Marketers using Adobe Systems Inc. for their social media campaigns will now be able to do it all on one dashboard, as Adobe is releasing updates to its Marketing Cloud program today.
Right now, marketers using programs like Adobe Social, Adobe Media Optimizer, Adobe Target, Adobe Experience Manager, and Adobe Analytics need to monitor them separately and use different login systems for each program.
That is, until today, when Adobe rolled out a new user interface, pulling all of these programs into one dashboard for easier access. Branded as the new Adobe Social, the dashboard integrates with Adobe’s Marketing Cloud feed also uses a Single Sign On feature, meaning just one password will be enough to log in to all of these accounts.
While Adobe’s famous for its Photoshop and Acrobat programs, Emi Hofmeister, senior product marketing manager of Adobe Social, wants to emphasize its social marketing software is more than that. The new Adobe Social helps customers “connect the dots” when they’re working on their social marketing campaigns, she says.
“Within social in particular, it’s very clear it exists in a silo. It’s difficult to measure the value of social because it’s isolated from the rest of the marketing organization,” Hofmeister says.
“It may be difficult to quantify the value and really understand what social is doing for your brand … We’ve heard our customers say, now that we’re in social and we made that investment, what is it worth? What is it producing for us in the long run?”
Hofmeister adds marketers find it difficult to gauge how effective social media is, since its data is measured in different metrics such as Facebook Likes and Shares or tweets on Twitter. There are also so many different social media channels, which makes it hard for marketers to figure out which are the most relevant to their brand and users. That’s where the new dashboard comes in, since it helps marketers keep track of all of their networks, she says.
Adobe also added a new social data listening feature, tapping into popular social media networks like Foursquare, Flickr, and Instagram to find out what people are talking about. With Foursquare, Adobe Social notes how many check-ins a location has received, though it doesn’t record which individual users are actually checking in. However, that can give marketers a good ballpark of trending topics and where to focus their campaigns.
That brings marketers to Adobe’s last update – predictive publishing and recommendations. Adobe Social’s analytics looks at factors like keywords, online engagement, and ad impressions to help marketers predict what topics will be well received, as well as the best times for a post to go live. That also makes it easier for marketers to send notes to other departments, like advertising, to let them know which posts are doing well and how their business can take advantage of them.
For current Adobe Marketing Cloud customers, these updates come automatically with their subscription, so there is no change in pricing to get these features. They will become available on July 18.
