Axis41 Builds Hotel Booking App to Demonstrate Personalization

The Experience Manager Mobile team recently challenged some of our technology partners to create proof-of-concept (POC) apps that highlight the capabilities of Experience Manager Mobile, its integration with Experience Manager and other Adobe Marketing Cloud services in order to show that with the right tools, technologies, and systems, apps can be developed quickly and serve as valuable business tools.

Axis41 is a full-service digital agency that brings art and technology together to deliver mobile brand experiences for clients that want to reach customers wherever they are. Jon Baddley, Vice President of Business Development, and Peter Nash, Technical Project Manager, talked with us about how Axis41 used Experience Manager Mobile to develop an engaging mobile app that can deliver personalized experiences for the hotel and hospitality industry. Be sure to also check out the apps that Perficient Digital and Ensemble built.

Adobe: Tell us about your hotel booking and rewards POC app and why you built it.

Baddley: More and more people leave their computers at home and rely on their phones when they’re on vacation. Our Hotel Modo POC app, was designed to show hotels how they can use an app to promote on-site activities, like restaurant meals or spa dates, by telling on-site guests about deals or open reservation times. Even when guests return home, hotels can use customer profiles to personalize the app experience and highlight promotional room rates or vacation packages that keep guests coming back. We see this type of app as a great opportunity for hotels to deliver personalized experiences and recommendations that encourage guests to spend more of their time and money on the property.

http://blogs.adobe.com/aemmobile/files/2016/08/Axis41.pngAdobe: Why deliver this experience in a mobile app rather than a mobile-friendly website?

Nash: The benefit of having a mobile app instead of just a website is that you can utilize the technology inside of the phone to deliver an additional layer of experience to customers. For example, you can use location technology to send a message and introduce the user to features and specials for any restaurant or amenity that they pass.

Baddley: Delivering personalized experiences is applicable to almost every industry. With Experience Manager Mobile, Axis41 can take these same principles that we developed for Hotel Modo and quickly build apps for companies in industries such as financial services, retail, or any other industry where the company wants to provide a personalized experience.

Adobe: What are some typical challenges companies face when creating apps?

Baddley: Creating mobile apps can be intimidating. Development platforms can be technical and complex, and they might require significant investment to get up and running. Many marketers will work with a developer to create and update content, but this pushes back turnaround times and increases development costs.

Adobe: How does Experience Manager Mobile help marketers solve these challenges?http://blogs.adobe.com/aemmobile/files/2016/08/adobe-infobit_black-2.png

Baddley: We’re excited about Experience Manager Mobile because it reduces the cost, time, and resource requirements associated with mobile app development. Companies that were afraid of investing in apps are going to be much more excited once they see how easy it is to work with Experience Manager Mobile. Marketers and other content creators can manage content and personalize experiences for the end user without having to go back to a developer.

Nash: If marketers are familiar with Experience Manager Sites, they’ll find that Experience Manager Mobile is built on the same idea. People can take the content from their website and easily adapt it for an app with added features that make apps so effective.

Adobe: How do the Experience Manager Mobile integrations with Adobe Marketing Cloud, including Experience Manager, help engage customers?

Baddley: With Experience Manager Assets, companies can manage assets in one place and reuse content across their website, mobile app, and even offline media. It gives a much more unified brand experience across all of their marketing materials.

Nash: The most interesting thing about Experience Manager Mobile is how it’s built with the Marketing Cloud in mind. We can integrate Target for greater personalization, or Analytics for rich insights into how people are actually using the app. That, for me, is the real power of Experience Manager Mobile.

Baddley: Our focus at Axis41 is to help our clients build relationships with customers. Experience Manager Mobile is a natural extension of what we’re already doing that expands our client’s brand story to the mobile channel.

Want to know more? Click here to learn more about Experience Manager Mobile.

Read our Travel and Hospitality brief to learn how to build apps that will empower your employees and move your customers.

To speak with a Travel & Hospitality expert, email Matt Stutz for more information.