Adobe Audience Manager Readiness Playbook

Adobe Audience Manager
Operational Readiness Playbook
Created by: Scott Rigby and David Contreras
Date: June 2015

Playbook Objective
The objective of this document is to get your business operationally ready for the
implementation and deployment of Adobe Audience. This will help you and your organisation –
as new Adobe Audience Manager user – to drive maximum value from your investment in
Adobe technology.
Although we have seen many projects succeed, others have faltered due to a lack of internal
investment in the business to ensure they are operationally ready to adopt this new technology.
This playbook will help guide you to avoid some of the common areas we have identified as
missing in less successful implementations.
The recommendations and best practices in Adobe playbooks are ideally intended to be applied
to your business in parallel to your technology solution deployment, to ensure that by the time
you go-live with your solution your business is best positioned to realise value from your
investment.
Adobe playbooks use a common digital governance structure focusing on the key areas of
leadership, strategy, people, product and process to deliver a robust approach to readying your
business whether you are deploying one Adobe solution or multiple.
This playbook should be read by:
Chief Marketing Officer
Head of Digital, Head of Strategy, Head of Marketing
Head of Analytics, Customer Insights Lead, Digital Channel Analyst
Solution Architects, Head of Implementation, Digital Implementation Leads
Program Managers, Project Managers, Business Analysts

Contents
1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 6
1.1 About Adobe Audience Manager ..................................................................................6
1.1.1 Types of Data Collected.........................................................................................6
1.1.2 Custom Segment Generation.................................................................................7
1.1.3 Performance Reporting..........................................................................................7
1.1.4 Ad Server Integration.............................................................................................8
1.1.5 Destination Publishing ...........................................................................................8
1.1.6 Tag Management...................................................................................................9
1.1.7 Data Security and Privacy......................................................................................9
1.2 About this Playbook ......................................................................................................9
2 LEADERSHIP......................................................................................................... 10
2.1 Sponsorship................................................................................................................11
2.2 Buy-In .........................................................................................................................12
2.3 Communication...........................................................................................................12
2.3.1 Communication management ..............................................................................12
2.3.2 Recommended communications process and principles......................................13
2.3.3 Setting communication goals ...............................................................................13
2.3.4 Recommendations on a communication approach...............................................14
2.4 Accountability..............................................................................................................15
2.4.1 Steering committee..............................................................................................16
2.4.2 Common roles and responsibilities within a steering committee...........................16
2.4.3 Setting up a working group ..................................................................................19
3 STRATEGY............................................................................................................ 19
3.1 Digital Marketing Maturity Model .................................................................................20
3.2 Focus..........................................................................................................................25
3.2.1 Digital Strategy ....................................................................................................25
3.2.2 Key Performance Indicator:..................................................................................29
3.3 Alignment....................................................................................................................30
3.3.1 Targeting and Personalisation Strategy ...............................................................31
3.3.2 Building your segments........................................................................................32

3.3.3 Targeting and Personalisation .............................................................................33
3.4 Innovation ...................................................................................................................33
4 PEOPLE ................................................................................................................. 33
4.1 Expertise.....................................................................................................................33
4.2 Structure.....................................................................................................................34
4.2.1 Structures Types..................................................................................................35
4.2.2 Project Based Recommended Organisational Structure ......................................36
4.2.3 Business Recommended Organisational Structure ..............................................37
4.2.4 Roles & Responsibilities ......................................................................................38
4.3 Resources...................................................................................................................44
4.3.1 Resource Model...................................................................................................44
4.4 Community..................................................................................................................45
4.5 Culture........................................................................................................................46
5 PROCESS .............................................................................................................. 47
5.1 Deployment.................................................................................................................47
5.1.1 Implementation Methodology ...............................................................................48
5.1.2 Data Integration Methods.....................................................................................53
5.2 Usage .........................................................................................................................55
5.2.1 Administration......................................................................................................56
5.2.2 Access Levels......................................................................................................56
5.3 Sustainability...............................................................................................................58
5.3.1 Maintaining a Single View of the Customers ........................................................58
5.3.2 Process to Adopt Traditional or Emerging Channels ............................................58
5.3.3 Track and Upgrade ..............................................................................................58
5.3.4 Optimise and Report for Success.........................................................................58
6 TECHNOLOGY / PRODUCT.................................................................................. 59
6.1 Solution fit...................................................................................................................59
6.1.1 Solution Architecture............................................................................................59
6.2 Integrations.................................................................................................................62
6.2.1 Marketing Cloud Integrations ...............................................................................62
6.2.2 Common Third-Party Integrations ........................................................................63
6.3 Data Security and Privacy...........................................................................................65

6.4 Democratisation..........................................................................................................70
6.4.1 Automation ..........................................................................................................71
6.5 Leveraging your investment (The Big Picture).............................................................71
7 CHECKLIST ........................................................................................................... 73
8 ADOBE AUDIENCE MANAGER PRODUCT MATURITY ACTIVITIES................. 74
9 ASSISTANCE CONSULTING OPERATIONAL MATURITY REVIEW .................. 75
10 ADOBE AUDIENCE MANAGER GLOSSARY OF TERMS................................ 75
11 ADOBE AUDIENCE MANAGER TEMPLATES.................................................. 78
11.1 Customer Profile Template .........................................................................................78
11.2 Deep dive insights request template: ..........................................................................79

1 Introduction
1.1 About Adobe Audience Manager
Adobe Audience Manager is the industry’s first data management platform that consolidates
audience information from all available sources. It identifies, quantifies and optimises high-value
target audiences, which can then be offered to advertisers via an integrated, secure, privacy-
friendly management system that works across all advertising distribution platforms.
Adobe Audience Manager helps you manage your data pipeline by bringing your audience data
sets together, making it easy to collect commercially relevant information about site visitors,
create marketable segments and serve targeted advertising and content to the right audience.
The solution also offers easy tag deployment and
management with robust data collection, control and
protection.
1.1.1 Types Of Data Collected
Adobe Audience Manager helps you collect and manage
first-party, second-party and third-party data.
Unlocking customer information assets stored in multiple
silos is one of the biggest data challenges faced by
companies today. From CRM databases, to registration
systems, to ad servers and so forth, companies require tools
that help centralise valuable data and manage customer and
audience information as a single strategic data asset. Adobe
Audience Manager helps you unlock isolated customer
information and manage data collection from multiple
sources. Collected data can be managed based on data
element time-to-live (TTL) values, which helps your
organisation control data expiration across all sources.
Audience Manager is designed to help you manage the
following types of data:
 First-party data collection (own data): First-party data collection is a main Adobe
Audience Manager feature. This core competency addresses the needs of publishers or
advertisers who want to use proprietary data as the cornerstone of their marketing
programs or for targeting and modelling against other data sources.
 Second-party data collection (partner data): Second-party data comes from a
strategic business partner (it's not publisher data). This information is collected and
managed just like first-party data.
Tip
Publishers: Companies
that manage the placement
of advertisements, texts
and other product links on
behalf of a company
(advertiser). Industries
associated in this category
are Media, Entertainment,
Loyalty and Retail.
Advertisers: Companies
that own sales, inventories
and marketing activities of
products or services.
Advertisers partner with
publishers to promote their
offerings. Common
industries associated to the
advertisers are automobile,
finance, insurance
manufacturers, and travel.

 Third-party data collection (purchased data): Third-party data is information
purchased, collected and shared by vendors outside of Adobe Audience Manager.
1.1.2 Custom Segment Generation
Data sources are represented in a client-specific trait taxonomy. Publishers can customise and
modify this taxonomy based on their data source and business use cases. Within the Adobe
Audience Manager interface, publisher team members can browse traits and segments to
combine them into new marketing segments.
You can also report on historical trait and segment size as segments are created. This helps
publisher team members understand potential inventory and lets them adjust segment
composition based on reporting data.
Qualification begins after a segment is saved in the Adobe Audience Manager interface. The
system uses two complimentary methodologies that help ensure full segment coverage across a
publisher’s entire user base:
 Instant segment qualification: Qualifies users based on real-time data collection
processes.
 Processed segments: Back-end processing of users not yet seen again who qualify
based on new segment rules criteria.
1.1.3 Performance Reporting
Adobe Audience Manager offers standard reporting interfaces for all data stored on user traits
and segments, including segment sizes, segment composition, targeting platform mappings
(destinations) and custom reports.
Overlap analysis and lookalike modelling
In addition to custom segment generation and standard reporting, publishers are interested in
understanding data relationships between all of their data elements and segments. Adobe
Audience Manager can create data overlay reports based on a publisher’s specific needs. Some
examples might include:
 Third-party data overlaid against first-party data.
 Third-party to third-party overlap for data analysis and scoring (e.g. gender across four
providers).
 First-party data relationships.
 Segment-to-segment overlap and analysis for additional lookalike modelling.

