A powerful tool, if you have a plan for it.
July 14, 2014

A powerful tool, if you have a plan for it.

Rodrigo Domingues | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

15

Modules Used

  • SiteCatalyst
  • Discover

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Marketing Cloud

Adobe Marketing Cloud was the essential tool to identify in which stage of the conversion funnel customers stand and inform sales department on maturity of leads. By integrating the tool with the company's CRM solution we were able to feed registered user navigation patterns into a model to predict likelihood of conversion and flag leads automatically. The tool was also used by the marketing team as a source of pre and post-campaign intelligence. Discover—one of the most versatile tools in Adobe Marketing Cloud—allowed us to fine-tune our user segmentation and develop our own metrics.

Pros

  • While most web analytics tools rely on aggregate navigation data, Adobe Marketing Cloud allows analysis up to the individual user-level—an essential feature for companies doing digital marketing for B2B.
  • Flexibility defining custom variables. You can customize the tool to fit your business' needs.
  • Allows integration with 3rd party tools such as CRM and sales software.

Cons

  • Price. If all you need is a basic web stats, you should choose a cheaper/free and more intuitive solution.
  • Scarcity of professionals proficient at the tool combined with a steep learning curve has to be taken into consideration before adoption.
  • Endless customizations can give you to more data than you need. If you don't have an plan in place for analytics you'll end up a victim of "analysis-paralysis"
  • Adobe Marketing Cloud has been a valuable customer-aquisition asset for several B2B companies I've had contact with. While return in investment depends on other variables surrounding the tool and the business, consistent increase in lead-to-conversion rates have been a good indication of increase in performance.
  • For B2C businesses, however, Adobe Marketing Cloud can be an overkill solution. Its high license, implementation and maintenance costs make it a hard investment to back, since cheaper solutions can provide the same kinds of insights.
  • If poorly implemented the tool can give you misleading information and discredit the marketing analytics professionals/section of the business.
Adobe Marketing Cloud is a great solution if you need individual-user level analytics, a high degree of customization and integration with sales or customer management systems.

However, if you want to understand how segments behave in an aggregate level, understand the sources of traffic to a website and assess visitor engagement, Google Analytics is a more sensible solution. Google Analytics' latest updates (in addition to Google Tag Manager), has increased the customization possibilities and allows marketing teams to tailor the tool to the business needs in a simple way.
Although a powerful tool, Google Analytics has been catching up in capabilities and is much simpler to use.
As analytics move to the spotlight, more sections in a company want to have access to it. However, creating straightforward reports/dashboards and sharing them with different groups is not a strength of Adobe Marketing Cloud.
This can be a powerful solution for B2B companies that rely on web for finding leads. It's important to have in mind that the fee paid to Adobe can be just a small share of the whole investment needed to make the best use of the tool. An airtight implementation, integration with other systems and experienced professionals may double the cost of your investment. If all you need is to understand how large segments behave on your website, I recommend you go for cheaper and more user-friendly solutions.

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