Understand Adobe Target activity types

Hello and welcome to this learning module on the activity types included in Adobe Target. My name’s Drew Burns and I’m a Principal Product Marketing Manager for the Adobe Target solution. So, our learning objectives after completing this training, you should be able to describe the various types of activities included in Adobe Target, select the appropriate activity type to achieve your goals and describe the three-step guided workflow that applies to all activity types. So, let’s begin with the various types of activities that are included in Adobe Target. First, let’s define what an activity is. An activity enables you to test and/or target content to specific audiences. It has a specific start date, when you’re running it and you can set a stop date or deactivate it, it has a measurable goal or several goals, a conversion goal that you’re tracking or several success metrics you’re tracking along with a conversion goal, the why that why you’re running the activity. And then finally, it defines the experience that each audience should see, what, where and to whom, allowing you to select them either sourcing it or selecting the asset or editing and creating variations on the fly. And for those that have used Target Classic or test in Target in the past, activity is basically the equivalent of what we used to call a campaign.

So, here are the types of activities and then I’ll go into when to use what. First, an A/B or we say A/B n test allows you to test one variation of content against another, A/B or several others, ABCDE et cetera to determine which one performs the best to different audiences.

A multivariate test is another activity type and this allows you to test multiple elements in a single design or content option to determine optimal performance of individual elements or combinations for different audiences. Experienced targeting allows you to set a rule or several rules within a single activity for targeting specific content to a specific audience. Recommendations and optimized recommendations allows you to select algorithms for decisioning on personalized suggestions, whether it’s content or products, et cetera and finally, automated personalization is an activity that leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze profile data and performance for automating the best personalized content to an individual and at a distinct point.

And a reminder before I go into these activities that Adobe Target can span across channel, so it can be used on web and mobile sites, offsite in email where we can deliver tests or targeted content or recommendations within email as well as other acquisition channels and partner sites. We have a flexible mobile SDK that allows us to go into mobile apps of all kinds and test and target content. We can extend out into what we call the Internet of Things, internet-connected screens and devices. So, think about ATMs or digital kiosks in stores. And finally, another rule of thumb is anywhere you can place content and an Adobe Target tag and what we can call the Adobe Target solution, you can use it for testing and targeting and personalizing content. So, let’s talk about when to use each of these activities to achieve your goals. First, A/B or A/B n testing is when you have a clear hypothesis for improving performance whether it’s through a qualitative analysis, you’ve gotten ideas from different divisions of your organization on improving the experience or a focus group from customers or a quantitative analysis through a report of analytics, you’ve seen an audience that’s bounced from the site. So, it can be valuable when you have a clear hypothesis for how to reengage an audience or improve the experience based on measuring particular success metrics or key performance indicators, KPIs as well as an ultimate conversion goal and an example is when you have different creative options for targeting a free offer to improve mobile app downloads, so which one is going to work the best to improve those mobile app downloads? Multivariate testing dives into as I mentioned a specific design or content option and allows you to test the different elements within that, so messaging and imagery and call to action together. I see this as a really powerful way to do initial discovery because in the multivariate testing reports, it shows you element contribution, so I can see that messaging is really more impactful on my conversion goals than imagery or call to action and so, I should refine that further with A/B testing. Others use it to see sort of the ultimate combination of several different elements but that could be difficult just because of the size as you add on more combinations, more versions of one of the elements, it can create a lot of possible variations, so these can be long-running tests. So, using multivariate testing for discovery of which element contributes most to conversion is a great discovery use for multivariate testing. Experience targeting. So, this includes geo targeting obviously if we are targeting based on someone’s geolocation down to the zip code but it can be experience targeting based on any element of their profile, so browser, device type, other environment variables or behavioral variables like category affinity or certain product purchases or past content I’ve engaged with, et cetera. And so, what I’m doing is I’m selecting an audience and selecting the experience to deliver to that audience and I can select multiple rules within a single activity to say this audience should see this content, this audience should see that content, et cetera.

Automated personalization. Now oftentimes this can be mistaken as an advanced use case but it’s really good as a discovery phase or even for always-on optimization because you’re putting several different variations of the banner let’s say that we’re seeing there, home page banner or even the home page banner and the messaging beneath the home page banner into the algorithm and then the algorithm self-learns over time what is most predictive of the profile variables it’s analyzing and so, as each individual touches down, it can say I’m going to target based on this profile variable and I’m gonna deliver this content to improve performance. So, again what it’s doing is as each individual profile or person is arriving at that location, and there’s several different content options or even layout or design options, it’s looking back at either historical values, other profiles it’s analyzed or historical conversion patterns as well and it’s basing its decision off a propensity for either a single conversion in terms of random forest or the likelihood of maximizing across multiple conversions, a lifetime value algorithm. So, a few different algorithmic approaches to improving an experience and maximizing performance and automating personalized content in the moment and then finally recommendations. So, several different algorithms that are based on your industry and the page type that allows you to customize and optimize suggested based algorithms for driving real-time suggestions across channels, pages, apps, emails, et cetera for greater engagement and conversion and ease of management, so this isn’t just a retail use case, this has really powerful applications across all industries to increase engagement, consumption of content as well as to improve conversion rates, and average order values. So, the great thing is no matter which activity I’m doing, they all follow the same three-step guided workflow. And that’s create, target and goals and settings, so as I’m moving through here, I begin with creating, so I select a location or browse through a location on any of my channels, select it, create variations of the content. Then I go in and I select the audiences. Am I opening it up to a large population or a specific audience? And then finally, I set those goals and settings. What success metrics I wanna track and what conversion goal I wanna track to gauge performance of each of these variations within this audience. So, easy three-step guided workflow for all those activities and the ability to use them in concert and concurrently even on the same page to maximize your conversion as well as deliver the most relevant personalized content to your audiences.

So, in summary, you should now be able to describe the various types of activities, the appropriate activity type for each goal that you wanna achieve and the three-step guided workflow that applies to all of 'em. Thank you so much. -