The Adobe consulting teams and partner solutions can work with you to understand your data
and reporting needs, create report templates, create custom reports and schedule delivery of all
overlap and lookalike reports.
Inventory and audience insight
Inventory and audience insight is closely tied to segment generation and overlay reporting.
Inventory and audience insight reports help you understand:
 How audiences overlap, or trend, against individual sites and domains.
 Potential ad inventory based on unique users within audience segments.
Audience overlap against sites and domains
As part of a data collection strategy, publishers can capture site, domain and site groupings in
the standard data. This gives publishers full visibility into overlap across sites, by data segment
across sites or overlap of any data combination of trait, segment, site, domain or site grouping.
Data is available in a number of areas depending on the specific use case:
 Standard reporting based on overlap segments generated.
 Custom overlay report templates as defined above.
 Segment creation wizard available via the user interface.
1.1.4 Ad Server Integration
The platform allows you to manage a single data repository and then leverage that data across
all your channels. This can include ad servers, content optimisation, creative optimisation, video
delivery and search.
Adobe Audience Manager has developed a central interface for managing new targeting
destinations that provide multiple integration points depending on the use case and technical
implementation of the external system.
1.1.5 Destination Publishing
With data management platforms, it is important to standardise the data transfer mechanisms
so they can be easily configured and managed by Adobe’s systems. When the data arrives to
the target system (ad server, DSP, ad network, etc.) that system is called the destination. Adobe
Audience Manager allows publishers to easily set up new destinations in the interface with the

“destination builder” which helps you manage URL, cookie-based or server-to-server
destinations.
1.1.6 Dynamic Tag Management
Dynamic tag management is a key feature of the Audience Manager platform. Dynamic tag
management consists of two core components: JavaScript container code and a graphical user
interface that helps you manage tags for deployment and data collection on your Web site.
The system lets customers create, schedule, deploy and manage their own tags. Additionally,
the intuitive management interface uses conditional logic that provides flexibility when managing
tags across a complex site environment. Adobe is committed to developing this platform and
supporting our clients and partners. We are also working to integrate our platform into the
Adobe Marketing Cloud.
1.1.7 Data Security And Privacy
Data security is an important part of any data
management system. Adobe Audience Manager has
controls and systems designed to improve data
security and prevent data leakage.
1.2 About This Playbook
This document follows a structure that will help you understand the key focus areas to nurture
the implementation of Adobe Audience Manager. This structure is based the digital governance
framework, which creates the appropriate business environment for digital to succeed. It
includes:
 Leadership—Executive buy-in and support for the implementation and adoption.
 Strategy—Clarity and alignment around key business goals for evaluating digital
performance.
 People—Resources, expertise and the appropriate team structure to run Adobe
Audience Manager effectively.
 Process—Procedures, project management and workflows for deploying and using
Adobe Audience Manager effectively.
 Product—Solution fit, common integration and automation.
Tip
Click here to read more on the
Data Security and Privacy

What’s different about digital? Everything.
2 Leadership
Leadership is critical — it provides the foundation for successful
digital transformation.
C-Suite involvement is needed to drive a digital transformation
program, budget and outcome. Your role as the project sponsor is
to contribute with a strong understanding of how Adobe Audience
Manager and digital in general will transform the business.
Position yourself as the subject matter expert and functional
leader in a hands-on mode.
A common trait you will find in successful digital teams is that they
are owned and managed by people who are prepared to make the
necessary investments in talent, equipment and training. Leaders are skilled at extracting
Tip
Projects which have
an executive
sponsor, project
name, defined
budget & KPIs set
across the team
outperform those
that don’t.
People
Culture shift, new skills,
strategic in-sourcing,
diverse talent and
skillset.
Strategy - Aligned to business goals, common goals and KPIs, communicated to business.
Process
‘Always-on marketing’,
testing and next-best
offer. A single source of
truth. Digital and
traditional merge.
Product
(Technology)
Deploy the right
technology to deliver the
best customer
experience.
Leadership
Stakeholder buy-in, single executive
sponsor, defined program of work and
Budget, insight-driven culture.

optimal performance from team members and developing strategies that take full advantage of
their unique talents.
Leadership consists of four subcomponents: sponsorship, buy-in, communication and
accountability.
2.1 Sponsorship
Having an effective executive sponsor will help the project achieve maximum success. To be
truly effective, this internal executive sponsor should have enough seniority and influence within
the business to get buy-in from other stakeholders across the organisation. Having a high level
of self-interest in the project’s success and a passion for digital transformation — and truly
believing in how Adobe Audience Manager is going to transform the business — are also
critical.
An effective executive sponsor should guarantee the implementation of Adobe Audience
Manager stays in line with the corporate strategy, protecting it from conflicting initiatives or
internal politics and helping address any limiting factors, such as resource or budget constraints.
The Four Ps of Execute Sponsorship
Source: Dykes, Brent. 2011. Web Analytics Action Hero. Adobe Press.
Prioritisation
To be successful, Adobe Audience Manager needs
to be aligned with key business goals. The
executive sponsor should provide crucial direction
to the team, ensuring the implementation is always
in line with the corporate strategy and top priorities.
Protection
The executive sponsor will play an important role in
protecting you, the digital and the implementation
from other conflicting initiatives or corporate
politics.
Problem solving
Using their influence within the organisation, the
executive sponsor should step in to remove any
problems that may impede the success of the
implementation, such as resource or budget
constraints.
Promotion
The executive sponsor will play a key role in
championing the benefits of Adobe Audience
Manager, holding people accountable, and
promoting digital wins within the organisation,
especially among other executives.

2.2 Buy-In
Achieving management buy-in across your leadership team is
also key. Having multiple change agents will help you drive
adoption easier and faster. The responsibility for the
implementation and deployment of Adobe Audience Manager
needs to be shared by the entire leadership team.
It is then the executive sponsor’s responsibility to win over the
executive team by sharing examples that prove the value of
Adobe Audience Manager and digital. Typically this focuses on
delivering a better customer experience and subsequent
benefits to the business.
When implementing digital projects such as Adobe Audience Manager, leaders will be
responsible for monitoring different departments and teams owning different parts of digital
marketing initiatives. It is critical to make sure that all groups share a common strategy to
achieve common goals. Having an internal roadshow to win support from executives will help
raise awareness towards aligning all teams and obtaining the necessary resources for an
optimal implementation.
2.3 Communication
To get the organisation on board, it is always a good idea to share the vision and repeatedly
reinforce the reason why your company is investing in Adobe Audience Manager technology by
articulating both the customer benefits and business benefits. Sharing documentation such as
success case studies of digital implementations will help you validate why and how this
investment will take the organisation to a new level. If you want the organisation to embrace
digital transformation, it’s important to let employees know it’s a priority.
2.3.1 Communication Management
A communication strategy can lay out the foundation and framework for communicating
initiatives and objectives across business and technology teams. It can also help by:
 Providing guidance and a framework for effective communications within and outside of
the project.
 Ensuring that proper protocols are always followed when preparing and delivering
communication.
 Providing precise and concise project communications at the right time.
Tip
Having cross function
stakeholder
participation in the
vision elicits
stakeholder buy-in

 Involving all necessary stakeholders and maintaining regular contact to keep
transparency in all transactions.
 Having clear communication channels with well-defined roles and responsibilities.
 Clarifying doubts, overcoming challenges and averting risks that affect the project.
 Building trust and developing open relationships between the parties.
 Promoting openness and transparency.
2.3.2 Recommended Communications Process and Principles
You can build your communication strategy around the following key principles:
 Communication is critical to effect change: Ongoing and timely communication is a
fundamental requirement to inform and respond to stakeholders about the change; its
impact on them and its outcomes; to enable feedback; to manage expectations; to
ensure a smooth change transition; and to support uptake and continual improvement.
 Communication delivery is local: Communication from the local area will mean that
messages are relayed in a language that is relevant to the audience. Engagement with
local communicators across the business and technology will increase the effectiveness
of the communication.
 Communication is consistent and repetitive: With a common approach across the
program, stakeholders will come to expect communication through specific methods
(channels), with given formats (look) and timing. Repeating key messages through
multiple channels will increase the amount of information that is absorbed.
 Communication is linked to the project objectives: Linking the communication to the
objectives provides a context and reasoning behind change. Repeatedly providing these
links will serve as reminders as to the wider benefits of the project.
2.3.3 Setting Communication Goals
All communication developed and distributed throughout the project is intended to achieve the
following goals:
• Stakeholders and project team members are aware and informed:
o Stakeholders and project team members should receive timely information about
what is happening (why, when and how and what it means to them). This
information starts at a generic level (which is repeated throughout the project
lifecycle) and becomes more detailed, specific and targeted to the audience as
the project progresses. This information enables stakeholders to think about,
understand and be prepared for change and plan for future project streams of
work.

