Adobe Campaign Interview Questions

Adobe Campaign Architecture is based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and comprises several functional modules.

These modules can be deployed on one or more computers, in single or multiple instances, depending on constraints in terms of scalability, availability and service isolation.

The scope of deployment configurations is therefore very broad and spans a single, central computer through to configurations including multiple dedicated servers over multiple sites.
Available Functional modules are below:

• Application server (nlserver web)
• Workflow engine (nlserver wfserver)
• Delivery Server (nlserver mta)
• Redirection server (nlserver webmdl)
• Managing bounce emails (nlserver inMail)
• SMS delivery status (nlserver sms)
• Writing log messages (nlserver syslogd)
• Writing tracking logs (nlserver trackinglogd)
• Writing inbound events (nlserver interactiond)
• Supervising modules (nlserver watchdog)
• Statistics server (nlserver stat)

These modules can be deployed on one or more computers, in single or multiple instances, depending on constraints in terms of scalability, availability and service isolation.

Is Adobe Campaign a multi-tier application?

Yes, Adobe Campaign is a multi-tier application.
Presentation layer:The application can be accessed in different ways, depending on the users’ needs: Rich client, Thin client or API integration.
Logical application layer: Adobe Campaign is a single platform with different applications that combine to create an open and scalable architecture. The Adobe Campaign platform is written on a flexible application layer and is easily configurable to meet a company’s business needs. This accommodates the growing needs of the enterprise from a functional perspective as well as from a technical perspective. The distributed architecture ensures linear system scalability scaling from thousands of messages to millions of messages.
Persistence layer: The database is used as a persistence layer and contains almost all the information managed by Adobe Campaign. This includes both functional data (profiles, subscriptions, content, etc.), technical data (delivery jobs and logs, tracking logs, etc.) and work data (purchases, leads).The platform comes predefined with a marketing centered data mart or can easily sit atop an existing data mart and schema using any of the major Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS). Adobe Campaign also provides a full complement of Extract Transform and Load (ETL) tools to perform data import and export of data into and out of the system.

Adobe Campaign offers a choice of three hosting models, providing flexibility and freedom to choose the best model, or models to suit business needs:
On-premise: Adobe Campaign can be deployed on premise, with all components of the solution installed and configured in your data centers.
Hosted: Fully hosted solution, with all data and communications hosted in Adobe’s data centers.
Hybrid: Adobe provides cloud-based messaging services, whilst you host the data-specific components solution – including integration components – on your premises.

There are currently 3 supported versions of Adobe Campaign:

• Adobe Campaign v6.1 (console version)
• Adobe Campaign v7 (latest version of the console version)
• Adobe Campaign Standard (web version)

You can consider v6/v7 as the same product and Adobe Campaign Standard a different product (as it is based on a different infrastructure).

There are three types of Adobe Campaign modules:
Multi-instance modules: a single process is run for all instances. This applies to the following modules: web, syslogd, trackinglogd and watchdog (activities from the config-default.xml file).
Mono-instance modules: one process is run per instance. This applies to the following modules: mta, wfserver, inMail, sms and stat (activities from the config-.xml file).
Utility modules: these are modules that are run occasionally to perform occasional or recurrent operations (cleanup, config, downloading tracking logs, etc.).

To list all modules, you need to use the nlserver pdump command. You can add the parameter -who to list the connections in progress (database and application).

To list missing modules, you need to use the nlserver monitor -missing command. Another useful command is nlserver monitor. It lists the monitoring XML file (obtained in the Adobe Campaign client or via the monitor.jsp web page).

nlserver monitor -missing
 11:00:39 > Application server for Adobe Campaign Version 6.1.1 (build 8510) from 30/12/2013
 inMail@test
 mta@test
 wfserver@test

The config command lets you manage server configuration, including the reconfiguration of the database connection.
Use the config command of the nlserver executable file with the -setdblogin parameter.

 nlserver config -setdblogin:<[dbms:]account[:database][/password]@server>

 nlserver config -setdblogin:PostgreSQL::test6@dbserver

To change the internal password use: nlserver config -internalpassword

PushEvent or PushEvents  are SOAP methods and linked to the two nms:rtEvent and nms:BatchEvent dataschemas. It is the information system that determines whether an event is a “batch” or “real time” type.

PushEvent lets you insert a single event into the message, PushEvents lets you insert a series of events into the message.

The PushEvent method is made up of a <urn:domEvent> parameter which contains the event, The PushEvents method is made up of a <urn:domEventCollection> parameter which contains events.

