Nine ways your WCM platform enables customer experience management. (And why you can t afford to choose the wrong one)

Transcription

1 Nine ways your WCM platform enables customer experience management (And why you can t afford to choose the wrong one) September 2015

2 Table of contents WCM Why it s no longer enough... 3 WCM now The backbone of experience management... 4 Nine capabilities to look for in a web content management platform... 5 Buying the right WCM platform... 9 About Sitecore Sitecore Corporation A/S. All rights reserved. Sitecore and Own the Experience are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand and product names are the property of their respective owners. This document may not, in whole or in part, be photocopied, reproduced, translated, or reduced to any electronic medium or machine readable form without prior consent, in writing, from Sitecore. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Sitecore. 2

3 Web content management (WCM) has changed. Your customers demand more than a fancy website with great images they demand content that helps them solve their problems and decide which products and services to purchase. You need to create experiences that deliver the right content to the right person at the optimal time so much more than a basic web publishing system can do. In its recent 2015 Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management, 1 Gartner acknowledges that web content management is a key technology that helps drive better, more relevant and engaging customer experiences. It also says that web content management has evolved to offer more capabilities to deliver these experiences. But not all web content management platforms offer the same features and functionality to support experience-driven marketing. Choosing the wrong WCM platform can result in significant challenges such as an incomplete view of your customers and their needs, or a lack of accurate feedback on what is and isn t working, among others. If you aren t sure what your web content management platform should offer, this guide can help you. Choosing the wrong WCM platform can result in significant challenges such as an incomplete view of your customers and their needs, or a lack of accurate feedback on what is and isn t working. WCM Why it s no longer enough Web content management has come a long way from the static brochure-ware style websites built over a decade ago. While static web pages evolved into dynamically generated web pages, they weren t personalized and didn t look great on mobile devices. Content authors created content and published it, not thinking about how it could be used or viewed on different channels or devices. Because companies knew little about their website visitors, everyone received the same experience. The most important metric to track was eyeballs on a web page a metric that was received days or even weeks after the website visits occurred. And real time? It wasn t even on the radar. The reality is that some organizations are still this way. Sitecore s maturity assessment 2 reveals that less than half the organizations surveyed (48%) had mobile-optimized websites, and less than a third (29%) were regularly testing content. How digitally mature is your organization? 48 % 29 % of the organizations surveyed had mobile-optimized websites of the organizations surveyed were regularly testing content Source: Sitecore Customer Experience Maturity Assessment As WCM evolved, capabilities such as personalization based on location, pages visited, or preferences became standard. The delivery of content on mobile devices through adaptive or responsive design, and loose integration with commerce platforms became widely accepted. Today, the opportunities to create rich, engaging customer experiences have increased dramatically as have the challenges. Web content management is the core technology that underpins the entire experience, and as a result it has morphed into something much bigger than basic web content management digital experience management Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management. 2 Sitecore Customer Experience Maturity Assessment,

4 WCM now The backbone of experience management Today, your challenge is not managing websites; it s about managing the customer experience. As Gartner indicates in its report, organizations of all sizes are seeking to connect successfully with target audiences and engage these audiences with highly contextualized cross-channel experiences. Yet only 16% of companies had moved well beyond managing their websites, according to Sitecore s Customer Experience Maturity Benchmark. 3 Your WCM platform provides the basic capabilities of creating and managing content and publishing it to multiple channels. Now it must also provide new capabilities such as profiling, analytics, testing, personalization, cross-channel integration, e-commerce, and integration with other business systems like customer relationship management (CRM), marketing automation, digital asset management (DAM), etc. Customers demand great experiences whether you are a large multinational enterprise or a small business. Where large enterprises may provide more resources and a greater budget to deliver on customer experience strategies, smaller firms are often more agile and able to adopt new customer experience capabilities quickly. When it comes to customer experience, it s not about size, it s about your understanding of your customers and their needs, and how you must support them. Research shows that better customer experiences can lead to higher revenues. A Forrester Research study found that there is a clear correlation between superior customer experience and superior revenue growth for many companies. 4 Another study in the Harvard Business Review noted that customers who had the best experiences spend 140% more than those with the poorest experiences. 5 Simply managing web content is putting your company s growth at risk. There are nine capabilities your WCM platform needs to offer to help you manage and drive more effective customer experiences. Let s take a look at each of these. 3 Sitecore Customer Experience Maturity Assessment, Does Customer Experience Really Drive Business Success? Forrester Research, July 15, The Value of Customer Experience, Quantified, Harvard Business Review, August 1, Nine key capabilities to look for in a WCM Flexible deployment Integration with other marketing systems Profiling Commerce WCM Personalization marketing Omnichannel experience marketing Analytics Testing 4