• Stakeholders and project team members are engaged:
o Opportunities are created and communicated to key stakeholders to support
them in exploring, becoming involved in and committing to a new way of doing
things, for example:
 Different stakeholders and project team members will move through and
transition at different rates and times.
 Communication will aim to gain key stakeholders and project team
members’ commitment through implementation.
 Strategies and implementation roadmaps can be developed to manage
stakeholders and project team members who are resistant to the change
throughout the transition.
o Communication is two-way, with stakeholder input and feedback sought and
valued at all stages.
o Stakeholders and project team members expectations are managed:
 The aim of communication is to provide set expectations of strategic
initiatives, program or project scope, associated constraints, risks and
dependencies, explain why this may differ from expectations (in targeted
messages) and to provide ongoing updates on expected and actual
outcomes.
o Acquisition of skills and knowledge is supported.
o Training is backed up by supporting communication to reinforce the training and
provide opportunities to share knowledge.
2.3.4 Recommendations On A Communication Approach
An approach to communication management for the project may
include:
o Conduct an effective stakeholder analysis:
 Stakeholder analysis is developed at the
project board, user group, project team and stakeholder levels.
 The stakeholder analysis will focus on all
parties (users, management, executives or third parties) required
to achieve the desired outcomes and any parties impacted by
the change to ensure full coverage.
Tip
Use a DACI model to
categorise
stakeholders and
their communication
needs

 Categorise stakeholders into specific audiences (communication
channels).
o Identify information requirements of all parties and establish distribution lists by
subject area:
 Have regular meetings. There should be regular meetings organised with
various levels within the project to ensure that there is regular
communication.
 Where project team meetings do not meet communication requirements
(for example, where cross-area representation is required for specific
project deliverables) use these sparingly :
 One-on-one meetings may be required to obtain specific input or
deliver important messages (as required).
 A common wiki or alternate online knowledge management solution to
provide access to all parties and used by some to provide a workspace.
 A shared drive to maintain the main reference point for overview of the
project with links to documentation for wide dissemination and feedback.
 Electronic newsletter or company-wide communications, providing regular
project news (updates, upcoming events, outcomes) delivered by email.
 Email may be used for targeted, individual or group communication —
with a specific purpose.
 Standard templates for communicating regular information such as
project status reports, meeting minutes and reports should be used to
ensure communication is consistent and repeatable.
o Track required message delivery.
2.4 Accountability
Your organisation is investing in Adobe Audience Manager
and top executives are expecting results. For this to happen,
it is the job of the leader and senior stakeholders to hold
themselves and their people accountable — employees,
teams, partners and most importantly him or herself. Start
with changing the perception that accountability is about
punishment and hard discipline. It should really be about
learning and improvement.
To define accountability, you can create a project charter.
TIP
Think about how your
team’s bonuses are
measured and if they
are being compensated
appropriately for project
success.

This document states that a project exists, why it is important, who is involved, its timeframes,
the expected outcomes and the resources needed for it to be successful. It also gives you
written authority to begin work.
2.4.1 Steering Committee
Setting up a group of high-level stakeholders and experts will help you achieve the four
subcomponents of leadership and, at the same time, set the direction of the project. This
steering committee can also help by:
• Prioritising initiatives.
• Reviewing business cases for new initiatives.
• Lobbying for the necessary time, personnel and budget.
• Ensuring quality in decision making.
• Encouraging a collaborative work environment.
• Monitoring progress towards goals.
• Controlling scope and resolving conflicts.
2.4.2 Common Roles And Responsibilities Within A Steering Committee
The following high-level roles and responsibilities are based on industry-standard practices for
steering committees.
Role(s) Responsibility
Business or
Technology
Sponsor
The sponsor is ultimately accountable for the outcome of the project and is
responsible for securing spending authority and resources.
• Vocal and visible champion.
• Legitimises and lends credibility to the strategic goals and objectives.
• Is the escalation point for changes and issues outside the agreed tolerances?
• Assists with stakeholder engagement where required.
Business
Executives
The executive’s role is to ensure that the project is focused on achieving its objectives
and ensuring a cost-conscious approach, delivering a product that will achieve the
forecast benefits, balancing the demands of the business.
• Designs and appoints the project management teams.
• Oversees the development of the business case, ensuring corporate strategic
alignment.
• Monitors and controls the progress at a strategic level, in particular reviewing

the business case regularly.
• Escalates issues and risks.
• Is the escalation point for issues and risks and ensures that any risks
associated with the business case are identified, assessed and controlled.
• Makes decisions on escalated issues, with particular focus on continued
business justification.
• Ensures overall business assurance and ensures that the project remains on
target to deliver products that will achieve the expected business benefits.
Business
Owner
This role represents the interests of all those who will use the product, including
operations and maintenance, those for whom the product will achieve an objective or
those who will use the product to deliver the benefits and value drivers.
 Provides quality expectations and defines acceptance criteria.
 Ensures that the desired outcome is specified.
 Ensures that products will deliver the desired outcomes and meet user
requirements.
 Ensures that the expected benefits are realised.
 Provides a statement of actual versus forecast benefits at the benefits reviews.
 Resolves user requirements conflicts.
Technical
Owner
This role represents the interests of those designing, developing, facilitating,
procuring and implementing the product. This role is accountable for the quality of
products delivered by suppliers and is responsible for the technical integrity of the
project.
 Assesses and confirm the viability of the approach.
 Ensures that proposals for designing and developing the products are realistic.
 Advises on the selection of design, development and acceptance methods.
 Ensures quality procedures are used correctly so that products adhere to
requirements.
Assurance
Owner
Assurance covers the primary stakeholder interests of the business, technical staff,
end-users and suppliers.
 Ensures the right people are planned to be involved in quality inspection at the
correct points in the product’s development.
 Sees that staff are properly trained in the quality methods.
 Ensures that quality methods are being correctly followed.
 Makes sure that quality control follow-up actions are dealt with correctly.
 Ensures that an acceptable solution is being developed.
 Monitors scope creep to ensure that the scope of the project is not changing
unnoticed.
 Oversees internal and external communications to ensure they are working.

 Ensures applicable standards are being used.
 Ensures the needs of specialist interests (for example, security) are being
observed.
Business assurance responsibilities
 Assists to develop the business case and benefits review plan.
 Reviews the business case for compliance with corporate standards.
 Verifies the business case against external events.
 Checks that the business case is being adhered to throughout the project.
 Checks that the project remains aligned to the corporate strategy and continues to
provide value for money.
User assurance responsibilities
 Ensures that the specification of users’ needs is accurate, complete and
unambiguous.
 Assesses whether the solution will meet users’ needs and is progressing towards
that target.
 Advises on the impact of potential changes from users’ point of view.
 Ensures that the quality activities relating to products at all stages has appropriate
user representation.
 Ensures that quality control procedures are used correctly to ensure that products
meet user requirements.
Supplier assurance responsibilities
 Reviews the product descriptions (features and capabilities) and aligns to
delivery.
 Advises on the selection of the development strategy, design and methods.
 Ensures that any supplier and operating standards defined for the project are met
and used to good effect.
 Advises on potential changes and their impact on the correctness, completeness
and integrity of products against their product description from a supplier
perspective.
 Assesses whether quality control procedures are used correctly so that products
adhere to requirements.
Project
Manager
The project manager has the authority to run the day-to-day operations with the
prime responsibility of ensuring that the project produces the required products within
the specified tolerances of time, cost, quality, scope, risk and benefits.
 Effective project management requires that the project management team,
as a whole, possesses and applies the knowledge in several areas:
o Project management itself.
o Business and industry domain knowledge specific to the project.
o Technology knowledge required by the project.

o Interpersonal and communication skills.
 The project management framework consists of five key activity groups:
Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Control and Closing. These
are the processes or activities for managing the project and they are different
to the project life cycle.
 The project life cycle activities are generally sequential while project
management activities are performed as below because project
management activities may overlap and repeat along the timeline depending
on risks (for example, the controlling activities may lead back to planning to
revise the project plan as a result of changes).
You can also include partners and key vendors as part of the steering committee. Their broad
understanding and experience with Adobe Audience Manager technology can positively benefit
the outcomes of your Adobe Audience Manager implementation.
2.4.3 Setting Up A Working Group
Having a working group with subject-matter experts working below a steering committee will
help achieve specified goals. In your Adobe Audience Manager implementation, this working
group includes the practitioner leads executing the project. They would meet more regularly and
report upwards to the steering committee.
The working group should have a weekly discussion where issues and risks are addressed and
the status, progress and approach of the project are discussed.
3 Strategy
Gaining a clear vision of what it takes to be able to assess and measure your audience
management efforts is critical to becoming a high-performing business.
“74% of business executives say their company has a business strategy.
Only 15% believe that their company has the skills and capabilities to
execute on that strategy.”
Forrester: Accelerating your digital business, 2013

3.1 Digital Marketing Maturity Model
The first step to craft your digital marketing strategy is to
evaluate the level of maturity of your digital marketing
landscape. To help you in this endeavour, Adobe has
designed a self-assessment tool which indicates the key
drivers of success in a digital, data-driven organisation across
seven digital marketing dimensions – channels, audiences,
context, content, assets, campaigns and data.
Digital Marketing Dimensions
Channels
Channels refers to the various locations and touch points where customers can interact with
your brand and how your digital strategy enables social engagement, paid and organic search
visibility, email deliverability and site optimisation among other functions.
Tip
Check the self-assessment
tool to assess your
organisation’s Digital
Marketing maturity.

