7 Ways to Make the Most of Launch by Adobe

Dynamic Tag Management (or DTM) has been part of Adobe’s offering since 2013, and users have done miraculous things with it. Companies have cut digital development times from months to days or even hours, added functionality, and improved digital experiences — all leading to increased conversions.

We’re proud of what users have done with DTM but digital technologies are on the rise in both numbers and complexity, and current tag management systems will soon be unable to keep up. As a result, the minds behind DTM have created the system’s successor. Adobe Experience Platform Launch — or just Launch for short — has been in development for two years to be the next-gen replacement for first generation tag management systems, like DTM.

Launching the Next Phase of Tag Management

Launch comes as the pre-emptive solution to meet the present and future needs of digital technology deployment and management. Let’s look at seven reasons to upgrade from DTM to Launch by Adobe.

1. Switching to Launch is straight forward

Traditionally, switching from one tag manager to another would mean finding and replacing the embed code from the prior tag manager. This translates into tedious and time consuming work that many brands dread. But, with Launch, you can rest easy. When upgrading from DTM to Launch, the built-in Adaptors do that heavy lifting for you, streamlining the migration without needing to manually replace the DTM embed code.

2. Use expert-built integrations from key brands.

When we say that third-party vendors can create their own integrations, we mean it. Launch is the only tag management system on the market that allows technology providers to create and update their own integrations, known as Extensions, without learning any custom code — that means anything from configuring how a technology operates to adding new functionality.

Jon Viray, product marketing lead for Launch by Adobe, explains, “This goes back to ownership,” he says. “If Adobe updates a company’s extension, you have excellent developers. But still, people who are not the experts of that technology are updating the integration. That’s the fundamental flaw in a closed tag management system.” Launch doesn’t limit the construction of integrations to just Adobe developers, so any web-based technology provider can make updates to their technologies and quickly update their extensions to match.

This improves the overall quality and value of integrations. “The end integration, the end extension, is higher quality because the people with the most expertise build it,” Jon says. If a company wants to add something totally new, they can do it and then update their own Launch Extension. This adds value for these third parties because it gives them control. Added value means more incentive to keep their extensions relevant and powerful.

And, as we leave integrations to the experts, we give them free reign to build whatever they want. “A customer could build their own interface, if they wanted to,” Jon says. “We think our user interface is fantastic, but that’s how customizable it is. Every piece of functionality is tied to an API, and all of those APIs are public.” This means companies can use Launch to provide just about any function they want — all without ever needing to leave Launch. For example, Facebook’s extension could enable a customer to sign up for its ad service — in addition to managing it — all from inside the Launch interface.

3. Explore our extension catalogue — our one-stop-shop for web-based technologies.

When third parties create integrations for their technologies, we host them in a catalog similar to an app store. The result is that brands gain access to a wide range of third-party technologies in one place — a one-stop shop for web-based technologies. This makes it quick and easy to see which technologies are available to marketers and developers to get sites up and running, enabling faster turnaround and shorter time to market.

“Anybody can go into Launch and build an integration for their technology,” Jon says. “Even our competitors. That’s unique in the space.” This catalog — which already hosts extensions from companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google — means that Launch users can work with any web technology, not just Adobe integrations.

4. Take control with centralized rights management.

Not only can administrators control who can publish, they can also control who has access to different parts of Launch. In addition, with granular rights management, administrators can designate who has access to specific integrations — and who doesn’t. Simply create rules that have very specific rights and/or access, then select the individuals who have permission to use those rights or access, creating an approved group.

These tools help administrators know who has what access, and allows them to make quick, easy changes to get people the rights they need without spreading rights throughout the organization unnecessarily.

5. Automate complex tasks for instant deployment.

Rather than writing the core code and then bolting on APIs like most marketing technologies, Launch was built on an API platform to maximize automation capability. For example, if a brand would like to track a particular behavior across all their websites, in the old tag managers, they would have had to go into the user interface and click around to begin tracking these behaviors on each of their websites. This takes up valuable time.

In Launch, developers can write a script that leverages Launch’s open APIs to programmatically track the behavior in seconds. The result is money saved because, as the saying goes, time is money.

6. Deploy your dream consumer experience via Rule Builder.

In 2009, there was an average of two technology tags on an enterprise website. Today, there are over 20. Even so, consumers expect seamless experiences that act on their every need in real-time. Often, the seamless consumer experience isn’t delivered by one technology. It’s delivered by an ecosystem of technologies

Launch helps to unify this ecosystem by giving marketers an interface to help those tools work together. Here’s how it works. At its core Launch’s Rule Builder is a if/then statement. Inside each if/then statement is where data from different integrations — YouTube, Foresee, and Adobe Analytics, for example — can come together.

For instance, a brand could set up the following if/then statement in Rules: If a visitor is on this page for longer than five minutes, then execute Adobe Analytics, YouTube, and Foresee. As a result, if a consumer is stuck on a particular page for more than five minutes the brand can automatically begin tracking the point of friction, employ a YouTube video to improve the consumer’s experience and resolve whatever has them stuck, and then offer a survey to capture their frustrations, thereby sending a message that the brand cares about them. This means the brand can employ an if/then statement to unify the functionality of three technologies from three different vendors and, ultimately, offer a streamlined and improved customer experience.

7. Manage production and publishing in an organized, collaboration-based environment.

With Launch by Adobe’s component-based publishing, you have all the control. Create libraries to determine precisely what you’d like to publish, and go all the way to development, staging, and production.

And don’t worry about cross-user conflicts. Launch will notify a user when another has made a change to a rule within the library so all users are on the same page. All users selected to join the team and who have publishing rights can find, add, inspect, or delete the rules, data elements, and extensions that make up the libraries to which they have access rights.

Get Ready to Launch

For years, DTM has been at the head of the pack for tag management. Launch allows you to take everything that you did in DTM and expand on it by tapping into a host of new features that prepare your digital experience for the future. In fact, Jon assures users that “if, ten years from now, they need something new that we didn’t think of today, it doesn’t matter. Launch is so adaptive that new functionality can be added to it.”

New technologies bring new experiences to customers but also place new demands on existing infrastructure. Launch is the next-gen tag management system built from the ground up to help you create ever-leading digital experiences, thereby meeting and exceeding customer experience expectations now and in the future.

For more information about what Adobe Experience Platform Launch can do for your business, read our whitepaper on reasons to upgrade to Launch, then visit the Adobe Launch page to check out our cutting-edge tag management system. Read more in our #ProjectLaunch series.