Tag management platform Ensighten is making it easier for marketers to bypass the IT department.
With its new Ensighten Mobile tool, brands can adjust the functionality of their mobile apps and campaigns on the fly, without relying on software development kits (SDKs) provided by the mobile platform. Essentially, the back end coding of the apps can be tweaked without having to ask the software developers to do it, making it easier to correct mistakes, react to real-time developments, and modify the app without the user having to download an update.
Ensighten’s tag management platform enables marketers to manage and modify the functionality of their owned channels, such as websites and mobile apps, with the ability to adjust multiple properties from a single dashboard. It serves as a complement to content management and customer experience management platforms which modify the visuals and front facing technology.
While companies such as Adobe (with Adobe Experience Manager) and Sitecore provide a lot of real-time site management capabilities that compete with Ensighten, Manion says it is the independence from SDKs that makes Ensighten stand apart from the competition.
“In the old school way of using an SDK, you effectively give the developer a set of tools and ask them to be kind of a fortune teller in terms of which data you want to collect, any actions you want to take in the future and you ask them to precode that into the application,” says Ensighten CEO Josh Manion. “In our approach, by inserting a single line of code into the application, the marketers have the ability to change what data is collected, change what vendors you might choose to share that data with or even optimize the experience of the mobile app itself.”
Modifications to the apps functionality include adding or removing clicks, forms, tracking new events or implementing A/B testing.
Manion gave the example of Ensighten client United Airlines, which used the platform to correct misleading text in its app about its Mileage Plus program that had been published in error, within a matter of minutes after spotting the mistake. It was able to display the corrected app without forcing the customers to download an update. “Without our technology, it could have been days or maybe even weeks before it was fixed,” says Manion.