Audiences
Audiences refers to the activities and actions taken to define and target specific customer
segments. It also refers to the skillsets necessary to analyse and create segments used for
targeting.
Context
Context refers to the circumstances and events that would comprise a customer’s master
marketing profile. Organisations nowadays gain a competitive advantage by leveraging
technology to contextualise messaging and reach segments through statistical modelling and
data mining which allows you to identify and refine targeting based upon customer touch points.
Content
Content refers to the asset management, creative workflows and tools needed to publish and
optimise digital experiences. It is determined by the activities undertaken to schedule, publish,
promote track and monitor the content throughout channels and its performance.
Assets
Assets refers to having the resources necessary to support the creation and management of
digital assets published and used for marketing messages and to meet the organisation’s
needs.
Campaigns
Campaigns refer to the activities and operations to manage the messaging of brand and
marketing portfolios to measure performance in addition to having the skills to create a master
strategic plan for campaign development and delivery and owning the systems that enables its
execution.
Data
Data refers to the data collection, definition and reporting on the performance of key metrics,
performance indicators and goals

INITIATED EMERGED FOCUSED ADVANCED OPTIMISED
Channels Simple impression
or click tracking.
Single or limited
used channels.
Limited media
mix.
Engaging with
customers in
several outbound
channels.
Ability to start
conversation
based on
customer actions
on the Web site
and social media
channels.
Engaging with
customers in
several outbound
and inbound
channels.
Start relevant
conversation
based on user
activity,
segmentations.
Several channels
are managed in a
centralised
manner.
Activities and
behaviours are
tracked and
analysed.
Have a strategic
plan for
communicating and
interacting with
customers across
channels in real
time.
Listen, track and
react to social
activities in real
time.
Have an attribution
model that credits
marketing efforts
with direct results.
Have a strategic
plan for
communicating and
interacting with
customers across
channels in real
time.
Target and optimise
digital content
based on channel
and customer
interaction point.
Marketing spend is
automated based
on performance.
Listen, track and
react to social
activities in real
time.
Have an attribution
model that credits
marketing efforts
with direct results.
Audiences Basic
understanding of
customer profiles.
Optimisation is
done as ideas
strike.
An optimisation
and
personalisation
roadmap is
created.
Using audience
segment profiles
to inform
advertising and
offers.
Optimisation and
personalisation
roadmap is
influenced by a
range of
stakeholders
across the
business.
Discipline-based
testing.
Own necessary
skills to analyse and
create audience
segments used for
targeting.
Ability to leverage
targeted customer
lists from ad-hoc
analysis.
Deliver tailored
content and
experiences to
unknown visitors
Own necessary
skills to analyse
and create
audience segments
used for targeting.
Use analytics data
to refine and adjust
segment
definitions.
Ability to leverage
targeted customer
lists from ad-hoc
analysis.
INITIATED
EMERGED
FOCUSED
ADVANCED
OPTIMISED

based on
behavioural data,
lookalike modelling
or third-party data.
Deliver tailored
content and
experiences to
unknown visitors
based on
behavioural data,
lookalike modelling
or third-party data.
Context Basic testing is
undertaken to
personalise email
marketing
campaigns and
offline material.
Own a customer
database used for
basic
personalisation.
Access
demographic
information to
deliver basic
personalised
campaigns.
Initial steps on
channel targeting.
Web site, email
communication
and advertising
channels are
being
personalised.
Cross-site
targeting.
Leverage
segmentation data
to personalise
basic workflows
across various
channels.
Ability to capture,
store and analyse
all touch points in
the customer
journey.
Geo-location,
demographic and
other third-party
data sets are
integrated with
Adobe analytics
data and used as
traits in the
customer profile.
Ability to capture,
store and analyse
all touch points in
the customer
journey.
Ability to tailor
experiences based
on the customer
recent online
behaviour.
Geo-location,
demographic and
other third-party
data sets are
integrated with our
analytics data and
used as traits in the
customer profile.
Content Sporadic
optimisation
activities are done
by isolated teams
or individuals.
All Web site and
campaign
variations are
managed
independently.
Basic
understanding of
content
effectiveness.
Content is
integrated with the
use of third-party
tools.
Limited support
from IT to allow
content flow
across campaign
channels.
There are
activities in place
to measure
content
effectiveness for
further
optimisation.
There are testing
variables to
optimise content.
IT and systems
established to
share content
across business
units.
Own sufficient
resources to
manage the content
necessary to meet
the organisation’s
needs.
Own the marketing
technology strategy
and defined
technology roadmap
using assistance
from IT/IS as
needed.
Social content
publishing is
scheduled and
coordinated across
the various social
networks and
performance is
included in your
Web analytics data.
Own sufficient
resources to
manage the content
necessary to meet
the organisation’s
needs.
Own the marketing
technology strategy
and defined
technology road
map using
assistance from
IT/IS as needed.
Social content
publishing is
scheduled and
coordinated across
the various social
networks and
performance is
included in your
Web analytics data.
There are strong
mechanisms to
assess content
usage and
cleansing.

Assets Limited Ad-hoc inventories
and asset
classification.
One-way
syndication of
assets.
Document and
test plans,
requirements
insights and
posts in a shared
space.
Enterprise
repository for
digital assets and
formal asset
lifecycle.
Own a searchable
central repository
for digital asset
management that
catalogues current
and historical
assets.
Effective
communication and
production with
agencies.
Create sufficient
assets for effective
A/B testing and
personalisation.
Own a searchable
central repository
for digital asset
management that
catalogues current
and historical
assets.
Effective
communication and
production with
agencies.
Ability to create and
deploy once across
multiple channels
and devices.
Create sufficient
assets for effective
A/B testing and
personalisation.
Campaigns Basic customer
profiling for
marketing tactics.
Channels not
integrated. Deliver
messages and get
results in different
advertising
channels.
Create automated
responses to
customer action in
Web sites.
Campaigns are
mostly reactive.
Execute
campaigns in
various
decentralised
channels.
Capacity to report
on key metrics.
Campaigns are
refined
periodically when
required.
Online and offline
channels are
employed to
deliver marketing
messages.
Business units
work in isolation to
produce content
and execute
marketing
campaigns.
There are
measurement
mechanisms in
place.
Ability to launch and
manage campaigns,
including analysis to
measure campaign
performance.
Deliver campaigns
across multiple
online and offline
channels.
Use an agile,
iterative or test-and-
learn process in the
design, execution
and analysis of
campaign
programs.
Ability to launch
and manage
campaigns,
including analysis
to measure
campaign
performance.
Ability to alter
campaigns based
on real-time
performance data.
Deliver campaigns
across multiple
online and offline
channels.
Use an agile,
iterative or test-and-
learn process in the
design, execution
and analysis of
campaign
programs.
Data Limited data
management
strategy.
Few business
units analyse
data.
There is a basic
data management
strategy.
Key business
units use data to
understand
customers and
crate meaningful
decisions.
Key stakeholders
are
knowledgeable on
There is a data
management
strategy in place
integrating various
first, second and
third party data
sources.
There are
mechanisms in
place for reporting
and decision
making.
Analytics processes
have executive
sponsorship and
support.
Team is
knowledgeable and
has skillset for
analytics and
reporting needs.
Online and offline
data integrated and
provide a single
Analytics processes
have executive
sponsorship and
support.
Team is sufficiently
trained and has
skillset for analytics
and reporting
needs.
Online and offline
data integrated and
provide a single

the use of data.
Reporting is basic.
Some business
units work
cooperatively
towards goal
achievement.
view of the
customer.
Data is readily
available and used
throughout the
organisation.
Reporting is
automated and
distributed.
view of the
customer.
Data is readily
available and used
throughout the
organisation.
Reporting is
automated and
distributed.
Own data mining
tools that allow
search through
large volumes of
data.
Analytics program
uses statistical
modelling to identify
trends and predict
outcomes.
3.2 Focus
Focus means understanding and focusing on the organisation’s key business goals and
strategic initiatives to achieve objectives. It is also important to prioritise these goals as well as
their scope and timing for completion. As business competitive environments change it’s also
important to review your business strategy and goals on a quarterly or bi-annual basis to ensure
they remain relevant to the current environment.
3.2.1 Digital Strategy
One of the biggest digital challenges organisations face is being able to define what they are
trying to achieve through digital channels. In many cases, corporate Web sites aren’t owned by
a single manager leading to a mix of different or, even worse, competing interests and
purposes. This causes a mixture of counterproductive results.
A clear digital strategy enables your digital team to align its activities to the key priorities of your
business and succeed as an integral part of your organisation. A key point to consider is that
your digital strategy should always be aligned to the overall business goals of the organisation.
These are steps you can follow to craft your digital strategy:
 Identify all of the key stakeholder groups that have input into your company’s digital
approach.
 Gather key business objectives from each group separately.
 Merge the goals into a set of four to five key objectives.

 Based on your understanding of the corporate strategy, prioritise and rank the list of
goals.
 In a group meeting, review and refine the goals with key stakeholders. If needed, involve
a neutral third party to mediate potential disagreements.
 Based on stakeholder feedback, finalise the business objectives and define KPIs to
measure these by.
 Share an overview of the agreed upon digital strategy with key stakeholders.

A Suggested Digital Strategy Framework
Key terminology
Enterprise goals:
• Strategic business goals and objectives.
• Aligned across the business at an enterprise level.
• Tied to increased revenue (or decreased costs).
• Can include medium to long-term vision of the company.
Examples: Increase revenue (by five per cent), expand product line (new line of business),
improve customer satisfaction (by five per cent).
Digital goals:
• Strategic business goals and objectives for your digital channel.
• Identify how the digital channel will contribute to achieving the enterprise goals.
• There can be more than one digital goal for each enterprise goal.

