Getting started

This information helps you understand and use with Adobe Mobile Services.

Adobe Mobile Services is composed of the following parts:

Adobe Mobile Services UI
Adobe Mobile SDK

For enterprise companies looking for the most effective way to increase user engagement and prove return on investment (ROI) for their mobile app investment, Adobe provides an end-to-end solution, Adobe Mobile Services, to acquire and engage app users and analyze and optimize their experiences.

Today, the mobile app landscape is dramatically different from when the smart phone was first launched. Having a mobile app to connect your customers with your brand is no longer enough; today, you must now drive a cohesive, compelling customer experience across channels and use your mobile app as a strategic touch point to engage your most loyal, high-value customers. But getting these users to interact with your app requires compelling content, contextual notifications, intelligent personalization, and integrated app analytics, and so on.

Adobe Mobile Services UI

The Mobile Services UI is supported on the following browsers:

Google Chrome (the latest two versions)
Mozilla Firefox (the latest two versions)
Apple Safari (the latest two versions)
Microsoft Edge (the latest two versions)

Adobe Mobile Services helps drive mobile app engagement in the following way:

Acquire

In Acquire, you use paid, owned, and earned media to drive user acquisition for app downloads across the leading app stores. Using Adobe Mobile Services, you can accelerate the app user acquisition process.

Adobe Mobile Services provide user acquisition workflows, including acquisition tracking and deep linking, that measure the effectiveness of your channels in acquiring app users. With Marketing Links that track which users came from which channel, you can gain visibility into which acquisition channels are most effective in driving profitable and engaged users.

In addition, with deep linking, you can drive users directly into the app content you would like them to see and encourage them to install your app if necessary.

Acquisition offers the following key features:

Acquisition analytics for apps
Tracking links across app stores
Deep linking into apps
Post back integration with advertising networks

For more information about this phase, see Acquisition.

Analyze

In Analyze, you can understand how consumers are using the mobile app and what makes them convert or come back.

With Adobe Analytics, you can gain key insight into the funnel of how users are downloading, installing, and opening your app. You can also measure and analyze your app content and UI, conduct cohort analysis, pathing, and fallout. With Adobe Analytics, you can use a central data store to inform your marketing decisions and reduce the marketing data silos in your organization.

You can use Adobe Audience Manager to enrich your audience segments with rich data to deliver more contextual and personal experiences.

Analyze offers the following key features:

App engagement analytics
Pathing and funnel analysis
Cohort and retention analysis
Location analytics
Extensive device and platform support

For more information about the reports you can run and analyze your customers, see Reports.

Engage

In Engage, you can use relevant push notifications and in-app messages to communicate with your users. With targeted push notifications and in-app messaging, you can ensure that users continue to return to your app. With support for segments from Analytics, you can target your push notifications to user segments that will respond and increase their propensity to convert.

Engage offers the following key features:

Push notifications are triggered by analytics segments.
In-app messages are triggered by real-time analytics, alerts, and new offers/content.
Understand views, click-through rates, and downstream behavior

Adobe Mobile messaging

You can use push and in-app notifications to communicate with your users. Push notifications are sent via the operating system on the device, while in-app messages are sent in the app when a user is actively interacting with the app. In-app messages can typically include a variety of additional formats like pop-ups and interstitials.

In Adobe Mobile, you can configure the following types of messages:

Push notifications, which appear outside your app, offer the following features:

Drive re-engagement via relevant push notifications.
Create, segment, and send messages to customers who have downloaded a brand’s app and accepted via opt-in to receive push notifications.
Are sent server-side by the app stores rather than from the mobile app.

For more information about creating push notifications, see Create a push message.

In-app notifications offer the following features:

Drive users to specific action while they are in the app session.
Additional formats (alert, full screen) because messages are delivered by the app, rather than a push delivery network.
Are triggered by real-time analytics.
Allow cross-promote apps and products.
Encourage users to leave an app store rating.
Deliver real-time and location-based messages

For more information about creating in-app messages, see Create an in-app message.

Optimize

In Optimize, you can optimize conversions (subscriptions, commerce, ad revenue, and so on) and improve customer retention. Optimizing the user experience in your app can help you personalize your content to drive maximum ROI and conversion.

For more information about testing and Adobe Target, see the Adobe Target documentation.

Geo-targeting

A mobile device allows you to inherently know where a consumer is as they engage with your app or have it running in the background through GPS location. With geo-targeting, Adobe Target enables you to deliver tailored, relevant content, offers, or messages at a time where proximity matters. You can target users who are within a defined radius of a point of interest or when they are in proximity to iBeacons and with relevant push notifications.

Adobe Target for Mobile apps now takes full advantage of the enhanced segmentation and reporting available through Adobe Analytics. This means that Adobe Target can take advantage of all key app metrics in Analytics by using them to target and personalize; it also makes for deeper level of reporting on test success, allowing marketers to better understand those ‘what if’ questions—the answers to which might evade the app marketer experiencing pressure to show a return on app investments. The Analytics/Target for apps integration makes for a combined offering, which represents the most robust app engagement solution that is available on the market.

For more information about location, see Location.

Adobe Mobile SDK

Adobe provides an end-to-end mobile marketing solution that accelerates your customer engagement across all these areas. With one SDK, you can access the capabilities of Adobe Analytics, Adobe Campaign, and Adobe Audience Manager, which reduces the technical cost of managing multiple different SDKs.

The Adobe Mobile SDK offers the following features:

End-to-end mobile engagement

You can measure and optimize apps across platforms with one, lightweight, and integrated Adobe Mobile SDK.
Acquire new customers and deliver engaging micro moments
- Bring users back to your app again and again through targeted push notifications, including support for rich media, and in-app messaging.
- Use deep-linking to drive app users directly into the content you want them.
Measure and optimize experiences to drive ROI

You can gain insight into app lifecycle metrics including funnel analysis (downloads, installs, opens), actions including session length, crashes, beacons, and messaging interactions.
Comprehensive
- Broad support for leading mobile operating systems and cross platform development tools.
- Extensive device support across smartphones, tablets, wearables, and OTT (over-the-top) consoles.
Integrated
- One SDK for multiple solutions (Analytics, Campaign, and Audience Manager), which reduces implementation time and effort for developers.
- Only one line of code is required for collecting the “baseline” app lifecycle metrics.
- As you evolve your mobile strategy, you can easily activate Adobe Experience Cloud capabilities to acquire, analyze, and engage users.
Fast and Lightweight
- Minimizes device processing load for sending data to Adobe servers and third-party systems.
- Small footprint minimizes the size of the app package that is submitted to app stores.