Now, onto the fun stuff.  How can we modify (or create) a system.d init script that will work with AEM?  Well, I’ll walk you through how to do this using the standard init.d AEM script.  If you have your own already, feel free to substitute it into the instructions.

You can grab a copy of the standard AEM init.d here (or here).

And here is the corresponding system.d file.

Now that we’re on the same page, lets get a few things straight:

• If you generated your init.d script (from above) these instructions use the filename aem and location /usr/bin/aem for the location of this script.  If you are using different values, please ensure the aem.system script is updated accordingly.
  • This script should be readable and executable by the root
  • AEM_USER
    • The system user in which AEM is expected to run under.  Be certain to start up an AEM instance using this user prior to going through these instructions to be sure they have appropriate permissions to the crx-quickstart folder
    • Default value is “aem”
  • AEM_ROOT
    • The root folder of AEM, or the parent folder of the crx-quickstart folder.
    • ex. if your crx-quickstart folder is /opt/aem6/crx-quickstart, the root folder would be /opt/aem6
    • Default value is /opt/aem6
• aem.system is a (very) basic system.d script generated for your standard AEM init.d.  In it there are several places which reference the existing aem script.  It is assuming that your aem init.d script (see above for link) is located at /usr/bin/aem.  This location can be modified to any you like, just ensure that:
• • It must be readable and executable by the root user
  • If the location of your aem script is not /usr/bin/aem, update references to ExecStart, ExecStop, and ExecReload accordingly
  • If your aem script does not include a restart, feel free to remove the ExecReload line as it will not function as expected.

Now for the official instructions:

1. (If no existing init.d) Download the sample init.d script here
   1. Open the file and modify the AEM_USER and AEM_ROOT variables to suit your environment (see above for description)
   2. Save the file to your file system.  This can be saved anywhere – the example aem.system file uses /usr/bin/aem.
   3. Ensure that the file is readable and writable as root:
      # sudo chmod u+rwx /usr/bin/aem
   4. Test the file works as expected
      # ./usr/bin/aem start
2. Download the aem.system file.
   1. (If you are not using /usr/bin/aem) – Modify the aem.system file by updating the location referenced by ExecStart, ExecStop, and ExecReload to match the scripts location
   2. Save the script to /etc/system.d/system/aem.system
   3. Ensure that the file is readable and writable as root:
      1. # sudo chmod u+rwx /etc/system.d/system/aem.system
   4. Enable the system.d entry:
      1. # cd /etc/system.d/system
# systemctl enable aem.system

That’s it!  On your next reboot, AEM should be started as expected.

According to a Commonwealth Fund study, the average American visits the doctor only four times per year and that number is declining. One of the drivers behind this behavioral change is accessibility to medical information.

Here’s a great example – in a study of millennials by ZocDoc, it was reported that this group is more likely to research symptoms online, with 28% self-diagnosing and 36% self-medicating before seeing a doctor.

When patients only see doctors when they’re sick or injured, it impacts the overall quality of care they could receive. With a more complete view of a patient, healthcare professionals can provide in-depth care and counsel that focuses on overall wellness or even detect the onset of a chronic condition.

Creating a connected health experience that’s ingrained in patients’ daily lives is one solution, and the need has never been greater to help doctors and hospital systems support their patients digitally.

Our team at Perficient developed DailyDose, a patient engagement app built on Adobe Experience Manager Mobile. With a solution that aligns with consumer/patient behaviors, this will support lowering patient readmissions, driving lower healthcare costs and increasing patient engagement.

Watch the video for a peek at DailyDose.

See how Adobe Experience Manager Mobile can help you build engaging mobile moments, and register for one of the upcoming AEM Mobile Roadshow events.

Washington, D.C. | July 14, 2016

Chicago, IL | July 19, 2016

Millennials approach information sources differently than previous generations. This, coupled with their increased customer experience expectations presents a challenge for B2B companies.

Rise of the Millennials

As shown in the illustration below, there are over 53 million millennials are in the workforce, making up 28.5% of the overall total. With Millennials focused on promotions and Baby Boomers retiring, soon Millennials will hold many purchasing positions.

Millennials, having grown up exposed to technology, no longer see technology as an add-on or gimmick. Instead, they expect technology to complement all experiences whether digital or analog. At the same time, Millennials emphasize the human factor. In an era of digitization, providing a humanized, personal experience sets a company apart.

Because Millennials view technology as a part of the human experience, they also expect technology to adapt to them. These expectations will especially challenge B2B companies, which already struggle with digital marketing.

