Adobe Test and Target is an A/B, multi-variate testing platform which Adobe acquired as part of the Omniture platform in 2009. It is now part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud. It offers tight integration with Adobe analytics and content management products.
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Movable Ink
Score 8.2 out of 10
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The Movable Ink platform from the company of the same name in New York allows marketing content creators to design and deploy a consistent visual experience for customers across digital experiences, from email, to webstore, to mobile apps.
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PathFactory
Score 8.4 out of 10
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PathFactory enables you to unlock B2B revenue with AI-powered content intelligence which allows you to generate personalized, engaging, and conversion-focused experiences across the entire B2B buyer journey. Per the vendor, you can accelerate deal velocity and grow your pipeline by recommending the next-best assets for individual buyers and target accounts alike.
If you're using the Adobe stack and tools to power your website, Target is a great solution to implement. I've utilized Target within two organizations, one running on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), and the other on Adobe Magento. I don't see how companies could harness the full capacity of Target without also having Adobe Analytics integrated. This is their 'secret sauce' and might not be a good solution for companies who are invested in Google Analytics 360. Integration was straightforward but did require support from the Adobe team to implement successfully. While Target is a great tool for digital teams to support, you'll need your tech team aligned and available to support implementation.
Any business that sends out a lot of email communications, and has accessible data that they can, at the very least, format in CSV sheets can utilize [Moveable Ink] with reasonable success. Depending on how your data is housed or received, the integration within Movable Ink is quite simple. I would recommend looking at the list of partners that Movable Ink integrate with. If your business is utilizing any of them regularly, it would make integration even easier. If you do not do a lot with email or your data is not easily accessible I would not recommend Movable Ink.
It's a great tool if you want to create experiences on web and share content with your audience - especially if you want to create bingeable content. For a microsite, I would like to see more modules that build up a page, and great examples for inspiration
This application gives us an incredible integration with Adobe Analytics that allows its operation to be the best and determine the performance of our website.
It offers us an analysis based on user behavior and a web page customization option to adapt and meet the needs of those users.
Personalization--Everyone likes to see their name in lights. Movable Ink allows you to pull in content such as their name, locations that are closest to them, and content they're actually interested in.
Unique Features--Movable Ink provides a variety of apps that can plugged into emails to make the experience more unique and exciting, such as countdown timers, add to calendar features for events, maps, and social feeds.
Tracking--Adding snippets of code to emails allow you to track data, such as opens, impressions, and clickthroughs. You can also track how individuals interact with specific pieces of the email.
User Friendly--Easy to build within apps for those who aren't graphic designers.
This is something a lot of testing tools struggle with, but I think the WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get") editor - or Visual Experience Composer (VEC) in Adobe terminology - could definitely use some work. It's a struggle to execute many tests beyond simple copy, color, placement changes, and even the features that do exist are often clunky if not altogether broken.
The interface itself can be a bit counterintuitive in certain parts. If you are familiar with other tools, it's likely middle of the road in this respect; think much easier to understand than Monetate for instance, but a far cry from the simplicity of an Optimizely.
It can be a bit buggy from time to time. The worst example is the frequency at which the tool will fail to save due to an error, but not inform you of this until you try to save, at which point your only option is to log out, log back in, and make all of your updates once again. It can become an extreme pain point at times, and I personally have just gotten into the habit of saving every couple of minutes to avoid a massive loss of productivity.
I think they could improve with how to provide strategic guidance to customers on applications and use cases. A lot of recommendations aren't applicable to new business models/scenarios
Their transition to onsite/landing page use cases was somewhat effective but we ran into some hiccups with applying the technology onsite
Microsite was very hard to build ourselves. Changing the site can be really confusing and is not always intuitive. We have trouble knowing how to update items to get it to work the way we want it to.
Better instructions on how to customize tracks and use the different tools.
Users that come in without UTM parameters should still be included in all data reporting.