Examples: Increase online sales (by five per cent), increase online audience (by 10 per cent),
increase online customer satisfaction (by five per cent).
Below is the Adobe business optimisation for success framework. Defining your business goals
is the key first step in this process so it is paramount to have these communicated and agreed
upfront.
Initiatives:
• Strategic digital goals.
• Actionable projects.
• Relates to digital channel as a whole (not just Web analytics).
Examples: reduce shopping cart abandonment, increase mobile content and increase new
visitors.
Tactics:
• Specific actionable online business requirements.
• Gaps in achieving online initiatives and goals.
• Achievable end goal.
Examples: measure shopping cart abandonment, measure application form abandonment and
report mobile usage.

Key performance indicator (KPI):
Key metric to evaluate business success of digital activities.
Example (business objectives and metrics)
Business objective Metric
1. $500M in sales through digital channels Revenue
2. Increase brand awareness Visitors
3. Drive deeper and enduring customer
relationships
Logins
Digital Strategy Framework
3.2.2 Key Performance Indicators
Focus also includes defining the key performance indicators (KPIs). In digital, these indicators
can be metrics such as online revenue or applications, along with associated targets for those
metrics (for example, increase application rate by 30%).
A common mistake when setting KPIs is selecting random metrics from an industry-related list
and expecting they will fit and perform towards achieving your unique business goals. Make
sure you always start with understanding your business goals before selecting appropriate KPIs.
As you deploy your digital properties using Adobe Social you will be able to use these KPIs to
understand the impact changes in content, design and architecture have had as an impact on
your business.

What are Key Performance Indicators?
Source: Dykes, Brent. 2010. KPIs: Focus on the Special ‘K”.
When implementing Adobe Audience Manager, ensure that
your KPIs are measured. Do not waste time on non-strategic
measures. Ask yourself this: if your CEO was stuck on an
island and you could tell him only three things about your
business so he would know the business was healthy, what
would you tell him? If you said the average time spent on a
page was one minute 30 seconds that tells him nothing.
If you tell him your campaign generated two million visits to
the Web site and the average revenue generated from a
specific channel was $2. That is something he will
understand as a true measure of business success. There is
so much opportunity to measure initiatives and improve on
them based on four or five metrics that you can keep yourself
busy for months or even years. Don’t fret about measuring
every little last detail, you’ll drive yourself crazy and you
won’t be supporting your business goals.
“Companies with greater digital capabilities were able to convert sales at a
rate 2.5 times greater than companies at the lower level did.”
McKinsey & Co. March 2015
3.3 Alignment
What they are:
• Quantifiable, measurable and
actionable
• Measure factors that are critical to
the success of the organisation
• Tied to business goals and targets
• Limited to 5 to 8 key metrics
• Applied consistently throughout the
company
What they are not:
• Metrics that are vague or unclear
• “Nice-to-knows” or metrics that are
not actionable
• Reports (e.g., top search engines,
top keywords)
• Exhaustive set of metrics
• Refutable
Tip
When creating your KPIs
remember the acronym
S.M.A.R.T. Performance
indicators must be:
Specific: to precisely define
the goal and it’s expected
outcome.
Measurable: to be able to
understand what success
means.
Assignable: to individuals
or teams
Realistic: and yet
challenging to drive great
results.
Time-based: built to drive

Organisations are dynamic: Business strategy changes; leadership changes; Web sites and
communications in general are redesigned; the market landscape changes; services and new
products are introduced; marketing campaigns are launched; new channels appear; and new
competitors are born. All these changes make it difficult for leaders to ensure alignment
between the company’s current strategy and the implementation of digital solutions.
To make sure there is a proper alignment between your Adobe Audience Manager
implementation and your digital strategy, your measurement strategy needs to be dynamic and
adjust as changes occur within your business. Having a member from the digital team sitting in
the steering committee can ensure that the team knows what is happening within the business
and any possible changes in priorities.
3.3.1 Targeting And Personalisation Strategy
Your organisation needs to be able to craft and deliver relevant experiences for your audiences
to increase your conversion rates, your customer engagement and brand value which therefore
will lead to effectively achieving your corporate goals. Data provides you with the means to
understand in detail your audiences and segment them. Segmentation allows you to create a
targeting schema which allows you to gain a better understanding of how to align your
customer’s desires, requirements, needs and expectations along with your organisation’s
principles, values and goals, which then empowers you with the ability to deliver truly
personalised experiences that your customers will love and your organisation will benefit from.
This is the core of what marketing technologies such as Adobe Audience Manager enables you
to do.
3.3.1.1 Data Modelling
Data modelling is the method by which organisations analyse, define and align the data flow
requirements needed to support key business processes. Aligning your data structure with
Adobe Audience Manager is key to getting the most value from the solution as it provides
marketing and technical users with the means necessary to respond effectively to your
organisational targeting and personalisation requirements. This ultimately strengthens the way
your clients experience your marketing communications.
The consulting team conducts a “data model” workshop to support your organisation in the
alignment of your data structure. In this workshop, which is typically conducted for one day, you
will be able to understand your organisation’s data needs in addition to the architecture of an
efficient data model. Although the process may vary the team usually undertakes your data
management strategy in three phases:

3.3.2 Building Your Segments
Understand what your ideal buyer profile would look like and how you can leverage the data that
is (or will be) available to create further targeting strategies. The idea behind creating buyers’
profiles is to craft relevant content for each segment group to better understand what type of
communication will work best — this is typically achieved through experimentation or advertising
platforms which allow you to set testing variables and gather data to see how certain
campaigns perform.
Some ways you can segment your audiences are as follows:
Demographical and firmographic
 Job title: By separating key influencers from other stakeholders.
 Functional area: Segmenting by department or business unit. For example, human
resources and marketing.
 Company size: By prioritising, for example, Fortune 500 companies and then medium
sized business.
 Geographical location: Sales territory, country or region where they operate.
Behavioural data
 Product interests: Such as the product category your customer is showing interest in.
 On-site activities: Such as pages visited, content downloads, research queries and
time per visit.
1.Identification
•Identify all data that is
located in the working
environment and is available
for use by marketing end-
users.
•Map how the data flows
from external sources and
how it will interact within
the data lifecycle in Adobe
Audience Manager and other
business systems.
2.Preparation
•Specify the dimensions that
determines how the data will
be targeted (i.e recipients as
opposed to contracts).
•Identify filtering and query
dimensions that create
relationships within data
targets (i.e recipients who
hold life insurance).
•Create the union, exclusion
and intersection dimensions
to enable you to consolidate
and process multiple targets.
3.DataUse
•Direct use of (targeting and
personalisation) data in
outbound deliveries.
•Direct use of (targeting and
personalisation) data to
enrich a data template.

 Off-site activities: Social media interactions (likes, shares, comments), event
participation and clicks from advertising campaigns.
 Campaign activities: Number of emails opened, links the customer interacted with and
other engagement touch points.
3.3.3 Targeting And Personalisation
Once you have gained a clear understanding of your audiences (in size, frequency interest, etc.)
you have to find an alignment and shape your content structure to appropriately approach them
— it is critical that the content in your communication efforts is relevant and contextual for your
multiple segment audiences. To achieve this, your organisation can leverage the segmentation
criteria established in the previous step to truly deliver relevant content to specific users.
You can further enrich the personalisation strategy by integrating other digital data, CRM,
transaction, point of sale, fulfilment and call centre data to orchestrate experiences across all
your marketing channels in real time. These include online as well as offline channels.
Find recommendations on how you can deepen the scope of your audience management
strategies in the integrations section.
3.4 Innovation
Once your organisation is consistently delivering relevant marketing messages across multiple
channels, you will be ready to continue gaining competitive advantage by finding the means to
expand the possibilities and generate greater value to your stakeholders. Gather a team of
visionary innovators and use the data collected from your ongoing campaigns and digital tactics
and empower them to generate new creative ways to improve your consumer’s lifecycle.
4 People
4.1 Expertise
Expertise refers to the different skills required by your organisation’s digital and technical staff,
business users and senior executives. Not every group will need the same skills, but an overall
understanding of how a digital strategy and Adobe Audience Manager will help the organisation
is fundamental.

Investing in training is a key activity when implementing new technologies. Make sure you have
training programs not only for on boarding new staff, but also for current employees so they can
continue growing their expertise over time.
Adobe offers a wide range of courses that can help you with your Adobe Audience Manager
implementation. These courses are available in multiple formats to suit your needs — at one of
Adobe’s regional training centres, online as virtual learning or on-site at your company.
To see all Adobe Audience Manager courses go to Adobe Audience Manager Course Catalog.
4.2 Structure
A well designed organisational structure will give you and your staff clear guidelines about how
the organisation is put together, who they have to report and delegate to and how information
flows across different levels. Defining an organisational structure, including roles and
responsibilities, before starting with your Adobe Audience Manager implementation will also
ensure the project runs efficiently.

