Creating an Acquisition Link in Adobe Mobile Services

Objective

In this exercise, we will use the Adobe Mobile Services UI to set up your app for acquisition link tracking. We will then show the process for creating a really simple Marketing Link.

This link will show the simplest form of Acquisition. Our simple Marketing Link will do two things:

1. Direct users to the correct app store for the device they are using and
2. Fingerprint the user’s device so we can correctly determine where the install came from.

The link can be used in print campaigns, email campaigns, search ads, or from websites like the following:

Setup

1. To get started, we'll need to log in to Adobe Mobile Services. You should have been provided with login information. Follow those instructions. Once you've logged in, select the app you've been provided from the dropdown in the top-left corner.

   

2. Now that you have your app selected, we need to configure the app for acquisition. Click Manage App Settings in the left pane and scroll down to the SDK Acquisition Options and enable it.

   

3. Now, before we save, let's add a couple of apps to link to. Scroll to the Add App Store App link. It should be just below the first section in the settings:

4. Let's start by adding an iOS App Store App. Paste the following App ID for Bea[rd]cons into the Store App ID field: 835196493. Click the Add button to save the app.

5. Now let's add a Google Play App. Make sure you select Google Play from the App Store dropdown. This time, we're going to paste the following identifier into the Package Name field: com.omniture.Beardcons. Click the Add button to finish the job.

6. Finally, hit the Save button at the top of the screen. Saving our app settings will change the configuration of the app. Normally, a developer would download the new configuration file from the site and put that file into their project. For simplicity, we will skip that step here.

Implementation steps

Configure a Marketing Link

1. From the Acquisition menu in the left navigation bar, select Marketing Link Builder

2. Now click the Create New button. You should now see the following interface:

   

3. Fill out the Marketing Link Name. Let's call it Simple Link so we can distinguish our links later. Now generate a Tracking Code.

4. Let's create some context data by pressing the Add Tracking Context Data. This is extra information that can be added to your Analytics data using processing rules. You can select from a list of commonly used keys, or create your own. For our example, we'll set the source to be website.

5. Next, let's create our Fallback URL. This is the URL that users are directed to when a destination cannot be matched. Click the New Web Link button. Now enter a Title and a Web Link and hit Save.

6. That's everything we need for now. We'll go into more advanced options later. Click Next to continue on to the Destination page:

   

Setup the Link Destination

1. We now want to tell our link where to redirect users to for different platforms. Click the to add a decision point.

2. From the dialog, let's click Add Path:

   

3. Let's do our iOS link first. So click the Operating System button and choose iOS from the list and Save

   

4. To add an Android destination, click the first and follow steps 2 & 3, selecting Android from the Operating System list this time.

5. Now we should have two paths that the link could take. Let's link them to our app store apps we created earlier. Click on the on the iOS tree.

6. From the Destination Type modal, choose App Store.

   

7. Now choose the iOS app from the list and hit Save.

8. Complete steps 5-7 for android.

9. Hit Save

Run It

You can now see your link in action. Click the Copy button next to your new link. Now, open a new tab in your browser and paste in the URL. Since you are not on an iOS or Android device, the link will take you to the Fallback Url you specified earlier.

If you have a QR reader or Chrome browser installed on your phone, you can scan the QR code. You should be taken to the App Store on your device. If you've configured everything correctly, Android phones will direct to the Google Play store and and iOS phones will link to the Apple App Store.

If you

Armed with your new link, you can start using it in your marketing. Here, we added the link and QR code to the sample website from the beginning of the exercise:

Next steps

Learn how to configure your app to do acquisition tracking in the Basic Acquisition Link Tracking lab exercise.