? 

• Personalize it with omnichannel customization - Using a shared customer profile, you can provide a consistent and personalized experience throughout the customer journey, even as it moves from channel to channel. Marketers now have the ideal balance of automation and control thanks to Adobe Target's personalization. 
• Use A/B and multivariate testing to eliminate guesswork - If you want to improve any aspect of your customer's experience, you must first test it. Create A/B and multivariate testing on your websites and other digital properties to discover the most effective combination of content, layouts, UX, and more. 
• Automate and scale it for everyone using AI-powered automation - You can provide each customer with a genuinely unique experience. You can test and personalize at scale with Adobe Sensei's AI and machine learning, far beyond what you could achieve with manual or rules-based approaches alone. Thousands and millions of optimizations are possible. 

References

https://experienceleague.adobe.com 

https://business.adobe.com 

Originally published: Feb 22, 2022