B2B: Laggards in Digital Marketing

While many B2B companies have made tremendous strides in their digital marketing, many still struggle. The industry lags far behind their consumer-facing peers. In a recent survey, 70% of digital marketers from B2B companies said: “their organization’s digital advertising strategy fails to meet expectations”. This is due to the difficulty in gathering quality leads and in measuring the return on digital marketing spend.

This challenge is especially acute in personalizing experiences. B2B companies are struggling to deliver personalized experiences, often citing technical challenges. Another major challenge is the inherent differences in how B2B and B2C companies go to market.

B2B companies personalize based on company and role, rather than individuals. By personalizing too much to individuals, B2B companies can actually hurt sales cycles. This reduces the number of data-points available and requires a judicious approach to personalization.

Another challenge for B2B companies is the disconnect between digital experiences and the actual sale. While B2B buyers research online, most do not buy through digital platforms. Without direct conversions, companies struggle to attribute leads and personalize experiences.

Millennials: New Challenges for B2B Marketers

The rise of millennials poses another digital marketing challenge to B2B companies. According to a recent survey by the Arketi Group, Millennials expect more of digital experiences than other generations. This is especially true at the top of the buying funnel, Millennials’ favored channels include:

• Blogs
• eBooks
• Infographics
• Online Ads
• Vendor Texts
• Social Media

Millennials find traditional B2B sales and marketing channels less effective throughout the buying process, and view the following channels significantly less engaging than other generations:

• Analyst Reports
• Vendor Websites
• In-Person Demos and Meetings
• Phone Calls
• Product brochures, datasheets, sales literature
• Trade shows and conferences
• Whitepapers

A few patterns emerge when looking at different methods millennials prefer for B2B marketing. Millennials favor channels that are digital, interactive, and social. In-person, print, and traditional channels are far less popular than for previous generations.

Contrast these channel preferences to these indicated by B2B marketers as the most effective in reaching their goals:

• Events (exhibitions, conferences, trade shows etc) 84%
• Print Media 13%
• Direct Mail 22%
• Outdoor Ads 6%
• Television 4%
• Radio 4%

This poses a challenge, as the channels preferred by B2B marketers are the ones millennials find less engaging. If B2B companies do not evolve their marketing to better serve millennial workers’ desires and expectations, millennials will leave for competitors.

B2B Digital Marketing for Millennials

So how do B2B marketers market to millennials?

First, B2B marketers need to lay a foundation for excellent digital marketing experiences. This means eliminating data silos, developing customer 360 profiles and building a strong platform. This requires an effective implementation team and modern technical platform.

With this solid platform, marketers can build technology-enabled solutions to market to every generation. This includes omni-channel marketing, to message consistently across all forms of media, and building personalized experiences across all digital platforms to deliver the correct message. Finally, sales and knowledge enablement platforms help deliver the best content.

Finally, Digital marketers need to market specifically to millennials. Marketers should include mobile, social, and interactive media to capture and hold the attention of millennial buyers. These new forms of media also offer the benefits of increased conversion points and data. These grant marketers a richer data source to inform their marketing efforts.

The rise of the millennial generation poses significant challenges to B2B marketing strategies. They are less likely to be persuaded by traditional B2B marketing approaches. Yet, this presents an opportunity to companies that choose to implement technology-enabled digital marketing. Companies that embrace this opportunity will win Millennials’ business from their less-agile competition.

Click on the map below to see when the AEM Mobile tour will be coming to a city near you!

AEM Mobile Tour Dates

Los Angeles, CA — June 2nd

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San Francisco, CA — June 9th

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New York, NY — June 14th

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Boston, MA — June 16th

Time

Thursday, June 16 2:00–8:00pm

Location

100 Stuart Street
Great Room A, B
Boston, MA 02116

Featured Speaker

Adam Smith – Partner, Blink Worldwide

Register to Attend More Information

Dallas, TX — June 21st

Time

Tuesday, June 21 2:00–8:00pm

Location

1530 Main Street
Praetorian Ballroom
Dallas, TX 75201

Featured Speaker

Lahary Ravuri – Head of Marketing, Adobe Experience Manager Mobile

Register to Attend More Information

What’s lurking behind this customer experience issue? There are a number of reasons, and data fragmentation is among them.

Consider for a moment at how fast data is growing each day. Worldwide digital data grows exponentially, and it’s expected to double every two years. What’s surprising is that only 0.5% of it is ever analyzed.

The profound volume and types of data created is a blessing and a curse for marketers. There’s an opportunity to harness this information, using it to make data-driven business decisions and providing more personalized experiences.

Data silos are among the top obstacles for marketers – where data lives and how it integrates with other systems so it can be accessed and used by the people who need it.