We have a team of people trained on how to use the application and it integrates well with the other Adobe products we use. Our future roadmap of testing will require some complex scenarios which we hope Target will be able to accomplish
We have seen a lot of value from our team's use of Path Factory. We also like working with this vendor as they actually take our feedback and implement it on their roadmap. A great vendor with a great product
The recent UI update is a complete mess. It is difficult to navigate and find features that previously existed. The reactiveness of the page depending on window size is also ridiculous and it is absurd that depending on how large your window is, entire columns of functions will disappear with no indication that they are missing. The usability of the tool has fallen off a cliff.
Overall, I think the tool is fairly easy to use to get a basic content uploaded to create a track and even the more complicated features become easier once you become familiarised with the process
I think there was only one time where we had issues reaching our account manager, otherwise PathFactory was always willing to hop on the phone to talk through strategy, to work through issues, and help build custom solutions to fit our needs. Customer service is a big selling point of PathFactory.
The analytics and reports feature is fairly new and have proved very popular with many areas of our business and is growing in popularity. The metrics that are attainable are very insightful and provides a clear picture on the performance of the track.
On several occasions, we have had the need to ask for help from the Adobe Target support team, and I must say that they have provided us with an excellent experience, as they take care of solving the problems quickly and with high precision
We meet weekly with Jennifer and I can't say enough about her. When issues have happened or we need help, she jumps on it quickly. If she doesn't know the answer, she pulls in Reggie or another on her team that can help. She goes above and beyond and has been very supportive, even when we had a lot of hard questions to answer from higher-ups. All this is on top of just being an awesome person.
The instructor that came to train us was awesome and this training was very useful. I would recommend it for anyone who is going to be using this software. I only mark it lower because it is an added expense to an already expensive product, and a lot of the training covered the "Target" portion of the software (which again, we didn't use)
I was able to browse around the tool quite easily once some basic training was given. I learnt much from using those method and only needed further help when wanting to learn about Reports, External codes and adding forms.
The training was very easy to understand, however it would have been more useful to my development team than me. It was also primarily over-the-phone, which is never as easy to follow as in-person. We ended up scheduling and paying for an in-person training session to supplement the online/phone training because it wasn't helpful enough.
The customer service, from technical through to customer success, is one of the biggest reasons I'd recommend PathFactory. This is true of their training. It can be as bespoke as you like, at least in my experience, and the team is always willing (where possible) to incorporate your suggestions.
Implement using a global mBox on the page so you can change any and everything over the traditional method. Traditional method is good if you do not have technical web dev resources, do not know Javascript/jQuery, or you have money to blow on mBox calls. Global deployment reduces mBox calls and allows you to touch many parts of the page easily. A lot more customizable
The PathFactory team was very helpful when implementing the product. They gave us a lot of recommendations on best moving forward. As a note to new users, when implementing I would make sure that you create with your team a system to make sure that the platform is scalable. My team was able to do this through creating a foldering structure, naming conventions for tracks and assets, and ensuring tagging is used on all content uploads. I would also make sure when implementing that you have an understanding of how your team will track success and that your brand team is involved to make sure that there is consistency in the look and feel of the tracks
We seriously considered another software but because we use so many other Adobe products this made the most sense for us. If you are not dependent on other Adobe software and are a smaller company, in my opinion, Target may not be the best fit.
I used Uberflip in a past company. I think they are pretty comparable. From what I remember, Uberflip was more intuitive to use, but I think PathFactory might have more capabilities. Although this was years ago, I am not aware of Uberflip's functionality now. I have had good experiences with both.
Pathfactory is growing in popularity amongst individuals from different parts of the organisation and it would be difficult to forecast how scalable this can become
We have been able to run specific A/B tests that have shown an increase in conversion, which in turn has led to very large banked sales numbers for the year.
We have been able to prove that using and automated Merchandising process did not decrease conversion. This allowed us to greatly increase efficiency by opening up resource time.
We saw ROI within the first 9 months of using PathFactory.
Our onboarding team saw quicker adoption of our product while using PathFactory to engage them during the onboarding process.
We've been able to more accurately understand our content needs and what works best when prospecting for specific segments. (eg. SMB, mid-market, and enterprise)