4.2.1 Structures Types
Below is a common list of organisational structures we see in digital organisations.
Dispersed: This structure is typically an early
stage, organic and reactive response to initial
staffing and resourcing requirements arising in
local or specific departments. While this works
well initially, it has limited strategic scalability and
can prove problematic in coordinating a top-down
strategic vision for the long term structure and
direction of digital capability, particularly within a
large and diverse organisation.
Centralised: Digital marketing roles and
capability are centralised into a single area or
team. This is typically characterised by a reporting
structure through to one head of digital, e-
business or e-commerce.
Hub and Spoke: A combination of both, typically
whereby digital marketing expertise is split - some
positioned at the centre looking across the whole
organisation and some sat within divisions or
departments often acting as a connection point
between the CoE and local non-digital teams.
‘Dandelion’ structure: Organisations which have
a hub and spoke approach, but across multiple
units or divisions. This is usually found in larger
corporations that are operationally divided around
key audiences (B2B and B2C, for example) that
might centralise some key digital capability across
the entire corporation, but also could have some
hub and spoke arrangements in each of the key
divisions.
‘Honeycomb’ structure: One additional structure
is the holistic, or ‘honeycomb’, structure, where
each employee is empowered with capability. This
structure might be interpreted as the equivalent of
a fully integrated digital capability where digital
expertise and skills are the domain of a broad
range of people and roles throughout the
organisation. In this scenario no specialist digital
roles exist and no single role has digital capability
as its sole remit.

4.2.2 Project-Based Recommended Organisational Structure
Management sponsorship:
Establish relationships with executives, remove barriers, create a point of escalation, frequently
touch base with engagement leads, understand goals and progress of engagements.
Enterprise architect
Multi-solution engagement lead, aligns all solutions and integrations to business needs and
objectives, solidifies and follows through on delivery execution, partners with the project
management office (PMO) on timelines and risks, fosters greater teamwork among various
solution leads and consultants, delivers on engagement promises, communicates value
realisation with consultants, the PMO and AM.
Adobe project manager
Responsible for positioning, scoping and providing consulting services. This person is in charge
of communications between Adobe and the organisation.
Product Lead
Business
Consultant
Technical
Consultant
Business
Consultant
Technical
Consultant
Product Lead
Business
Consultant
Technical
Consultant
Business
Consultant
Technical
Consultant
Product Lead
Business
Consultant
Technical
Consultant
Business
Consultant
Technical
Consultant
Solution Lead
Business
Consultant
Technical
Consultant
Creative
Consultant
Partner / GDC
Management Sponsorship
Enterprise Architect
(Strategy Owner)
Adobe Project Manager
(Communication Owner)

Solution lead
Assigned to lead engagements for particular solution. Strong collaboration with the EA and
other solution leads. Ensures high quality, strategic consulting and successful delivery. May
lead out on multi-product engagements if there is no PM or EA.
4.2.3 Business Recommended Organisational Structure
Organisations commonly use a centralised model for digital implementations. In this structure,
all of the digital resources are centralised into a single area or team often with a reporting
structure through to one head of digital, e-business or e-commerce. This is a generic example of
an organisational structure and hiring recommendation:
The main advantages of having a centralised model are:
• Consistency and control: Consistent methods,
procedures and terminology.
• Governance and focus: Unified commercial entity,
strategy and budgets; ease of securing senior management
buy-in to digital marketing strategy and projects; and
consistent standards, greater efficiency in the allocation of
resources, ease of project prioritisation across the
organisation.
Hiring phase 1
(0-6 Months)
Hiring phase 2
(6 - 12 Months)
Hiring phase 3
(12 – 18 Months)
TIP
The above model will
need to be right-sized
for your business
depending on its size,
structure and
geographical nature.

• Scalability and support: The application of digital expertise to support the wider
business and clarity on where to go for support and advice.
4.2.4 Roles And Responsibilities
4.2.4.1 In A Centralised Model
Here are suggested responsibilities for each of the roles described above.
Director of Digital
• Director of digital analytics, marketing analysis, CRM or business intelligence.
• Position of authority to influence others.
• Key point of contact for executives, business owners and analysts.
• Focuses on corporate-level issues, but maintains visibility into regional or business unit
issues.
• Works closely with executive sponsors to drive value from analytics across the
organisation.
• Drives cultural change and product adoption within the organisation via user education
and other interactions.
• Manages the core team and commercial relationships with analytics vendors.
Head of Strategy
• Drives and owns the digital strategy roadmap.
• Coordinates ongoing strategy workshops with stakeholders.
• Ensures the business is continually focused and aligned with business objectives.
• Determines the priority of new implementation projects.
• Drives the digital steering committee, not just a “Web analytics” steering committee.
• Manages the business analyst and project management resources.
Head of Optimisation
• Owns the testing roadmap.
• Drives the personalisation targeting strategy.
• Works collaboratively with the senior analytics team on supporting analytics optimisation
actions through testing.
• Manages the testing resources.
• Manages ongoing relationships with testing product vendors.
• Coordinates with the head of implementation on testing implementation needs.

Head of Analytics
• Focused on overall digital performance with Web analytics being the barometer of that
performance.
• Runs regular, recurring meetings (weekly or monthly) with stakeholders on digital
channel performance.
• Establishes enterprise-wide standards.
• Manages ongoing relationships with analytics vendors.
Head of Implementation
• Owns the analytics solutions design architecture.
• Key point of contact for technical aspects of Web analytics for one or more business
units.
• Works collaboratively with the core team on enhancements.
• Manages the implementation resources.
• Manages ongoing relationship with internal integration teams.
Business Requirements Specialist
• Defines prioritised projects.
• Runs workshops to gather business analytics implementation reporting requirements.
• Develops the business requirements document for each project.
• Gathers business sign-off.
• Works collaboratively with the core team on requirements gathering enhancements and
documenting the process.
• Acts as project manager.
Targeting Lead
• Drives the testing roadmap.
• Owns the key and complex testing campaign initiatives.
• Key point of contact for testing technical aspects.
• Owns the testing deployment and QA process and manages ongoing data accuracy.
• Mentors the testing specialists.
Digital Analyst Lead
• Focused on measuring business unit key performance indicators (KPIs) and optimising
business units online.
• Owns the analytical reporting requests log.
• Single point of contact for end-users within business units and understands end-users’
changing needs.
• Validates data collection for business units.

• Meets with business unit reporting owners and the core team on a regular basis
(monthly).
• Informs the core team of business unit activity and champions its needs to the core
team.
• Coordinates QA efforts and manages ongoing data accuracy.
Digital Implementation Lead
• Drives the testing roadmap
• Owns the key and complex implementation initiatives.
• Key point of contact for technical aspects.
• Owns the testing, deployment and QA process.
• Mentors the implementation resources.
• Owns the testing deployment and QA process.
• Maintains a library of implementation documentation and shares knowledge within the
organisation.
• Active, not passive, participants in the deployment enhancement process.
Content Strategist
• Drives the content strategy.
• Owns the content delivery roadmap.
• Manages the content delivery team.
Technical Requirements Specialist
• Defines prioritised projects.
• Runs workshops to gather technical requirements and identify risks.
• Develops the technical documents and deployment plan for each project.
• Gathers sign-off.
• Works collaboratively with core team on requirements gathering enhancements and
documenting the process.
Targeting Specialist
• Owns the testing and targeting campaign initiatives.
• Gathers the individual campaign objectives and requirements.
• Coordinates implementation campaign needs with the targeting lead.
• Key point of contact for individual campaigns.
• Delivers the individual campaign reporting and analytical insight.

Digital Analyst Specialist
• Gathers analysis requirements from the business.
• Delivers reporting requirements analysis, insight and actions.
• Presents analysis back to the report owner.
Digital Implementation Specialist
• Drives individual implementation projects.
• Coordinates with internal and external development resources on implementation
requirements.
• Creates the individual project technical specification documents.
• Provides assistance on deployment and testing.
• May be assigned to a specific business unit.
Content Producer
• Maintain communication among cross-functional teams.
• Owns the process for creating, enforcing and managing the content production plan.
• Collaborate with all departments to define and manage goals, scope, specific
deliverables and scheduling needs.
• Aggregate and distil input from all areas of the organisation and develop the best
approach for incorporating feedback into project executions.
• Contribute to strategic thinking around content models that adapt, scale and expand
over time and distribution platforms.
Project Manager
• Outsourced initially and then established as a FTE.
• Responsible for costing, estimating and planning projects.
• Prepares project initiation documentation (PID).
• Responsible for ensuring best value is obtained for the project including from the
supplier base and use of internal and external resources.
• Maintaining and completing project KPIs.
• Writing detailed and summarised project progress reports.
• Identifying, costing and processing any contract variations.
• Tracking activities against the detailed project plans.
Creative & UX Designer
• Conceptualise and create design content for all campaign testing and targeting
experiences.
• Test concepts, perform task and user analysis and assist with user acceptance testing.
• Develop prototypes that succinctly illustrate hierarchy and navigation.

• Strategise and drive interactive product development from site map to launch.
• Create compelling online consumer experience that drive business results.
• Possess knowledge of prototyping and wireframe creation tools.
Channel Analyst
• Specialises in a particular channel: SEO, SEM, display, social, affiliate, etc.
• Understands online strategy and how this breaks down into multi-channel Web
marketing elements.
• Expert knowledge of key analytics tools and the ability to setup advanced tracking and
reporting mechanisms and capture key metrics.
• Monitor and analyse Web related data “across the board” and analyses key metrics.
• Understand how different elements of Web strategy relate to, and complement, each
other (e.g. organic search engine optimisation, social media PPC) and create metrics to
monitor and measure this.
• Real-time, daily and weekly campaign performance reporting. Presentation of key data
and conclusions to management.
Mobile Implementation Analyst
• Drives individual implementation projects around mobile.
• Coordinates with internal and external development resources on implementation
requirements.
• Creates the individual project technical specification documents.
• Provides assistance on deployment and testing.
• May be assigned to a specific business unit.
Mobile Content Specialist
• Maintain communication among cross-functional teams.
• Own the process for creating, enforcing and managing the content production plan for
mobile.
• Collaborate with all departments to define and manage goals, scope, specific
deliverables and scheduling needs.
• Aggregate and distil input from all areas of the organisation and develop the best
approach for incorporating feedback into project executions.
• Contribute to strategic thinking around content models that adapt, scale and expand
over time and distribution platforms.
Head of Social
 Solution expert.
 Maintain communications among cross-functional teams to execute on social media
campaigns.
 Drives the implementation of social media projects.