Other challenges involve technology and people. Many organizations lack the right analytics tools and people with the right skills or training that can turn data into insights.

How do you overcome this? And more importantly, how can you improve the 45% of consumers who aren’t satisfied with their experience?

When you employ a digital marketing platform like Adobe Marketing Cloud, you will be able to track, analyze, and report on customers’ activities across digital marketing channels – not just what happens on your website.

Want to learn more about demolishing data silos and solving other common digital marketing challenges? Download our latest guide below.

People generate massive amounts of content daily. Think about how much you use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or blog on a daily basis. As an example of how much content is out there, Facebook has 2.5 billion pieces of content and 300 million photos.

Are companies capitalizing on user generated content (UGC)? For some, the answer is a resounding yes. The Content Marketing Institute reports that 78% of B2C companies plan to leverage UGC in their marketing strategies this year.

Adobe recently acquired Livefyre, a solution that curates UGC, because the technology supports the Adobe Marketing Cloud and provides marketers quick access to authentic, user-generated content.

In an interview with CMS Wire, Loni Stark, senior director of strategy and product marketing for Adobe, reveals more about the strategy behind the acquisition. Giving marketers full access to Livefyre, it allows them to tap into billions of pieces of UGC to use on their websites, ads, emails, apps, and more.

Brands typically use this content for brand advocacy. According to Adobe, UGC is revered as more trustworthy by consumers.

“Our content research found 81% of respondents considered a product that was endorsed by a family member or someone they were related to or a friend,” said Stark.

With more authentic user-generated content, brands have the opportunity to create more compelling and engaging experiences.

“That’s why we wanted to work with Livefyre,” Stark remarked. “It’s to bring the joint story of professional and user-generated content and deliver it in creative ways through the marketing cloud.”

This thought should give us pause as marketers. Rather than creating and pushing more of our content out there, shouldn’t we be creating opportunities and experiences for our customers that inspire their content creation?

Let us hear from you. How do you plan on taking advantage of user-generated content to enhance your marketing efforts?

Sound familiar?

Between call centers, social media, email, mobile apps, and brick-and-mortar stores, your customers have multiple options for engaging with your company. The downside is that when the data coming from these channels aren’t connected, the experience can be confusing and off-putting. Not to mention that your customers’ frustration can be amplified when encountering vastly different experiences across your mobile, desktop, and eCommerce sites.

As a digital marketer, you must optimize content to maintain customers’ attention and meet their expectations to remain competitive. You might wonder, “How will this impact my business?”

A study of customer journeys by Harvard Business Review followed companies in two industries, insurance and pay TV. The companies that excelled in delivering journeys outperformed the competition with:

• 30-40% improvement in overall customer satisfaction
• 20-30% better performance in revenue, repeat purchases, and positive word of mouth

When you focus on delivering a journey that aligns to customer expectations, you position yourself to jump ahead of the competition. With a digital marketing platform like Adobe Marketing Cloud, you can create a seamless customer journey by organizing data and delivering a connected experience.

Want to learn more about creating a connected customer journey and solving other common digital marketing challenges? Download our latest guide below.

According to Gartner, 89% of companies expect to compete on customer experience in 2016. And in just four years, it’s estimated that 85% of a customer’s relationship with a brand won’t include face-to-face interactions. (Got your attention?)

Personalization is key not only for customer acquisition but also for customer retention. In the 2016 Annual Digital Trends Survey, companies that want to meet (or exceed) customer expectations need to deliver experiences that are: 

• Personalized and relevant (25%)
• Valuable (25%)
• Easy to understand (17%)

To create personalized experiences, marketing organizations need a solid digital marketing platform that supports their well-defined personalization strategies.

Many marketing departments choose to standardize on a single platform, easing the support and integration required for disparate, existing tools. Adobe Experience Manager, the content management pillar within the Adobe Marketing Cloud, is one such example.

Updates included in the recent release of Adobe Experience Manager 6.2 include features that make it easier for marketers to:

• Personalize and target offers
• Understand which assets are performing well (or not so well)
• Create connected experiences across mobile apps, forms, and in-person (or in-store)

Want to learn more about exceeding customer expectations and solving other common digital marketing challenges? Download our latest guide below.

Source: https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/why-new-adobe-marketing-cloud-id-service-should-be-on-your-radar/

Migrating from Adobe Analytics Legacy Visitor ID
This migration will either store the legacy cookie (s_vi) to the AMCV cookie or create a new AMCV cookie, which will be used as its replacement all together.

