Over the years, we have gotten many requests from customers asking for clarity around how best to use Adobe Target Audiences and Locations when setting up Activities via the Visual Experience Composer (VEC) or Form-based creation.
This video will share best practices and explain how best to leverage the functionality.
Video Transcriptwe put together this quick video to
hopefully help
some confusion out there and to share
some best practices and in ways to can
think about test locations and audiences
and how they play out when setting up a
test and adobe target whether using a
visual editor
or a form-based activity
so let me jump in here and show you uh
what’s going on here so i’m creating an
activity i’m going to use the visual
editor so here you supply the url this
is the location this is where you want
the test to execute we’re not thinking
about
using the target profile or anything
like that like you know for repeat
customers or people coming from google
or anything like that this is where the
test is running the location so i’m
going to enter in the url there
so the visual editor is loading and
doing its thing
so i’m clicking on the gear here and
then i’m going to apply page delivery
let’s say we want to expand on that
location
to apply to run on the mia provo blog
so i’ve got lots of options here to
expand on this location and and this is
the first part of the confusion uh
between
locations and audiences that we get
questions on
so
we’re limited here in terms of a list
there’s nothing to do with
people from texas or geographic data
it’s limited to location based which it
should it makes sense to do that let’s
say
i wanted to update this to go on the
blog i can do
or url
contains
www.miaprobot.com
blog cool so now whatever i do in the
visual composer will be applied here
uh on our homepage as well as here i can
also make sure i can use path i could do
you know things
that make sense for locations where
specifically
is the test running so i’ll just save
this update here
so within this section it’s best to
think of it at this experience stage is
not so much who’s going to become a
member of test but rather where the test
is running
you’ll notice there’s a component here
for audiences
i’m going to come back to this i think
this would be better served under the
targeting but i’m going to come back to
this in just a second here let me go
back into another window here and
i’m going to go ahead and create a form
based activity so create an a b test
come here i’m going to select form uh
properties uh is a whole other component
it is very it’s part of locations again
this whole first step whether this
visual editor where you put a url is
location
form is also location because properties
are defined uh you know based off of
where the organization uh defines the
properties and they’re based off of urls
or where the unbox calls are coming from
so now you’ll notice here in the form
target global emma so choose my inbox
now if you notice like in the visual
editor i supplied a url i told adobe
target this is where the test is running
but if i apply code in here i go ahead
and i create an offer and or pick an
offer
it’s a global inbox so it’s gonna that
offer is gonna fire and adobe rightly so
i was like whoa you should you should
refine and limit the scope
uh specifically limit where the code the
offer is going to fire the visual editor
absorbs this information automatically
and so
the test by default will only fire uh in
supply code based off of the url but the
refinements here
are audience refinements so in the
visual editor if you notice it’s it’s
based off of you get
uh
you get url per you know path domain
that sort of thing so here you could go
ahead and create an audience based off
of anything
browser operating system geo targeting
stuff that speaks to the the audience
that the the visitors that you want in
um yes there’s overlap i could go in
here and i could do site page uh current
page
url
due to do
contains
you know forward slash block cool okay
so
you’re able to accomplish that but
because you’re being exposed to
visitor stuff right um it’s creating
some some confusion so
even though you can create all of these
other different things based off of
these attributes
at this particular state please uh
consider you know think of this as the
scope of where you want the test to run
when it comes to audience members leave
that through here you can create
audiences you can use all the rich data
you’d like you can combine multiple
audiences
this is something very cool uh you’re
not able to do it in the audience
section although there’s a pretty big
update coming there which might enable
this um
but you think about it this day in the
targeting who
not where who experiences is is is the
where and and the same thing goes for
the visual editor use the
think of this as who’s going to become
members of this test
uh so
that makes sense so uh
here on the experience tab i said i’d
come back to this i’ll do this for both
so on the left here this is form base
okay
so you’ll notice here in the form base
audiences single and multiple
okay which i think is i think this needs
to be moved over to here as well but
they’re actually it makes sense for here
but let’s say i select multiple
audiences here
so i’ve got this odd i’m now
within i’m going to add an experience b
experience c
i’ll add in uh an audience let me just
create one here i’m going to say
chicago
add
rule geo
i’m not a big fan you know yeah i could
select city but
to me
companies are better to use dma you’re
going to get a wider a wider net in
terms of audiences so i’m a big fan of
dma but you can use city there
so wait for this to show up here in just
a second i’m just a shortcut
whenever i create an audience i like to
just create copies of all the ones i’m
going to use for the test
to do so dma i’m going to do this i’m
going to change this to san francisco
okay so yeah this is a much wider net
san francisco oakland san jose okay so
i’ll enter this to the dma
save okay cool so first test i want to
select
chicago so there’s my audience for
chicago i’m actually going to get delete
this i’ll stick with just an a and b so
chicago
i’m going to add in san francisco so
what this enables you to do
we still have the location specific i’m
actually going to update this because
because we need to do this so i’m going
to do
home page hopefully i have that in there
home
nope i don’t let me get out of there so
let me create the homepage big fan of
homepage is path
equals
that uh that allows it doesn’t create an
equal you don’t have to worry about
issues with contains uh or you know
lots lots of companies have had issues
not doing this this is an awesome uh
approach so i’m gonna do a current page
path
to do uh not contains we’re gonna use
equals here equals this so someone comes
in from paid search or something where
there’s utm or tracking parameters
you’ll still be members of this test
this limits the scope uh but this does
not uh if you’ve got lower environments
with different subdomains you’d want to
update that information
so here again
location
here is
audiences so basically if you get
experience a you can have an offer for
chicago and an offer for san francisco
for down here and i’ll and i’ll show you
an example of that
same thing applies within here so again
think of this section as
location where the test is running but
you do have the ability to add multiple
audiences with it within here same thing
as i did here so i’m going to change the
audience
i’m going to choose chicago done
and then i’ll add in san francisco
and here’s an example of how this comes
together
let’s say you’re united airlines i’m a
big united fan here um approaching a
million miler hopefully in the next year
or two
um but let’s say united wanted to run an
a b test where the control was the same
but let’s say they wanted to
highlight a new route for
uh people from from chicago here i i
typed this up so
multiple audience examples united wants
to run a test to visitors in chicago and
san francisco promoting new routes sfo
to ogg ogg is maui in hawaii and ord is
o’hare in chicago and ogg so
how the multiple audiences works is we
in the uh experiences we define the
location
but then we can also add in different
audiences like this and so the test
would look like this chicago you can
have a chicago imagery with text
promoting oh uh ord ogg
uh in san francisco the same thing so
that that’s kind of where that comes
together within adobe uh target within
here so hopefully that makes sense uh
like i said it was a big customer today
set up some tests and had it was a
little screwed up so i had enough
thought i’d make a quick video uh if you
like this and like others or got other
ideas for content to be helpful please
add it to the comments thank you
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