 Identifies opportunities for expansion.
 Responsible for reporting on the performance of social media channels.
Publishing Lead
 Responsible for the execution of content across social media channels.
 Ensures internal workflows deliver the content and social media strategy.
 Ensures tracking mechanisms have been implemented appropriately.
Monitoring and Moderating Lead
 Represents the organisation across multiple channels.
 Maintains the wellbeing of the communities.
 Provide support to the communities when required.
Listening and Analytics Lead
 Responsible for the monitoring of several social media channels to analyse the channel
sentiments.
 Measures channel performance in terms of key business goals.
 Measures channel sentiment and provides immediate feedback when required.
4.2.4.2 Key Teams And Roles
Business users: Product owners and input providers
• Provide overall business strategy and goals for products.
• Develop key messaging and customer segmentation strategy for online sales.
• Not involved in day-to-day management of the Web site.
Marketing: Brand awareness and site management
• Develop strategy for product marketing across all channels, including Adobe.com.
• Drives day-to-day site marketing (content changes, testing, etc.) activities.
• Provides market research and analytic support for site management.
• Partner with sales to deliver online revenue.
Sales: Online revenue and e-commerce business strategy
• Own strategy and execution for all e-commerce related aspects of the site.
• Develop growth plans and deliver to business objectives.
• Partners with marketing on delivering online revenue.

IT: Implementation and Delivery
• Delivery support to site strategies and objectives.
• Develop technical strategy to deliver business vision.
• Partners with marketing product owners to enhance platform framework with new
templates, components and capabilities.
4.3 Resources
You will need to decide the right balance and allocation of internal staff and external
consultants. This will be determined by your organisation’s previous experience with digital
implementations — less experienced organisations may require more help from consultants.
Internally speaking, your organisation will need to implement a talent strategy to determine how
best to hire and retain digital and analytic talent.
“Having the right talent and sufficient resources on your digital team is
crucial to your long-term, data-driven success.” Brent Dykes – Adobe
4.3.1 Resource Model
To get the most out of Adobe Audience Manager and to deliver a better digital experience to
your customers, you need to get the most out of your implementation. Investing in external
resources will help you optimise your investment, mitigate project risk and identify new
opportunities.
4.3.1.1 Adobe Consulting And Partners
Organisations are facing a deficit of digital marketing expertise and Adobe consulting and
partners can play a critical role in making Adobe Audience Manager operational within your
business — implementing it, running and operating the solution and realising value through
business optimisation. Based on your resources and project scope, working with Adobe
consulting and partners can help you in many different ways: from developing your customer
journey, creative and user experience to building your content strategy, defining your workflow
processes, training and enablement, building your page template and components, making
necessary customisations to the implementation, integrating with other technology platforms
and providing general guidance on how to use the solution.

Roles and responsibilities, critical success factors, post implementation review and sales alignment.
4.4 Community
It is key to encourage the creation of a digital community within your organisation. Invest in
creating an environment where all members can learn from each other and share experiences,

ideas, best practices and campaign wins. When you have distributed analysts and business
users across different business units and countries, the digital marketing community provides
valuable support to new users as well as opportunities for more advanced users to share their
collective knowledge. This is especially important in traditional businesses where upskilling
traditional skillsets with digital ones is vital. It can be a useful forum in which to educate the
traditionally minded people within your business. Community can be fostered in a number of
different ways, such as a simple email distribution list, internal wiki, corporate chat groups and
workshops.
4.5 Culture
Adopting marketing technologies influence a great number business processes and practices
changing the nature of how teams work to achieve common goals. Despite the fact that your
organisation has invested in Adobe Audience Manager, some leaders and employees may still
have doubts about the benefits of the solution. They probably do not fully understand what
audience segmentation and targeting, social media marketing, display advertising, analytics,
automation, content management, user experience and other components of digital bring to the
table. This is common in a business world that is still adapting and changing to digital.
The first step is to have a clear vision for your culture as well as having the right mindset to shift
activities and thinking within your digital organisation. Second, involve key stakeholders and
share that vision of that future across the organisation. One of the main reasons why
organisations fear change is because they have little or no information about where the change
is taking them. Third, invest in individuals who embrace opportunities and are the right cultural
fit. These will find it easily to work in teams and emerge in more complex problem solving
situations.
Additionally, C-level executives can leverage two basic steps to embed a new way of thinking
into business operations regardless of the scale of the organisation. These steps fall into two
categories:
 The formal levers: These are adoption and adaptation of processes and structures
such as leadership policies, role definitions and people processes to support
digitalisation. These stakeholders will be responsible for the introduction of new digital
channels into traditional operations.
 The informal levers: These relate to the key behaviours, role models and networks that
help employees set a mindset aligned to the cultural structure of your organisation.

The following are the common traits in a digital organisation1
:
5 Process
In this section of the document, you will find the information to effectively deploy and use Adobe
Audience Manager. There are four main types of processes: deployment, usage, sustainability
and change management.
5.1 Deployment
Adobe Audience Manager implementations are
consultative engagements that focus on data collection
and aggregation strategy, audience profile planning
and targeting consultation. The implementation
methodology has been standardised by your assigned
Adobe Audience Manager consultant, who will guide
you through a code deployment and configuration
process with consultation around data collection and
audience strategy. The transition from implementation
to launch is designed to be seamless as the teams
1
Adapted from: Strategy&, 2013, ‘Building a Digital Culture: How to meet the challenge of multichannel digitalisation’, p. 10.
Customers and demand
• Pulls ideas from the market
• Driven by demand
Organisation
•Flat Hierarchy
•Rapid decision making
•Result and product orientation
•Empower employees to find ways to
achieve goals
Work Environment
• Understand needs of digital customers
• Driven by innovation, improvement and
overcoming constraints
• Cross-functional teams
• Rapid, unpredictable career progression
• Focus on rapid learn and launch
Tip
Depending on the service
associated to your account,
the Adobe Audience
Management team will
conduct periodical account
monitoring to help you
leverage the usage of your
solution. Ask your account
manager for more information.

work together to help your organisation define and develop the qualitative and quantitative
metrics to measure the success of your accounts.
Getting started with Adobe Audience Manager can take approximately six weeks to three
months, depending on your data collection needs. Our implementation techniques help create a
consultative partnership with new clients. This process is designed to:
 Discover and understand your business requirements.
 Produce an actionable plan to address those demands.
 Develop custom solutions to help meet unique requirements or use cases.
 Ensure that your proprietary data is imported and made available in Adobe Audience
Manager.
Our partner solutions and account management teams will work closely with you before, during
and after the implementation process.
5.1.1 Implementation Methodology
Before the implementation project kicks-off, it is key to have a well-defined success criteria for
the program (refer to the S.M.A.R.T KPIs outlined in the strategy section), a comprehensive
change management and communication plan and be committed to the ongoing training Adobe
will provide during the implementation. Adobe provides optional post-deployment resources for
further upskilling in the Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions.

5.1.1.1 Define Phase
This phase is designed to help customers to define and agree on project scope, understand
custom requirements, establish milestones and setup communication.
DEFINE DISCOVERY
BUILD, TEST &
TRAIN
LAUNCH, SUPPORT
& OPTIMISE
CODE
IMPLEMENTATION
Key Activities
Kick off meeting
Introduce project
leads
Provide access
Status reports
and project team
calls
Participants
Business teams Technical team
Deliverables
Documents
identifying roles
and
responsiblities
Processes to
share resources
and acces
Scope of work
A plan to
schedule project
meeting and
calls

5.1.1.2 Discovery Phase
The discovery phase is dedicated to gathering requirements, conducting research and
working toward a deeper understanding of your business needs and data collection
strategies.
The following table describes key activities that take place during this phase:
DEFINE DISCOVERY
BUILD, TEST &
TRAIN
LAUNCH, SUPPORT
& OPTIMISE
CODE
IMPLEMENTATION
Key Activities
Requirements
and goal setting
Brekout sessions
Discover sources
of your first-
party, second-
party and third-
party data
Follow-up
communications
Develop plans
for tag
management
and data
collection
Participants
Business teams Technical team
Deliverables
A completed
first-party,
second-party,
and third-party
data collection
strategy
A completed
data taxonomy
A developed
third-party data
integration plan
A completed
CRM or data
warehouse
ingestion plan
Defined
audience-
segmentation
requirements

