Get more out of the New In-App Message Channel from Adobe Campaign

“Mom! You forgot to get me jazz shoes for drama. Those are due next Tuesday!” pouted my twelve-year-old son as I shoved bags in the trunk of the car. We were getting ready to drive to the airport for a family vacation over the president’s day weekend.

My seven-year-old daughter immediately decided to pile on while rolling her eyes, “And Mom, you have not even ordered those pencil leads as well that I need for school next week!”

While sitting in the car, I ran through my mental checklist. I have to check out that new restaurant (that I got notification on last week) and make reservations for the upcoming moms’ night out. And oh! I really have to buy one of that new style of shoes this weekend using my reward points coupled with President’s Day deal! If only I could get 15 minutes on my mobile phone, I will surely be able to knock all of these tasks out.

Later, at the airport, it was a bit more crowded than usual, but I managed to find some time to knock off the tasks just before the boarding announcement was made.

Phew! Mission accomplished.

I had a sense of immense relief as I looked up from my phone screen… almost even a pang of pride at having fulfilled my mom duties successfully! Now, I can get on with that vacation fully relaxed.

In this time and age, it is next to impossible to imagine how one would run the business of their lives without these powerful devices called mobile phones and mobile apps that enhance every single function of our daily lives. And that’s why the release of in-app message channel in Adobe Campaign is so exciting to me! As a consumer, I can fully relate to a brand’s ability to enhance their end user’s mobile experience using this messaging channel.

In-app message — a new mobile channel in Adobe Campaign

As a marketer, you are already familiar with the power of Adobe Campaign to engage and retain mobile users with various messaging channels like push, SMS, and responsive emails. Now, we’re announcing the general availability of yet another mobile engagement channel — in-app message. This channel enables companies to create a highly personalized and enriching experience for their mobile app users by presenting contextually relevant messages in response to a user’s real-time behavior. And, it creates value for brands by driving users toward a high-value action.

in-app message channel encompasses all the core Campaign capabilities like message personalization using profile attributes, cross-channel campaign orchestration via workflows, delivery scale, and much more. In the following paragraphs, I describe some key features of this channel that will help you craft a riveting experience for the users of your mobile app.

But before that, let us ensure you know how to access the channel.

How to access the in-app message channel in Campaign

Existing Adobe Campaign customers leveraging the mobile app channel are entitled to the in-app message channel for no additional cost. On the other hand, if you are a new customer, contact your account executive to help you procure a mobile app SKU.

Once the mobile app SKU is provisioned, a Campaign user can access the in-app message channel via ACS (Adobe Campaign Standard) home page, marketing activities page, or workflow — similar to all other channels in Campaign.

Now that you know how to access the channel, let me present some key features of this channel to help you get the most out of it.

Target users with a highly personalized message

In-app message offers brands the option of targeting users via three different out-of-the-box delivery templates, providing flexibility to pick one based on marketing goals and needs. These delivery templates include the ability to:

• Broadcast to all mobile app users whether or not Campaign has their profile information. Use cases in this category include mobile app tutorials to first-time app launchers or announcements for new feature releases. This kind of targeting is extremely useful in creating a best-in-class first impression as well as showcasing the value of the mobile app.
• Target anonymous users (those who have interacted with a brand’s mobile app but haven’t created a login yet) with messages personalized based on user attributes obtained from a mobile device. For example, a brand can target all customers that launched their app more than five times in the past week. This type of messaging is effective in keeping users interested and encouraging sign-up.
• Target Campaign profiles (those who have logged into the app) with messages personalized with CRM profile attributes available in Campaign. This template is most useful to support cross-channel orchestration use cases, where a brand has already targeted users on other channels like email, push, and/or SMS. Based on a user’s responsiveness, the in-app messaging channel can be leveraged to create a uniquely engaging experience based on an integrated view of the user’s profile.

Display messages in real time in response to user’s actions

In-app messages in Campaign are displayed in real time in response to a user’s interaction with the app, such as launching an app, making a purchase, or browsing a particular page of the app, etc. These actions serve as triggers and are defined as in-app message rules in the ACS interface.

The channel supports several different options for defining event triggers.

• Custom events: This option allows you to define custom events and use them as triggers. The events are associated with a mobile app and instrumented therein.
• Adobe Analytics events: This option is relevant to those customers who are leveraging the Adobe Experience Platform (the first ever platform for Customer Experience Management) SDK in their apps that are already capturing and sending events to AA (Adobe Analytics) servers. This allows marketers to utilize analytics events, context data, and view state as rules for displaying in-app messages.
• Lifecycle events: In addition to custom events and analytics events, you can also leverage the Experience Platform SDK out-of-box lifecycle events like launched, crashed, etc. to trigger an in-app message.

Engage users with rich content

To create a compelling app experience, the in-app message channel offers two different modes of authoring the message:

• Use out-of-the-box template layouts or
• Upload your own custom HTML

Out-of-the-box template layouts support multiple modes and a variety of content options like text, images, video, buttons, redirect URLs, etc. Custom HTML, on the other hand, allows you to leverage content produced by content creators and provides more control on overall branding and consistency across multiple channels.

Try out and innovate

On Monday evening, I and my family returned home to see packages lying outside the main door. Kids jumped with glee and I felt happy too! After all, I was fully prepared to take on another week…

Our mobile phones have changed our lives irrevocably… for the better. From the time we are woken up by the alarm in our phones to the time we go to bed, all those mobile apps are at work like little ninjas, helping us make reservations, get reminders for important events, order goods, search for stuff, inform and educate ourselves, and whatnot. So, as a consumer, I really appreciate when I come across brands who have designed and optimized their mobile experiences to suit my needs.

in-app messages are a powerful tool that amplifies a brand’s marketing efforts in two ways. One, this message type gives you additional ways of enhancing the overall experience and value proposition of your mobile app, and two, it complements the push-notifications channel, wherein push notifications drive users to mobile apps and in-app messages help keep them longer in the app which potentially leads to higher conversion rate.

From offers to soft opt-in for push notifications, from tutorials to seeking app feedback, there are a variety of use cases that marketers can enable using in-app messaging. I cannot wait for Campaign customers to get this powerful tool in their hands and unleash many more innovative use cases that will create more meaningful and memorable experiences for end users like me. More info about our mobile innovations in Campaign can be found here.

For questions and feedback, please reach out to us on our community page.