At the DMA conference today, Adobe will announce the launch of a new email retargeting feature for its Adobe Campaign marketing automation platform.
The new feature allows marketers to automate emails that specifically target site visitors who abandon their shopping carts before completing a purchase. Through an integration with Adobe Analytics, marketers can now identify cart abandoners either through the email they have entered in the checkout process, or through matching their profile in a CRM system if they are are a repeat customer. Once that email is captured, Campaign can send an automated follow up email that gives the customer an incentive to complete the purchase, such as a discount coupon, or free shipping.
In case a customer decides to try gaming the system by purposely abandoning their cart several times, Campaign can view their purchase history to see if they’ve already been offered free shipping, and send them a different type of follow up email. Campaign will also offer A/B testing in order to help optimize the content of follow up emails.
Adobe Campaign director of product Kerry Reilly says the new tool is only the first in a series of integrations and retargeting features that Adobe is developing within its marketing solutions. “We took a practical, systematic approach towards integration,” says Reilly. “Going after abandoned shopping carts, especially with an automated, real-time approach to remarketing was low hanging fruit.” Rather than creating retargeting capabilities for every channel all at once, Adobe is building out the features according to specific use cases says Reilly.
Reilly says customers can expect more integration within Adobe’s Marketing Cloud solutions to enable retargeting through other channels such as display ads, social and mobile. In addition, the goal will be to reach anonymous site visitors through cookie targeting, utilizing Adobe’s Master Marketing Profile.
Adobe will definitely have to get moving on those new developments fast, since a lot of what it’s talking about is currently being offered by competitor Salesforce’s ExactTarget Journey Builder platform. Journey Builder allows marketers to automate responses to customers triggered by specific interactions they take across multiple channels, including email and mobile apps.
For now, Campaign’s automated retargeting is only limited to emails, but Reilly stressed Adobe’s other strengths, such as integration with the comprehensive Analytics, and Adobe’s highly rated digital asset management system in Experience Manager.