5.1.1.3 Build, Test And Display
During the build, test and train phase, you will review the data collection strategy and prototype
with a designated partner solutions lead.
Your data collection strategy will undergo end-to-end QA testing. Partner solutions will track
discovered bugs and coordinate problem resolutions with Adobe systems engineers. Customer
training can start in parallel with these other efforts.
DEFINE DISCOVERY
BUILD, TEST AND
TRAIN
LAUNCH, SUPPORT
AND OPTIMISE
CODE
IMPLEMENTATION
Key Activities
Enable third-party
data provider
integration. And
perform cross-
browser
compability testing
Create instance in
Adobe Tag
Manager and
provide log-in
information
Onboarding of
CRM and other
data sources
Load data and
segment storage
Create initial batch
of segments,
audiences for the
segmentation plan
First-party data
collection, Traffic
Adobe Tag
Manager onto first-
party pages
Build reporting
methods based on
gaps and custom
reporting
requirements,
create relevant
custom queries
Environment
provisioning
Key Participants
Business teams Technical teams
Deliverables
A completed and
accepted data-
collection plan
End-to-end QA
testing
Acceptance and
sign off
Basic instruction on
AAM user interface
features

5.1.1.4 Launch, Support And Optimise Phase
During the launch, support and optimise phase, your data collection and prototyped
implementation moves from development to a live production environment. We’ll continue
training on product familiarisation and strategies that can help increase your ROI through data-
driven optimisation.
5.1.1.5 Code Implementation
Though the deployment process may seem complex, the code implementation is as simple as
adding a few lines of JavaScript adjacent to the closing </body> tag of your Web site.
Deployment
The Adobe Audience Manager code snippet calls Akamai to download the business rules set up
previously in the user interface. Furthermore, client browsers cache this information, which
DEFINE DISCOVERY
BUILD, TEST AND
TRAIN
LAUNCH, SUPPORT
AND OPTIMISE
CODE
IMPLEMENTATION
Key Activities
Data analysis and
optimisation
Further training
Create traits and segments
Follow-up communications
Deliverables
Generating and
interpecting report data
How to get product support
Depending familiarity with
AAM
Understanding custom
reports
Responding to, or
soliciting, feature requests,
bugs, and user feedback

helps reduce page and server load times. Our code and data collection methodology is
designed to maintain the user experience across your inventory.
Participants
Adobe partner solutions can work directly with your technical teams to help deploy code,
address final concerns and fulfil other requirements.
5.1.2 Data Integration Methods
Adobe Audience Manager exchanges visitor information with other data providers by either of
the following methods:
 Real-time: Transfers data immediately as a user visits your site. This method is also
known as a synchronous integration.
 Batch (server-to-server): Transfers data between servers on a set schedule after a
visitor has left the page. This method is also known as an out-of-band, or asynchronous,
integration.
Choosing the right integration method depends on a combination of business requirements and
the technical capabilities of your data partner.
5.1.2.1 How To Choose A Data Delivery Method
Describes technical and business reasons for sending data via synchronous (real-time) or
asynchronous (server-to-server) methodologies.
Selecting a data delivery type
Technical considerations: Data delivery depends on the technical capabilities of the data
partner. Adobe Audience Manager can send and receive data in real-time from the browser or
by batch updates through offline, server-to-server communication processes.
Business considerations: The business reasons for selecting one delivery method or another
depend on the technical capabilities of your destination partner and how you want to use this
data. Typically, synchronous data transfers are useful when you need to take action on user
data immediately. Asynchronous data transfers may be useful when immediate action is not
required and when you have time to build deeper user profiles for later use.

5.1.2.2 Real Time Server-To-Server Integration
A real-time server-to-server data integration rapidly synchronises user data between Adobe
Audience Manager servers and another targeting system. In most cases, data exchange takes
place within seconds or minutes, depending on the refresh rate of the targeting system. Note,
however, the targeted system determines this refresh interval, not Adobe Audience Manager.
Furthermore, the refresh rate can vary between different systems. A real-time, server-to-server
integration is the preferred integration type for data exchanges. Adobe Audience Manager uses
this method whenever targeting partners can support it.
Advantages:  Allows you to qualify users for segments without seeing them again on the
page, in a video player, etc.
 Reduces the number of HTTP calls from the page. Fewer calls helps preserve
the user experience.
 Helps with time sensitive targeting so you can take action on a qualified user
quickly.
 Useful when moving to a DSP for offsite targeting.
Disadvantages:  Less useful for onsite targeting when you need to target the user on the same
page, or the next page, based on qualifying a user for that segment.
5.1.2.3 Server-To-Server Batch Integration
A server-to-server batch integration bundles data and sends it to other systems at set intervals
rather than in near real time. Data transfer intervals can range from two to 24 hours. Some data
providers support this integration type only. However, we've seen a general trend away from
batch integrations towards real-time integration methodologies.
Advantages:  Allows you to qualify users for segments without seeing them again on the page,
in a video player, etc.
 Useful for targeting that is not time sensitive.
Disadvantages:  The synchronisation interval can delay targeting against the most current data.
5.1.2.4 Real Time Calls
Real-time calls exchange data with Adobe Audience Manager immediately, as a user visits your
site or takes action on the page. With this method, targeting systems get the most updated

segment qualification data and can take that information into account during a content or ad
delivery decision. Also, this process works with publisher ad servers where we update qualified
segments to a first-party cookie that is read into an ad call as key-value pairs. Currently, Adobe
Audience Manager uses real-time calls to integrate with Target, Adobe Primetime and other
content management systems.
Future developments include making these calls between servers rather than directly from the
page. For example, Adobe Target could make a single request for a new content area and then
message Adobe Audience Manager via server-to-server protocols. This helps reduce calls
made to the page. However, this process is in a proof-of-concept phase only. A production
release has not been scheduled. Furthermore, most external systems do not support this type of
server-side call, although Audience Manager can support it now.
Advantages:  Allows you to target the next page, content area, or ad impression based the most
recent segment qualification.
Disadvantages:  Adds a call to Adobe Audience Manager from the page.
5.1.2.5 Pixels Syncs To Targeting Systems
Pixel synchronisation maps segments to pixels on the page. The pixel fires and transmits data
when a user qualifies for a particular segment. Pixel synchronisation is a rudimentary and
unreliable data transfer mechanism. Top tier data providers and systems rarely use it.
Advantages:  Real-time data transfers.
Disadvantages:  Can add a lot of client-side calls from the page.
 Unreliable for data transmission (5% to 20% loss is normal).
5.2 Usage
Usage is all about establishing and leveraging best practices that will help you with your overall
reporting, analysis and decision making. Understanding how your organisation uses the solution
becomes important because it will help you maximise your investment. Here are a few
questions you will need to consider:
 How will you manage time and resources spent on reporting and deep-dive analysis?
 If your analysts are going to be overloaded with reporting and analysis requests each
week, what tools and workflows do you need to implement to help them prioritise those
requests?

5.2.1 Administration
As a solution in the Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Audience Manager permissions are granted
at two levels: at the marketing cloud level and at the Audience Manager level. Adobe Marketing
Cloud permissions govern access to Adobe Audience Manager and can be used to restrict
visibility to individual report suites and their connected data.
The options under the administration menu let you create Adobe Audience Manager users and
assign them to groups. You can also view limits (traits, segments, destinations and AlgoModel).
Enterprise customers using Audience Manager need one data management platform for all of
their data, but must be able to control the visibility of the different data elements to specific
business units. You can accomplish this using group permissions.
Audience Manager uses groups to assign permissions. Permissions are not assigned at the
user level. Group permissions are tied to objects (traits, segments, etc.) and to actions you can
perform on those objects (edit, view, etc.).
 Create users: Create users in Adobe Audience Manager and specify user details, login
status and assign users to groups.
 Create a group: A group is a collection of users that share access rights to destination,
segment trait objects. You can limit groups to single objects only or give them broad
access to combinations of different objects.
 Edit your account settings: Non-admin users can edit their own profiles, including
changing their email addresses and resetting their passwords.
5.2.2 Access Levels
The following matrix illustrates the different access permissions that Adobe Audience Manager
can assign to user groups:
TRAITS SEGMENTS MODELS DESTINATIONS DERIVED
SIGNALS
TAGS
Available roles Available roles Available roles Available roles Available roles Available roles
View traits View segments View models View destinations View derived
signals
View tags
Create traits Create segments Create models Create
destinations
Create derived
signals
Edit traits Edit segments Edit models Edit destinations Edit derived
signals

Delete traits Delete segments Delete models Delete
destinations
Delete derived
signals
Available
permissions
Available
permissions
Available
permissions
Available
permissions :
1. Data provider
permissions
1. Data provider
permissions
1. Data provider
permissions
1. Individual
destination
permissions
Read Read Read Read
Write Write Write Write
Create Create Create Delete
Delete Delete Delete 1. Wild card
permissions
Map to segments Map to models View all
destinations
Map to models Edit all
destinations
Create algo trait Delete all
destinations
1. Wild card
permissions
1. Wild card
permissions
1. Wild card
permissions
View all traits View all segments View all models
Create all traits Create all
segments
Create all models
Edit all traits Edit all segments Edit all models
Delete all traits Delete all
segments
Delete all models
Map all to
segments
There is no wild
card permission
for map to model
as that is handled
by model wild
cards.
There is no wild
card permission
for map to model
as that is handled
by model wild
cards
Create permission
is not needed.
Permission is
based on user
role.
There are no
permissions on
derived signals.
Permission is
based on user
role.
There are no
permissions on
tags.

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