You need to use urn:PushEvent in soap web service call and Example using PushEvent:

<urn:PushEvent>
 <urn:sessiontoken>mc/</urn:sessiontoken>
  <urn:domEvent>
   <rtEvent>
     ...
   </rtEvent>
  </urn:domEvent>
</urn:PushEvent>

You need to use urn:PushEvents in soap web service call and Example using PushEvents:

<urn:PushEvents>
  <urn:sessiontoken>mc/</urn:sessiontoken>
   <urn:domEventCollection>
    <Events>
     <rtEvent>... </rtEvent>
     <rtEvent>... </rtEvent>
     ...
    </Events>
  </urn:domEventCollection>
</urn:PushEvents>

The <batchEvent> element lets you add the event to the “batch” queue. The <rtEvent> adds the event to the “real time” queue.

The mandatory attributes of the <rtEvent> and <batchEvent> elements are @type and @email. The value of @type must be the same as the itemized list value defined when configuring the execution instance. This value lets you define the template to be linked to the content of the event during the delivery.

<rtEvent> configuration example:

<rtEvent type="order_confirmation" email="john.doe@domain.com" origin="eCommerce" wishedChannel="0" externalId="1242" mobilePhone="+33620202020">

Note: A detailed description of all authorized attributes as well as their values is available in the description of the nms:rtEvent and nms:BatchEvent dataschema.

Yes, It is possible. When combined with mobile applications (Mobile App Channel), Message Center enables you to issue transactional messages via Adobe Campaign thanks to push notifications on mobile applications.

Offer Engine(Interaction)

28 Mb

Interaction comes with the following values that can be used to qualify the status of an offer proposition:

• Accepted.
• Scheduled.
• Generated.
• Interested.
• Presented.
• Rejected.

Note: These values aren’t applied by default: they have to be configured.

The offer proposition’s status is not updated immediately. It is carried out by the tracking workflow which is triggered every hour.

Xml collections are supported on the inbound channel, but the links to other schemas are not.

For the inbound channel, you must add the call data fields into the Interaction node.

<element label="Interactions" labelSingular="Interaction" name="interaction">
  <attribute label="Navigation language" name="navigationLanguage" type="string"/>
</element>

To transfer additional data when calling the engine, you have to add the interactionGlobalCtx variable into the web page’s JavaScript code. Insert the Interaction node containing the call data into this variable. You must respect the same xml structure that is in the nms:interaction schema. Refer to: Configuration.

interactionGlobalCtx = "<interaction navigationLanguage='"+myLanguage+"'/>";

You need to configure a data buffer zone in order to increase inbound Interaction performance by desynchronizing offer proposition calculations. This configuration is to be carried out in the instance’s own configuration file (config-Instance.xml).

This data buffer zone is periodically read and emptied. The default period is in the space of about one second. Proposal writing is therefore grouped. Data buffer zone configuration can be done in the instance’s configuration file (config-Instance.xml).

The definition for a writing daemon (process named: interaction) is as follows

<interactiond args="" autoStart="false" callDataSize="0" initScript="" maxProcessMemoryAlertMb="1800"
maxProcessMemoryWarningMb="1600" maxSharedEntries="25000" nextOffersSize="0"
processRestartTime="06:00:00" runLevel="10" targetKeySize="16"/>

All of the rights defining a zone are as follows:

allowDebug: enables a webApp to be executed in “debug” mode

allowEmptyPassword: authorizes a connection to an instance without a password

allowHTTP: a session can be created without using the HTTPS protocol

allowUserPassword: the session token can have the following form: “<login>/<password>

sessionTokenOnly: the security token is not required in the connection URL

showErrors: errors on the server side are forwarded and displayed

Seed address is a Qualitative method used in Marketing especially by Direct marketing vendors and Marketing automation tools. Seed address is a way to which companies using direct mail and e-mail marketing programs can make sure quality of services offered by Marketing automation instruments and vendors.

Seed address uses and configuration:

In Marketing automation tools, We have a capability to add seed address or Return paths into targeting list for email/direct mail/SMS delivery. Seed address could be your internal address from your marketing team or other stakeholders who are interested in tracking/measuring the quality of services offered by a tool or a vendor.

Benefits:

Seed address is a crucial tool in Marketing automation, and it provides a simple mechanism by which your business stakeholders such as Marketing Team, Campaign Manager, Account Manager and Analysts can keep track about all your business activities revolving around Email Marketing and Direct Mail Marketing. Other benefits are listed below:

1. Following the Actual Delivery Turn Around time:

As a Marketing team you have inserted your address(Email, physical address, SMS) in your real delivery target, you will be able to receive the communication(Delivery), so You can easily calculate the actual delivery time.

