• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 18, 2014

Adobe on Tuesday will launch several location marketing services aimed at personalizing the mobile experience for consumers. The features, supported by the Adobe Marketing Cloud, range from in-app messages to app, search, and campaign management, as well as a new social app.

The Intelligent Location Marketing features allows marketers to push relevant content and messages to consumers based on their proximity to beacons. Marketers can deliver location-based in-app messages to drive real-time engagement and then follow up with email campaigns that tap data based on the customer's interactions in retail stores, sports stadiums or other physical locations.

The in-app messaging feature takes Adobe's beacon technology launched in April a step further to provide local, personalized notifications. Similar to the way Google's Inbox feature for Gmail works, the message pops up on the locked mobile screen. The mobile user swipes the message and lands it in the app. Since timing is everything, marketers can set the message to appear on a specific time and day.

Intelligent Location Marketing supports the ability to provide in-app messaging. Ray Pun, strategic marketing manager for mobile solutions at Adobe, said many brands develop apps with location or message targeting in mind. The feature enables marketers to use the data collected about the app user such as behavior or proximity to a beacon to drive real-time engagement. The content or message is not viewed as spam, but rather directly relevant to the consumer's needs.

Additional data-driven marketing innovations include real-time mobile app testing -- a Dashboard that enables marketers to view all app data on one screen. It also provides insight into portfolio bidding to place search ads across mobile devices.

The growth of app use on smartphones outpaces tablets by more than two times -- 70% vs. 30%, per analysis from the Adobe Digital Index. The data shows hopes for the use of location-based technology during the holidays. In a survey of 400 U.S. consumers who own a smartphone or tablet and plan to shop online during the holidays, about 71% like having ads personalized, but opinions differ about the quality.

Twenty percent of those who participated in the Adobe Digital Index do not think brands personalize the ads enough. Some 30% of those participating in the study like the personalized ads and believe efforts are right on track. About 20% feel that today's personalization efforts are too intrusive, and 29% don't think ads should be personalized at all.

Adobe Digital Index found that 34% of respondents have received a marketing promotion based on their location, but another 21% were unsure. Some 53% noticed retargeting efforts aimed at them. The survey also found that consumers are open to beacons, with 55% finding them useful to receive promotions on their mobile device while in a physical store.

Interestingly, Pun points out iOS apps are used twice as long as Android. 

Woman Using Phone While Shopping photo from Shutterstock