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.

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!

Overview

Perficient was self tasked to feature a highly interactive, visually compelling Adobe Summit App built in AEM Mobile that allows users to see real-time analytics from Adobe Workbench, an interactive analytics application part of Adobe Analytics that allows you to build visualization dashboards, as well as experience personalized content based off their responses on the survey taken from their mobile device.

Challenge

Integrating DTM and Target on a single page application in AngularJs, a JavaScript front-end framework.

The application was built with Cordova (formally known as Adobe PhoneGap), a hybrid app development framework which consist of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, we were able to leverage the mobile platform’s Web view to render content. Since DTM is a JavaScript based container, we were able to integrate many of the other Adobe Marketing Cloud products that we come so accustom to.

Using DTM as a host for Adobe Tools such as Adobe Analytics and Target, you are able to push, configure, track, integrate and perform marketing initiatives such as performing A/B tests with different components on the page and tracking user activities on your app.

STEP 1

We built a base template for each page (“mobileapps/components/angular/ng-page”) and we extended our pages from that template by creating an AEM (CQ) project using Apache Maven, a building management tool.

STEP 2

After configuring our property in Adobe Dynamic Tag Management, we went to our first page in the app, in this case the login page, and inserted the DTM bootleg snippet.

“<script src=”https://assets.adobedtm.com/3215e845c9690cbe968752c99b825440070e111f/satelliteLib-21077d4adfcbef88029b6d7609a4be07d51b0616-staging.js”></script>”

Notes: Place snippet before the end of <head> section in the head.jsp;

Screenshots from CRXDE Lite (Adobe AEM) and Maven Project

STEP 3

In the login page component, go to body.jsp, and insert the DTM snippet in the body of the page.

“<script type=”text/javascript”>_satellite.pageBottom();</script>”

Notes: Place snippet before the end of <body>;

Screenshots from CRXDE Lite (Adobe AEM) and Maven Project

STEP 4

Since the summit app is an Angular SPA, we just needed to put the snippets in the first page, and the JS will be loaded/available for all other pages.

Therefore the next step was to UAT/QA and verify the JS was getting downloaded correctly.

STEP 5

Now we are ready to add our Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target tools in DTM, where we were able to implement our analytics solution design and run different personalize tests based data being collected from Adobe Analytics including custom variables and success events.

However, delivering a top-notch CX poses several challenges, particularly when it comes to integrating technology with existing marketing processes and platforms. Follow these seven expert tips to help you optimize your digital marketing platforms.

Like what you see? Download our guide, Solve Three Common Digital Marketing Challenges with Adobe Marketing Cloud.

If you’re not 100% familiar with Livefyre, here’s a quick overview – this social media content platform allows companies to search and gather user generated content from Twitter, Instagram and other networks to not only monitor customer sentiment but also engage and monetize this content.

Integrating these capabilities with Adobe Experience Manager will empower brands and advertisers with the meaningful data that will help them create more personalized customer experiences.

And when you think about taking customer generated data and how you could sync it with all data from Adobe Marketing Cloud Co-op, the possibilities and opportunities are endless. Not only will you have information about customer behaviors across devices but you’ll also have insight into what excites them (or on the flip side, what’s off-putting.)

It will be exciting to watch this strategic play unfold. Stay tuned for a follow up as Adobe is sure to reveal more in the weeks to come.

The Adobe Deploying and Maintaining AEM documents are an invaluable reference for the new or experienced systems administrator installing and configuring Adobe Experience Manager on premise. Despite the wealth of references, I all too often see installations that were not well thought through and result in maintenance headaches that would have been easy to avoid, but can be challenging to remedy after-the-fact. Common problems include:

• Inconsistent installation paths, permissions, and ownership;
• Inconsistent startup settings and overall configuration;
• No planning or forethought for disaster recovery and expansion;
• Little or no monitoring of AEM instances;
• Poorly documented release processes and inconsistent access restrictions;
• Lack of, or not adhering to a standardized maintenance plan;

These are just a few of the challenges customers face; employee turnover and juggling multiple vendors only aggravates the problem. Deploying AEM for the long-term involves careful planning, clear and repeatable documentation, and a maintenance plan that follows established best practices not just from Adobe, but from your internal IT team.

It seems obvious, right?

Not always. For organizations that are new to AEM, getting up and running initially on the platform in a way that adheres best practices and promotes long-term maintainability is often overlooked. This task is sometimes given to an experienced AEM developer, but with little or no actual system skills, or an experienced system administrator, but with no AEM experience.

If you are embarking on a new project to stand-up your AEM foundation, here are some tips:

Pre-Installation Tips

• Understand best practices from your internal IT organization around separation of systems (e.g. dispatcher zones vs. author/publish instance zones, firewalls, load balancers, etc.).
• Create a detailed topology diagram for all environments showing each server and device along with detailed port maps. This visually communicates infrastructure needs, shows how internal and external system interact with one another, as well as what firewall ports and load balancer pools, etc. need to be created.
• Obtain the necessary approvals and get started on build sheets early.
• Understand Disaster Recovery requirements, AEM Cold Standby’s, clustering, Jackrabbit Oak Document Store configuration options, and physical sizing requirements. All of these decisions will affect infrastructure topology and build.

Installation Tips

• Completely read Adobe’s Deploying and Maintaining AEM.
• I encourage anyone that will be deploying and maintenance AEM in an enterprise environment to attend the Adobe AEM System Administration. This training can be invaluable and offers a well-rounded view of how to deploy AEM.
• Draft and fully test detailed step-by-step installation documentation locally or on test servers before finalizing.
• Establish a set of configuration parameters that can be used both during the initial system stand-up and as a health check guide for the future.
• Read through the Adobe Security Hardening Checklist, and maintain a list of your own hardening instructions.
• Don’t always go for the latest version, unless there is a compelling feature you can’t live without. Our general rule is to wait until the first service pack is released.
• Implement a change management process that includes updating all relevant documentation, including disaster recovery, service packs, hotfixes, health check and hardening guides, etc.

Development, Build and Release Processes Tips

• It’s likely your organization has standardized release process guidelines that can be adopted for AEM, and if not you’ll need to develop them.
• Make sure the guidelines include necessary security and code scans, release notes templates, rollback procedures, and any other checkpoints required before moving between environments.  
• Establish source control and document a branching structure early on, before the first line of code is developed.
• A developer Standard Operating Procedures document should be created to accelerate developer onboarding and again provide consistency.

And if you are choosing an AEM vendor for the first time, you are now armed with knowledge to quiz their maturity level around AEM on premise deployments.

“Marketers are no longer in the business of selling products – we are selling experiences.”

The proliferation of technology, such as smartphones and the Internet of Things, make it possible to engage with customers on a one-to-one basis. However, the challenge is meeting their expectations to provide continuous, consistent, and compelling experiences both digitally and in reality.

Clients often come to us with the same three digital marketing challenges that can be solved with a solid marketing technology platform. Our latest guide, “Solve Three Common Digital Marketing Challenges with Adobe Marketing Cloud,” explores the underlying factors that impact customer experience and how the right digital marketing platform can help you:

• Exceed customer expectations in B2B and B2C
• Create a seamless customer experience across all channels
• Use analytics to make data-driven marketing decisions