5 Nine capabilities to look for in a web content management platform Profiling To deliver great experiences, you need to know your customers and what challenges or pain points they are trying to solve. A 360-degree view of the customer who they are, what they do across your various customer touch points, or channels, what social networks they use, and what they are saying about their needs (and your products and services) will help. Your WCM platform must provide the ability to create and manage customer profiles and use them to create more contextual, personalized experiences across all those channels. Profile management can be broken down into two different activities: behavioral profiling and individual records management. Behavioral profiling leverages the real-time behavior of your visitors to deliver relevant content right away. For example, if a visitor looks at three different web pages related to safety information on children s toys, the WCM can provide additional content such as related pages, recommended products, and other content. Management of individual records involves the creation of rich customer profiles stored over the lifetime of the customer. These profiles collect and connect both implicit and explicit customer data, i.e., that which is learned by observing visitors on-site behavior, and that which they expressly enter into forms and fields. This data might include website visits, opens and clickthroughs, social network usage, data from CRMs and marketing automation platforms, and other first-party data sources that altogether enable a complete view of the customer. Profile management capabilities not only support the ability to understand the individual customer but also enable you to segment your customers and prospects into specific audiences and personas. Segmentation can use similar attributes such as web pages visited, location, preferences, products purchased, and so on. WCM acronyms explained Confused by all the different terms being thrown around? Like WCM, CMS (content management system), WEM (web experience management), DXM (digital experience management), and CXM (customer experience management)? To compound it, WCM and CMS are often used by web content management vendors interchangeably throughout their marketing content. Many WCM vendors also refer to their platforms as web experience management (WEM) or digital experience management (DXM) platforms. The terms WEM, DXM, and CXM are used by WCM vendors to redefine their platforms in a broader context. WEM is often used in place of WCM, although today the capabilities are the same. Where WEM gives the connotation of webonly experience management, DXM or CXM refer to supporting the entire digital channel (and in the case of CXM, the offline channel). DXM and CXM typically offer additional capabilities to support the cross-channel customer experience. Personalization When you know who your customer is, you can personalize the experience specific to their needs using information stored in the customer profile. 5

6 Even where you don t know who the customer is, such as first-time, anonymous visitors, there is still an opportunity to personalize the experience by matching the visitor to one or more defined audiences in your profile management system, through real-time analysis of their website visit. Predictive capabilities are important as they leverage information known about a visitor (both real-time and stored within the customer profile) to predict what content and offers should be delivered to ensure a more contextually rich experience. Keep in mind that it s a balancing act between personalization and privacy. When you know the customer, the expectation of a personalized experience is understood and typically demanded. When you personalize the experience based on a defined audience (where you might not know the visitor), you have to be careful not to give the perception of spying on the visitor, or having obtained what they might consider private information. The ultimate goal of personalization is to get past the noise and clutter of the mountains of information available online. Offer content of value that will help your customers and prospects answer questions and make decisions. Remember, personalization is about delivering the right information at the optimal time in the right context. Omnichannel experience marketing It wasn t that long ago that we talked about the customer s experience on the website only. Today, it s about web, mobile, social, and offline. Although each of these channels is separate and distinct, the customer doesn t look at it that way. All too often marketers define channel strategies how they build the experience for the website, mobile, , or the brick-and-mortar store but this silo mentality is the wrong approach. Customers don t think in terms of channels. The customer or buyer s journey is made up of many interactions that can take place on any channel or device, online or offline. Customers respond based on their entire experience, and they expect it to be seamless across their entire buying journey. For example, a customer shopping on an e-commerce website expects to be able to pick up the same products in the If you aren t taking action on the data you collect, then you aren t collecting the right data. physical store. A customer in a physical store might access a kiosk or their mobile device to check on pricing or reviews of a product they are considering buying. Your web content management platform shouldn t focus on a particular channel or order of channels. It s not web-first, it s not mobile-first, and there shouldn t be a complete separation of offline. It s customer-first. The experience you provide must be consistent and seamless across all your channels, regardless of where the customer started. To achieve this, your WCM should fundamentally separate content management from the presentation of that content. You need the ability to manage the creation and approval of content components, and the flexibility to have those components published across different channels and devices easily and efficiently. Omnichannel marketing means using content seamlessly across a wide variety of channels, according to what your customer is doing and using at that moment. A customer who registers for a white paper on your website doesn t expect to be prompted with a call to action to download the same white paper on your mobile site or in an . A customer who bought your product doesn t expect to see multiple ads on your website for that product. But, a customer looking for information on your website expects to see the same content available when they view your site on their smartphone or tablet. If they added something to a shopping cart or wish list on their smartphone but decided to finish the purchase on their desktop later on, they expect to see the items they added to the cart still there. The web content management platform that you select today must be able to support the creation and management of an integrated omnichannel customer experience. 6