2. Track Quality:

Your direct mail vendor has promised to deliver a high-quality offer booklet to you customers but how can you make sure that they deliver what they promised? The answer is quite simple a secret seed address list. You can insert this list randomly into your real target list.

3. Identify Improvement areas:

As we have established above that, we can track delivery time and quality with seed address so we can also find the areas of development by identifying whether you received your email in spam box or did not receive at all. The vendor did not deliver direct mail on time, and paper quality was not up to the standards, there was some printing error, etc.? These problems affect your campaign performance, so you need to fix that, and all that information is possible with your seed address, and I know, deliverability reports will uncover some of the improvement areas but not everything. Seed address helps you in validating your reports.

4. Protect Your Mailing List:

Companies spend millions in buying leads and in nurturing them. The address list is a valuable asset, so companies want to protect it by ensuring that their vendors don’t steal it. With seed list, you can make sure that no on is miss using your list. If someone sells this to any company and when they will send any communication using this list, you will be a part of it.

Further Reading section:

1. Adobe Campaign Resources
2. Adobe Campaign and seed list configurations
3. Adobe Campaign and customization of seed list

IF(NOT(ISNULL( Date_A )), IF(ISNULL( Date_B ), TODAY() – Date_A , Date_B – Date_A ), NULL)

Given the following function definitions:

IF(logical_test, value_if_true, value_if_false)

Checks whether a condition is true, and returns one value if TRUE and another value if FALSE

NOT(logical)

Changes FALSE to TRUE or TRUE to FALSE

ISNULL(expression)

Checks whether an expression is null and returns TRUE or FALSE

TODAY()

Returns the current date

The formula above is a straightforward formula for returning the number of days between two dates, with some conditional checking for null values.

Well, This is a role based question. The point of this question is to understand how a candidate thinks about taking in a set of data and processing it for another business group. The seasoned professional will have a solid point of view on how leads should be prioritized and will ask probing questions to tailor his mental model to fit the constructs of your business. A candidate who doesn’t have as much experience in this realm may not be able to spout off a proven lead scoring algorithm, but can still show you his understanding of how to consider various lead qualities and establish weighting and balance among them.

IF email_address CONTAINS (oracle.com OR adobe.com OR sap.com)

  THEN set competitor_flag == TRUE

    AND set lead_status == Disqualified

Another trick question to test your attention to detail. A missed parentheses or an exclusion of a lead status—it may seem like a small error, but it can lead to disastrous results.

The workflow cycle has three main steps.
Being edited
This is the initial design phase: When is new workflow is created, its status is ‘Being edited’. The workflow is not yet handled by the server and can be modified without risk.
Started
Once the initial design phase is complete, the workflow can be started. In this phase, the instance is handled by the server and the individual tasks are executed. The workflow can still be modified with certain precautions.
Finished
A workflow is ‘Finished’ when there are no longer any tasks in progress or when an operator has explicitly stopped the instance.

Lead nurturing Strategy helps marketers build relationships with buyers across channels and throughout the sales cycle. It will be different for every business but Generally speaking, Lead Nurturing Strategy could be divided into Three phases such as:

Initiation/Filtering:

Lead Fit: Is the lead is a perfect fit for Your business?

Lead Interest: Does the Lead satisfies the criteria for your prospect?

Engagement/Nurturing:

Engagement is the central part of my strategy, and I have listed down multiple ways to engage your lead until that lead provide your proper hints(enough point to become a qualified lead) of becoming your customer.

Targeted content – Leads nurtured with targeted content produce an increase in sales opportunities of more than 20%

Multi-channel lead nurturing – Four out of five marketers say their email open rates do not exceed 20%. It is time to think beyond the inbox

Multiple Touches – Prospects receive an average of 10 contacts from the time they enter the top of the funnel until they are a closed-won customer

Timely Follow Ups – The odds of a lead entering the sales process, or becoming qualified, are 21 times greater when contacted within five minutes versus 30 minutes after an inbound lead converts on your website

Personalised emails – Personalised emails generate up to 6 times higher revenue per email than non-personalized emails do

Lead Scoring – 68% of successful marketers cite lead scoring based on content and engagement as the most effective tactic for improving revenue contribution from lead nurturing

Sales and Marketing Alignment – 89% of companies that align their sales and marketing lead nurturing efforts report measurable increases in the number of sales opportunities generated

Conversion/pop the question:

Follow the steps, and you have got yourself a well-defined Lead Nurturing Strategy:

1. Once Your Lead becomes the Qualified Lead ask your Sales team to reach out to the prospect
2. Gather the feedback from your sales team about the customer.
3. Use the feedback to improve your system.