Implementing AMCV in Adobe Dynamic Tag Mangement

Prerequisites – Adobe Requirements

1. Contact Client Care to obtain the Marketing Cloud Organization ID ie. (MCOrg ID)
2. Ensure your scode is on AppMeasurement version 1.3 or later, scode H.27 or later.
3. Make sure your Adobe Adobe server calls are going to Regional Data Collection, meaning your image requests are being sent to RDC tracking server ( ie. .sc.omtrdc.net) instead of a Non-RDC tracking server, (ie. .2o7.net).
4. Next, deploy your new VisitorAPI Javascript library. Log into your Admin Console and get the VisitorAPI.js file from the Code Manager. This can be in your scode file or in DTM in the tool’s setting, but it must be placed at the beginning of the file. Important Note: The placement of this code needs to fire first in the order sequence in order to be leveraged by the other Adobe JS libraries.
5. Configure your Visitor ID service.
6. Set Visitor ID in a Custom Variable (sprop or eVar) to test quality assurance. (Below is the Custom JS to capture the AMCV in a DTM Data Element that is ready to be mapped to a custom variable.) You can also set the AMCV in a cookie using a native DTM function to either map or verify in the Developers Console. (_satellite.setCookie(‘cookie name’,’cookie value’,days to expire)
7. As precaution, please be sure to check Adobe Analytics server call as there should be an additional parameter called “mid”, the Marketing Cloud Visitor ID.

Now that you have the foundation for your Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Media Optimizer and Adobe Audience Manager tools, you can feel confident about your data being unified and now you are finally ready to start building your campaigns, profiles, activities, and reports.

In the latest release of Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe has simplified authoring personalized content. In addition to some exciting new features, this release includes a new integration with Adobe Target. The new integration allows authors to edit personalized content directly within AEM.

Given the strong ROI of personalization, the improved AEM / Target integration will be a big win for Adobe customers.

Authoring Personalized Experiences with AEM & Target

While at Adobe Summit, I attended the lab “Integrating Experience Manager with Adobe Analytics, Target and DTM”, which showcased the new AEM / Target integration. In only one hour, we were able to set up the integration and personalize content.

In this post, I’ll show the process for authoring personalized content in AEM with Adobe Target. For more information on setting up the integration, please see the Summit Session documents. The images below are credits the authors of the lab.

1. Configure an Activity in AEM

The first step to using Adobe Target in AEM is to configure your Activity. An activity is an instance of targeting on a page. Each activity gets a name and you can configure which targeting engine, configuration and targeting type to use.

To create a new Activity, first, select the Brand (which is a container of activities for a particular brand or site) and then click the + button. If you wanted to modify an existing activity, you would select the name of activity from the drop-down.

2. Define Targets

Next, define the components to be targeted. You can define any number of components to be targeted on the page. To do so, simply select the Targeting icon on the component’s edit bar while in targeting mode.

When you target a component, AEM replaces the existing component with a targeting container and makes the existing content the default.

3. Create Experiences

Once you have your components selected for the Activity, you need to create the experiences. Experiences are content variants shown to a particular audience or are groups of users based on criteria. By default, only the DEFAULT experience will be displayed when the Activity is first created.

To add an experience, select “+ Add Experience Targeting”. This will allow you to choose from among the pre-defined audiences or create a new audience to target.

You can create any number of audiences and order them in order in which they will be selected by Target.

4. Create the Experience Content

Once you’ve defined the experiences, select each one and update the content in the targeted components. You can change content, images or anything else you can edit within an AEM component.

You can quickly switch between experiences in authoring mode by selecting the experience name on the right. This allows you to see how the content appears in each experience.

5. Finish and Publish

Once you have created the content for the experiences, review and finish the setup of the Activity.

From this screen, you can define how reporting will be tracked for the Activity as well as the goals for the Activity. This will allow marketers to see reports on the success of the personalization activity.

Once you have verified and finished the Activity, publish the page to push the changes to the live website. AEM will publish all the content to the live site simultaneously to ensure website consistency.

Bonus: Testing Experiences

To ensure your targeting is working correctly, AEM includes the ability to view and modify the Client Context. The Client Context stores data on the current user and can / should be used for configuring segments inside AEM and Target. To view the Client Context, switch to Preview mode in AEM and then select the Client Context Hub icon. This will allow you to modify the variables in the client context and switch between segments to see the different experiences.

Personalization Unleashed

With AEM and Target, brands can delight their customers by providing rich, personalized experiences. At the same time, the new integration means authors have less overhead maintaining content.

Brands understand the need of personalization and the new AEM / Target integration allows them to make it happen.

Need help with understanding personalization with AEM & Target? Leave a comment below and I’d be happy to help!