7 Testing Analytics It s critical to know what s happening on digital channels, so you know what s working and what s not. Your website most likely already has a web analytics program giving you basic traffic information. Reviewing analytics is the first step in understanding what s happening across your digital properties. Web analytics gives you a range of important information such as how many visitors are on your website, how many pages they view, the most popular landing pages, how much time they spend on your site, what devices they use to view your site, and so on. This information should be available both historically and in real time. But basic web analytics paint only part of the picture. Engagement analytics tell you how engaged your customers are on your digital properties. Here you shift the focus from how many visitors are on your site (quantity) to how engaged they are (quality), the idea being that high engagement means great experiences. Engagement analytics help you understand how well your campaigns are performing across all channels and devices and provides you the ability to see any issues quickly. If a channel is underperforming, you might look at different approaches to increasing engagement on that channel or switch your focus to a channel that performs better. Engagement analytics also tell you how different channels have been used in the customer journey, which channels perform best, what content resonates the most, what the best path to conversion is for customers, and more. All your analytics must do one thing: they must provide actionable insights. Don t track metrics and analyze performance for the sake of it. If you aren t taking action on the data you collect, then you aren t collecting the right data. Marketers know they should be testing everything they do. However, very few implement a testing regimen. A/B testing (e.g., testing two different versions of content on a web page or ) and multivariate testing (e.g., testing combinations of content components on a web page) are essential. They help you quickly understand what is working with your campaigns and content. Testing provides the ability to refine your content continually in real time, optimizing the experience and improving engagement. You should be able to test one page against another, and test individual components of those pages so that you re constantly optimizing every element of your site. The WCM platform you select should offer the ability to perform testing on your content and campaigns. Look for testing capabilities that don t require IT involvement or yet another vendor to add complexity to your marketing infrastructure. Not needing to go to IT every time you want to run a new test ensures you get results you can act on more quickly and leaves IT to focus on other priorities. marketing is another key channel to engage customers. marketing works best when integrated with the rest of your digital channels, including your website and mobile site or mobile app. In some cases, your WCM platform provides built-in marketing capabilities that integrate tightly with the rest of your channels. In other cases, your platform offers pre-built integrations with well-known marketing systems. The consumer decision-making process has moved from pure search for a product, compare products, and make a purchase to research, read, learn, ask questions, research more, find out what others think and then, ultimately, make a purchase. 7

8 In either case, ensure that your marketing can access your customer profiles to deliver s that are contextual and relevant. If your marketing is a separate solution, confirm that the customer data you capture on their activities can be shared with your profile management system to continue building that 360-degree view of the customer. You also want the content you create for your marketing landing pages and other content assets created and managed within the WCM platform. This additional integration supports the ability to create content once, test it, and optimize and reuse it where necessary. Commerce There is much discussion on the relationship between content and e-commerce. The legacy approach to e-commerce has been to have your basic website and its content within one platform and your e-commerce capabilities within another. However, enterprises of all sizes see a correlation between the content they provide and e-commerce conversion rates. A study by the CMO Council found that 43% of marketers believe rich content and digital experiences increase conversions. In addition, 40% believe great digital experiences improve retention and loyalty. 6 The consumer decision-making process has moved from pure search for a product, compare products, and make a purchase to research, read, learn, ask questions, research more, find out what others think and then, ultimately, make a purchase. A commerce-focused enterprise needs to look at the entire customer journey from need to purchase and deliver a range of targeted content that seamlessly enables the customer to make a purchase if, and when, they are ready. Addressing the entire customer journey is one reason so many enterprises have adopted content marketing. According to recent research from the Content Marketing Institute, 77% of B2C marketers are using content marketing, and 65% of these are working on using that content to convert visitors on websites. 7 The need for a consistent contextual experience across all channels drives the need for integrated content and e-commerce, and the desire for rich content that is both product-focused and needs-focused across the entire customer lifecycle. How you decide to integrate your content marketing and e-commerce activities depends on several factors. While some enterprises continue to run these platforms side by side, there are two common approaches to obtain the right experience. If you have an existing e-commerce platform, make sure your WCM platform integrates well with it so that the contextual knowledge and personalization capabilities of your WCM can be applied all the way through the purchasing process. If you re looking at re-platforming both systems, seek out a vendor that offers the complete end-to-end capability, to connect content, campaigns, and commerce and improve your conversions. When you look at web content management platforms, be sure to understand your requirements and the approach that will work best for you. Integration with other marketing systems Web content management is at the core of your experience technology strategy, but there are a multitude of other marketing systems to contend with. Your WCM platform needs to integrate with a range of technologies to ensure that you get that coveted 360-degree view of your customers and can deliver a seamless, consistent omnichannel experience. These include CRM, digital asset management, marketing automation, social media marketing, and more. As an example, integration with marketing automation platforms includes the sharing of content from your content management system and the synchronization of customer profile information. This includes lead data from lead generation forms fed into the WCM profile, and use of WCM profile data in lead forms, s, lead management, and more. A similar integration strategy is true of CRM. 6 Brand Attraction From Enriched Interaction, CMO Council, August B2C Content Marketing 2015: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends North America report, Content Marketing Institute. 8

