Transcend Tags and Deliver Experiences

The number of webpages and marketing tools has exploded. In 2011, there were roughly 100 different web-based marketing technologies, and now — just five years later — there are more than 3,800.

This explosion of web-marketing tools has given marketers a plethora of options when it comes to delivering compelling experiences, but these marketing tools have also given marketers a couple of unwieldy problems — more products that don’t work well together and more data to wrangle then integrate, for instance.

To develop an experience business, marketers need rich customer data — and there’s plenty of it available from companies’ very own websites. To capture this customer data, businesses use JavaScript tags that allow marketing tools, like Adobe Analytics, to find and store the data they need.

But, there’s a catch.

Bottleneck — Not a Scalable Solution

The availability of more than 3,800 web-marketing tools has ushered in a new reality. Setting up tags for your online marketing tools and managing them across hundreds of webpages is not something that can be accomplished manually with any degree of effectiveness.

With a traditional tag-management solution, you can streamline the process somewhat by using templates that simplify the deployment of these tools; however, even this is turning out to be a bottleneck instead of the scalable solution marketers thought it would be.

Data that flows through marketing tools should be integrated and immediately actionable. Instead, template tag managers place a wedge between marketers and the marketing tools they use by controlling when templates are updated and how they operate. Why should tag managers have ownership over templates that deploy third-party marketing tools? The answer is simple: they shouldn’t.

The Next Generation of Tag Management
It’s time for a new solution that will help marketers deliver exceptional experiences with real-time data that is both trustworthy and integrated. Adobe Experience Platform’s Launch is a next-generation tag-management solution that enables brands to orchestrate and activate web-based marketing tools.

Launch, by Adobe, allows independent software vendors (ISVs) to build, manage, and update their own integrations that connect their products to customer experiences. This gives marketers easy access to a vast catalog of client-side technologies, enabling them to create compelling experiences more quickly than ever before.

Launch, from Adobe, will shift the way marketers gather and use data to deliver personalized, real-time experiences by:

1. Accelerating Time to Value by Simplifying the Deployment of Web Apps
Previously, Adobe customers who were using dynamic tag management had to search for the implementation codes of non-Adobe products. With Launch, marketers have one place from which they can browse, deploy, and configure marketing tools — whether Adobe-owned or not.

2. Delivering Compelling Experiences With Web Apps That Work Together
Launch, from Adobe, allows marketers to determine when marketing tools enter — or don’t enter — the customer experience. But, it also allows those marketing tools to take actions together and share data with one another.

Adobe Launch uses a marketer-friendly rule builder to determine what actions should be taken in each situation. This rule builder integrates the data and functionality of third-party marketing tags and tools by allowing extension authors to embed new capabilities — including events, conditions, actions, and data elements — into each part of the rule builder. Any marketing- or advertising-technology vendor can write a Launch by Adobe extension and build functionality onto the Adobe Experience Platform.

For instance, let’s say a marketer wants to show a specific YouTube video based on anonymous data from Google Analytics and the customer’s actions on the webpage from Adobe Analytics. To accomplish this using Launch, a marketer would create a rule that states:

If a customer with a product affinity of “technophile” clicks on the “learn more” tab on a product page, then play a YouTube video that highlights the technical features that make that product great.

Because Launch, by Adobe, is built upon the Adobe Experience Platform, three different non-Adobe marketing tools would be able to capitalize on its open nature by adding very specific capabilities directly into the Adobe Launch system. Doing this allows all three marketing tools to integrate as a single solution to deliver a more compelling experience.

3. Gaining More Accurate and Consistent Information With Unified Data
It’s not uncommon to have tags for 20 marketing tools on a webpage. Each tag generates data for a specific web app. Perhaps, three of those tags track revenue from the page. However, it’s also not unusual for each tag to capture revenue in a slightly different way, in which case, the three web apps that are tracking revenue are all using different data.

With Launch, from Adobe, you can define how your data — revenue, in this case — is captured and then point your marketing tools to that same correct data point. In fact, Adobe Launch listens to every byte of data that flows through it, allowing marketers and analysts to meticulously manage how data is collected, defined, and distributed across web apps. Launch empowers brands with trustworthy data to fuel the compelling experiences customers crave.

Transcend Tags and Deliver Experiences.
We once thought of tag management only as HTML and JavaScript that’s sole purpose was to put the tag on the page. Today, tag management is no longer about tags — it’s about composing the right data to serve great experiences. Since data is at the heart of tag management, selecting the right solution is critical.

It’s time to upgrade with a solution that’s completely open and extensible. With a flexible, yet sturdy, web foundation that can integrate, unify, and organize data, there will be more options for impacting and delivering on the top-notch experiences your customers crave.

Launch, by Adobe, will be available later this year. To remain up-to-date on the latest news pertaining to Adobe Launch and its release, click the “Stay informed” button on the Adobe Launch homepage.