Adobe Launches App Creation & Management Tool For Marketers

Adobe is out with several announcements this week that it hopes will make app creation and management easier for marketers.

The key one is the launch of Adobe Experience Manager Mobile on its Marketing Cloud, intended to simplify the building and managing of apps, especially enterprise apps. It unifies and expands on functions previously found in the company’s Digital Publishing Solution (DPS) and Experience Manager Apps, both of which are being retired as separate brands. For the indefinite future, DPS is being made available to existing customers as an on-demand service.

Experience Manager Mobile also brings app creation and management closer together on the Adobe platform, not unlike the way content management systems (CMSs) have done for websites.

Senior Product Marketing Manager Bridget Roman told me that marketers and designers can now work together in Experience Manager Mobile to create apps using customizable templates without involving the IT department, as was previously required.

A developer is still needed, however, for connecting the apps to back-end systems and data, like customer relationship management, personal identification numbers or enterprise resource systems, but she said such integration is also simplified. Such apps might include consumer-facing mobile banking or on-site tools for insurance claims adjusters.

The created apps are also more deeply integrated into Adobe’s Marketing Cloud, Roman said. This means they can be centrally managed from a unified dashboard in Experience Manager Mobile, and their content can be managed from the Adobe Experience Manager, employing the same team that manages the brand’s website. Roman noted this makes it easier for brands that have to centrally manage content, such as compliance-restricted financial services or health care companies.

Previously, managing apps and their content was dispersed across several Adobe tools. There’s also now integration with Adobe Target for user segmentation, which previously had been offered through DPS.

In all, creating and deploying data-infused apps can now be done in a couple of months, she said, as opposed to a previous Adobe-enabled timeline that might have taken up to nine months.

Roman said that Adobe is targeting IBM and Apple’s MobileFirst enterprise apps initiative and Microsoft’s PowerApp solution as its key competitors in streamlined enterprise-focused apps. Adobe’s differentiators, she said, include the unified dashboard for app management and direct integration with the company’s enterprise-grade CMS, Adobe Experience Manager.

Adobe is also announcing several additions to pump up the capabilities of apps created and managed with its Marketing Cloud. For the first time, it is offering through its Marketing Cloud deep linking that leads directly into an inner screen in an app. Location-based personalization is now updated so location data can be pulled from a brand-maintained point-of-interest database, like all nearby car dealerships.

And mobile messaging is now unified with other messaging in the Marketing Cloud, so that location data, Marketing Cloud IDs, and other Cloud-based factors can be employed when messages are sent.