AJO & the Power of Decisioning

Anuhya Yaratapalli

Decision Management is the process of making real-time decisions and taking actions based on the data and insights gathered during the customer journey. It enables businesses to automate and optimize their marketing efforts by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to determine the next best action for each customer interaction.

It is a crucial component of Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO), and it can be utilized in Adobe Target to deliver personalized experiences to customers on the web and mobile. (Decisioning API allows businesses to programmatically access and deliver personalized offers across various channels in real-time.)

Decision Management helps businesses determine the most appropriate content, offers, or next steps to deliver to individual customers at any given moment, across inbound and outbound channels, as part of its comprehensive customer journey management solution.

It considers a variety of factors, such as customer preferences, historical behavior, real-time contextual information, and business rules, to make informed decisions. By automating these decisions, businesses can deliver personalized experiences at scale and in real-time, increasing customer satisfaction and driving desired outcomes.

Use Cases: Decision Management in Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO)

Here are some use cases where Decision Management in AJO can be beneficial across different channels:

Website Personalization: Integrating AJO lets you leverage Decision Management to personalize the content and offers displayed to each visitor. Based on real-time data — browsing behavior, past purchases, and demographic information — Decision Management can determine the most relevant product recommendations, promotions, or content to present to individual visitors, increasing engagement and conversions.

For example, if a user has shown a preference for casual clothing, the website might highlight new arrivals or promotions related to casual wear.

Email Campaign Optimization: Based on customer profiles, historical interactions, and real-time data, such as email opens, clicks, and previous purchase behavior, Decision Management in AJO can determine the most relevant offers, product recommendations, or personalized content to include in each email, leading to increased open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

For instance, a user who has been subscribed for a long time might receive an exclusive upgrade offer, while a user who has recently cancelled their subscription could receive a win-back offer.

SMS and Push Notifications: Decision Management in AJO can be utilized to deliver targeted and personalized SMS or push notifications. Considering factors like customer preferences, location, and real-time behavior, Decision Management can determine the most suitable content, offers, or alerts to send to individual customers via these channels, driving engagement and response rates.

For example, a customer who has not made a purchase in a while might receive a SMS reminder with a special discount to encourage them to visit the store, or a lunchtime offer could be sent around mid-morning to remind users to order their lunch from the mobile app.

In-App messaging: AJO's decision management capabilities can analyze user data, such as user behavior, demographics, and past referral activity. Based on this analysis, decision management can identify segments of users who are more likely to refer others.

For example, the decision management system may identify that users who have made multiple purchases in the past are more likely to refer others. In-app messages can be sent to this segment, offering an enhanced referral reward or exclusive incentives for successful referrals.

Decisioning API – Third-Party Custom Applications

AJO provides a Decisioning API that allows businesses to programmatically access and leverage the decision-making capabilities of the platform to deliver personalized offers across various channels in real-time. This API integration allows for seamless integration with existing systems and applications, enabling businesses to provide dynamic and targeted offers to their customers efficiently into their own applications, websites, or systems to dynamically determine and deliver the most relevant offers to customers.

Once the decisioning process is complete, the Decisioning API retrieves the recommended offer or content from AJO. This can include personalized recommendations, promotional offers, specific messages, or any other relevant content tailored to the individual customer.

The retrieved offers can be seamlessly delivered to various channels through the API integration, such as websites, mobile apps, email campaigns, SMS messages, push notifications, or any other third-party customer touchpoints.

Use Cases: Decisioning API

Here are some use cases where Decisioning API can be utilized with third-party applications and tools:

Call Center Support: Agents can access customer profiles, past interactions, and suggested actions based on Decision Management analysis. This enables agents to provide personalized and relevant recommendations or solutions to customers, enhancing the overall customer experience.

For example, if a customer has a high data usage but is on a limited data plan, the call center representative may offer an upgrade to an unlimited data plan at a discounted rate.

Kiosk Experiences: Decision Management allows kiosk experiences to adjust pricing and promotions in real-time based on such factors as inventory levels, customer segments, or competitor pricing. The kiosk can then optimize offers and discounts to maximize sales while ensuring profitability.

For instance, if a customer orders a burger, the kiosk can display a prompt to add fries and a drink at a discounted combo price.

Offer Decisions – Adobe Target

Adobe Target and Adobe Journey Optimizer can work together to enhance the offer decision–making process and deliver personalized experiences. To be able to use offer decisions in Target, Adobe Target Standard or Adobe Target Premium must be implemented using the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK. (The offer decision feature is not available when implementing Target with at.js or other Target SDKs.)

AJO allows businesses to define customer segments based on various attributes and behaviors. Those segments can then be synchronized with Adobe Target to enable personalized targeting and offer decisions for each segment. With AJO’s offer decisioning, Adobe Target can determine and deliver the next best offer for your visitors on web and mobile.Offer decisions created in AJO can be added to Target activities via manual A/B testing or experience targeting using either the Visual Experience Composer (VEC) or the Form-Based Composer to test and deliver personalized offers to your visitors on your inbound channels powered by Target.

The Bottom Line

Decision Management empowers marketers to make data-driven decisions, personalize customer experiences, and optimize marketing efforts in real-time across channels and applications. It helps marketers deliver the right message, to the right audience, at the right time, resulting in improved customer engagement, conversions, and overall marketing effectiveness.Whether it’s CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, analytics tools, or other sales and marketing technologies, our specialists can help you configure, customize, and integrate them seamlessly into your existing infrastructure. Schedule a call to talk with us about putting the right technologies to work for you.