Adobe Target: What You Need to Know to Get Started

Adobe Target can be described as Adobe's Personalization and A/B Testing solution, seamlessly integrated into the Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem, enabling businesses to deliver customized content and experiences to their customers.

It plays a pivotal role in optimizing user engagement, boosting conversion rates, and improving the overall digital experience. So, what do you need to know to begin using Adobe Target? Let's explore some key points to help you get started.

Different Flavors

Adobe Target is a mature solution that has continually evolved over time. Currently, there are three versions available:

1. Adobe Target Classic: This is the legacy version, no longer commercialized but still supported by Adobe. It includes Test and Target functionality and offers a classic UI.

2. Adobe Target Standard: Built on the Classic foundation, this version offers Test and Target functionality in a touch-optimized, mobile-friendly experience.

3. Adobe Target Premium: This version goes beyond Standard, incorporating all of its functionality while adding extra features like AI capabilities (Automated Personalization, Auto-Target, Recommendations), Recommendations as an offer, and enhanced enterprise user permissions.

Personalization Driven by AI (Adobe Sensei)

The features below are solely available in Target Premium.

• Auto-Allocate: An A/B test that leverages the power of Adobe Sensei (AI) to identify a winner among several experiences and automatically reallocates more traffic to the winning experience. Consequently, it increases conversions while the test continues to run and learn.

  This is an excellent choice if you need to determine a winning experience as quickly as possible, ultimately reducing costs compared to a traditional manual A/B test. The caveat is that because AI reallocates traffic to the winning experience, there is no record of how the experiences performed against each other. You will only get to know the best experience, not the second-best or subsequent rankings.

• Auto-Target: This type of A/B test, similar to Auto-Allocate, utilizes Adobe Sensei (AI) to determine the best experience that matches an individual customer profile.

• Automated Personalization: Although not an A/B test, this activity harnesses Adobe Sensei to match various offer variations with each visitor, tailoring content based on their unique customer profile to enhance personalization and increase performance.

  This activity can prove highly valuable during the discovery phase of testing or can run continuously to provide ongoing improvements. This approach is sometimes referred to as an "always-on" mode.

  Check out Adobe’s documentation if you want to know more about how Automated Personalization differs from Auto-Target.

• Recommendations: Adobe Target enables the creation of custom content entities, such as products and services. Advanced machine learning algorithms can then match the best content against the user's prior activity, preferences, or criteria. According to the official website "Recommendations lets you provide your visitors with relevant content at the right time and in the right place."

Adobe Experience Cloud Integrations

Adobe Target, as a component of the Adobe Experience Cloud, offers integration capabilities with several other Adobe solutions to enhance its functionality. Let's take a quick look at what you need to know about these integrations:

• Adobe Analytics: This integration is simply referred to as Adobe for Target or "A4T". It enables Target to leverage Analytics as a reporting and tracking source. This can be beneficial if you have already  implemented Analytics on your site, or if you need a more advanced option in your reporting tool.

• Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO): You can use Adobe Target with the "offer decision" feature from Adobe Journey Optimizer to determine and deliver the most relevant offers to your web and mobile visitors. This allows you to efficiently test and deliver personalized offers through your inbound channels powered by Target using tools like the Visual Experience Composer (VEC) or the Form-Based Composer.

• Experience Cloud Audiences: This solution was developed to facilitate communication and sharing user profiles across various Adobe solutions, and Target is no exception. You can leverage Audiences from the Experience Cloud Audiences to enhance its functionality.

• Adobe Audience Manager (AAM): This integration, also referred to as Target/Audience Manager, allows you to leverage Audience Manager segments (audiences) within Adobe Target. This integration can be highly beneficial if you are already using Audience Manager.

• Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): You can leverage content from AEM in the form of Experience Fragments or Content Fragments to reuse them as offers within Adobe Target. This can be beneficial if you already have existing content, users familiar with AEM, or specific content needs.

• Adobe Real-time Customer Data Platform (RT-CDP): The Real-Time Customer Data Platform (RTCDP) helps businesses gather information about their customers from different places. With RTCDP, you can create customer profiles to give customers personalized experiences on websites and apps, no matter how they access them. Some important things about RTCDP include working closely with Adobe Target, making sure everything is secure, and using real-time customer information to make websites and apps better for users.

• Adobe Campaign: Adobe Target can be used alongside Adobe Campaign to personalize and optimize email content.

Conclusion

Understanding the usefulness of Adobe Target, its current product versions, capabilities, and compatibility with other solutions is essential for determining the right Target implementation for your needs. The increasing importance of AI in personalization makes it crucial to comprehend how Target utilizes AI so that you can apply it to relevant business use cases.