Adobe Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics serve different purposes within Adobe's suite of marketing and analytics tools. Here are some of the key differences we see between Adobe Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics:
Overall Functionality
Adobe Analytics: This application focuses on analyzing and reporting website and application performance, user behavior, and digital marketing campaign effectiveness. It provides you with insights into key metrics such as page views, conversion rates, and user engagement which can help you optimize your digital presence.
Customer Journey Analytics: This application is instead specifically designed to allow you to analyze and visualize the end-to-end customer journey across various touchpoints and channels – not just web-based touchpoints. It helps you understand how customers interact with your brand over time, enabling the creation of personalized and targeted customer experiences. If understanding customer behavior is your priority, Journey Analytics is critical to have in your portfolio.
Sources of Data For Each Application
Adobe Analytics: AA primarily deals with data related to website and app interactions but also lets you import additional online or offline data for reporting (e.g., call center data, pre-click data). This is valuable to add to your ability to understand how visitors are interacting with your website.
Customer Journey Analytics: CJA is designed to aggregate and analyze data from various sources, including online and offline channels. It looks at the holistic customer journey, incorporating data from websites, mobile apps, email, social media, and other touchpoints. With CJA, any data source can be part of the data you use for reporting and analysis, but the data needs to be housed in the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP).
Analysis Approach
Adobe Analytics: Focuses on both summary and granular data analysis at the page or event level, providing insights into specific user interactions on digital properties.
Customer Journey Analytics: Takes a broader view, analyzing the entire customer journey and identifying patterns and trends across multiple touchpoints. CJA uses the concept of data views which are containers allowing you to determine how to interpret data from a connection. This provides you with the flexibility to specify and configure dimensions and metrics in preparation for your reporting and analysis.
Visualization
Adobe Analytics: Adobe Analytics has the concept of virtual report suites, which allow you to segment your collected data and control access to that segmented data. It includes detailed reports, dashboards, and visualizations for analyzing digital performance metrics where you can create custom reports to drill down into specific data points.
Customer Journey Analytics: CJA Offers visual journey maps and reports that illustrate the entire customer journey. This includes identifying touchpoints, interactions, and potential pain points in the customer experience.
Identities & Personalization
Adobe Analytics: Adobe Analytics uses a definitive set of identity fields, such as the Adobe Analytics ID (AAID). While it provides insights into user behavior, it may not have the same level of focus on personalization as Customer Journey Analytics.
Customer Journey Analytics: Customer Journey Analytics supports the identities that you define as part of the schemas in the Adobe Experience Platform. It allows you to capture insights that can be used to personalize and optimize customer journeys. You can then identify opportunities for targeted messaging and content delivery based on the analysis of customer interactions across channels.
Integration with Other Adobe Solutions:
Both Adobe Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics are part of the Adobe Experience Cloud and integrate with other Adobe solutions, such as Adobe Campaign for marketing automation and Adobe Target for personalization. If you are using Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO), you may want to also include Journey Analytics, to help you analyze the work you are doing in AJO.
We hope this information provides you with a succinct summary of the differences between these two powerful Adobe products. If you would like additional information or would like to discuss which application can help you best meet your specific analysis goals, please feel free to reach out to Sean Burrell at sean.burrell@celerity-is.com.