9 Your WCM platform needs to integrate with a range of technologies to ensure that you get that coveted 360-degree view of your customers and can deliver a seamless, consistent omnichannel experience. Implementation partners play a key role in helping you stitch multiple systems together. Partners work in concert with the WCM provider offering a range of marketing, business, and technical knowledge to help you design a complete customer experience strategy. Depending on your needs, these partners may offer end-to-end implementation services or a subset of services such as technology implementation. Ensure the web content management provider you select has a strong implementation partner ecosystem that understands the WCM platform intimately and can provide the integration experience you need to ensure your marketing stack works well together. Flexible deployment choices Many enterprises are starting to look to the cloud to support their customer experience strategies. Cloud-based solutions provide a number of conveniences such as faster implementation and reduced costs for implementation and ongoing administration. Other organizations may require that they run all their marketing systems in their data centers or private clouds, due to regulatory compliance, data sensitivity, or competitive advantage. When evaluating WCM platforms, consider that an on-premises-only solution, while perfectly good, will require more involvement from IT to implement and support. Also, the upfront infrastructure costs may be a deterrent for some smaller enterprises. An alternative to on-premises is cloud-based, either dedicated hosting or SaaS. In a dedicated cloud offering, the WCM platform is hosted in either your private cloud or a public cloud like Microsoft Azure. If hosted in a private cloud, you still rely on IT to implement and manage the platform. If hosted in a public cloud, your WCM provider may provide full support (including upgrades and patches), and you can expense the cost of the platform over a number of years (subscription-based pricing). In a SaaS-based WCM environment, your website is hosted completely in a public cloud managed by the WCM provider. SaaS environments require you share resources with other organizations (referred to as multi-tenancy) and make you completely reliant on the WCM provider for timing of upgrades and patches (whether you want them or not). You are also typically limited to using the templates offered by the SaaS provider, narrowing your ability to deliver unique experiences. While this is often adequate for personal sites and very small businesses, it is highly restrictive for mid-sized and larger firms. Some WCM providers offer a hybrid solution for enterprises that want to keep their core platform on-premises, but also want to provide business units, like marketing, the ability to quickly spin up and take down new campaign microsites or landing pages. The key is understanding your own organization s requirements and constraints, then selecting a WCM platform that can fit into your chosen deployment strategy. Be sure you understand the different options the WCM platform provider offers and the costs and administration/management effort associated with each. Buying the right WCM platform Your customers expect a seamless, consistent cross-channel experience that engages and educates. These expectations are driving changes in the capabilities WCM platforms must provide. Web content management is about more than managing and publishing web content. It has become the backbone of experience management both online and offline and now offers a broader range of experience-based capabilities such as those discussed above. As you develop your strategy to select a new WCM platform, look for a provider that offers as much of these capabilities as possible, one that has the knowledge and experience to help you define and deliver on your customer experience strategies. 9

10 Next steps The Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM assesses leading solutions and delivers valuable insights for those looking to optimize digital marketing platforms for a better customer experience. The 2015 report evaluates 19 vendors for their Ability to Execute as well as their Completeness of Vision. This year, Sitecore leapt vertically to the top position for its Ability to Execute among the vendors evaluated and has been in the Leaders quadrant for six consecutive years. Learn more by downloading your copy of the 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM now. About Sitecore Sitecore is the global leader in customer experience management. The company delivers highly relevant content and personalized digital experiences that delight audiences, build loyalty, and drive revenue. With the Sitecore Experience Platform, marketers can own the experience of every customer that engages with their brand, across every channel. More than 4,400 of the world s leading brands including American Express, Carnival Cruise Lines, easyjet, and L Oréal trust Sitecore to help them deliver the meaningful interactions that win customers for life. For more information, visit sitecore.net 10