Early May 2020, Adobe Campaign Standard made External API activity general available in Release 20.3. Using this feature digital leaders & marketers can execute campaign workflows that invoke an external service through its public facing API. Opening up infinite possibilities of integration with Adobe Campaign Standard (ACS) with other endpoints that enhance customer profiles to manage experiences.

In these times where digital adoption is highest ever, these ACS capabilities would be essential to drive customer-centric experiences & stand out among competitors. A working example is available here

For simplicity, we’ll explore the potential to become more customer-centric across 2 categories:

Customer-Centric Upstream: These capabilities would enhance customer profiles already existing in ACS, in real time to produce omnichannel relevant & connected campaigns.

1. Real Time Customer Scoring: Your ACS instance has a lot of leads, prospects & existing customers. Determining which customers have a higher propensity to purchase or conversion helps drive Marketing ROI. These scores are calculated based on activity/interactions & can onboarded into ACS via batch methods which might not have the latest, when the marketing message is sent.

Using Extend API activity after your query activity in ACS, you can determine the latest scores for a given profile and then apply the most relevant offers. As these offers are derived in real time, profiles within the same audience would get individualized offers. Individualization is the next best step after personalization.

2. Last Touch Channel Attribution:  Often the last touch channel or last interaction of customers is not relevant to the campaign messages actually delivered to the customer. I still get asked to complete my orders for products which I had abandoned in the past and bought something else instead.

With External API activity you can query your eCommerce/CRM/lead management systems about what was the last activity & channel used by the customer. After this activity you can either update profiles with such information or qualify customers for a certain automated campaign

3. Offer Code Management: As your marketing campaigns scales to serve millions of customers, maintaining campaign code & promo codes can become challenging. I am sure your workflows require manual intervention to update the correct promo code for each campaign. Hence the capabilities of real time marketing automation reaches a moot point.

If these offers are hosted in an Azure Cosmos DB or similar cloud capabilities, External API activity can query the most relevant campaign code already existing or register new ones.

After this activity, customers would be served the most relevant & correct promo codes to participate in campaigns. Performance impacts of such initiatives can then be tracked by the correct promo & campaign codes in your digital analytics reports.

Customer-Centric Downstream: After the data has been enhanced to be more real time & relevant, these new capabilities can ensure the next best offer is delivered with the next best experience.

1. IoT & Chatbots: Fundamentally, Internet of Things devices are anything that are connected to internet. So, they have an existing endpoint that can be leveraged to communicate with customers using these devices. Chatbots & chat-based commerce has been lately seen high adoption rates.

With the ease of development reduced thanks to chat platforms like Azure Bot Service & Facebook Messenger Platform they can be easily integrated to deliver offers & experiences using Adobe Campaign Standard. External API activity can deliver customer identifier and persona details to a chatbots experience endpoint that can be rendered into messages during customer interactions.

2. Omnichannel Connected Segments: Audience segments today are based on various data sources & platforms based on which personalization is driven. Due to the various platforms that drive personalization, often these segments are not in sync with the last email or sms or push notification sent to the customer. A confusing customer experience can lead to never-purchase customer behavior.

Using External API activity, for every marketing activity within ACS, segments located in Adobe Audience Manager or Krux etc. can be updated based on the latest details. Hence the end user, after receiving an offer would see the same experience across all digital channels & touchpoints.

3. Error Reporting: With the number of variables & dependencies to deliver experiences ever increasing, the potential for error increases as well. A customer experience in error leads to a brand in horror.

Often ACS encounters errors which are restricted to be viewed within ACS and/or product owners inbox. For visibility to the leadership & enterprise wide, External API activities can forward error logs towards an endpoint at NewRelic/App Dynamics.