In a recent blog post, we summarised the digital experience platform (DXP). We spoke about what it is, how it’s different from a CMS and the core components from which it is comprised.

Now we’ll be taking a deeper dive into the DXP looking specifically at how it will help power the next generation of personalised experiences for your customers and what you need to do to actually make it happen.

Whether you call them students, citizens, users, members, or something else entirely, your customers expect personalised experiences. With the torrent of information being thrown at them each day, personalised communication is the best way to attract and hold your customers’ attention.

Imagine you’re watching the football and your team wins in overtime. You take out your mobile and Tweet about how excited you are with the result and post a pic of you and your mates celebrating in the team colours. Almost instantly you’re presented with opportunities to purchase tickets to the next match, buy a commemorative team jersey and join the fan mailing list.

You’ve just experienced a hyper-personalised digital marketing experience made possible by a DXP.

Hyper-personalisation is the concept of gathering real-time behavioural data of customers to tailor products, services and experiences according to their wants and needs. It engages them by only providing the information they actually need at any moment in time on the channel that suits them best.

How can a DXP help deliver next gen personalisation?

Hyper-personalisation is only possible if you are able to profile and segment customers, refine content in response to customer feedback and deliver it across whatever channel your customer is using. To do this you will need your technology to have three key capabilities:

• Customer data management

• Sophisticated analytics and

• Multichannel content delivery

1. Customer data management

A key capability of a DXP is their cloud-based data storage that allows you to collect a lifetime of customer data, deliver personalised customer experiences, understand your customer journey and rapidly innovate your suite of digital services. This means that, as your customers engage with your website, apps, portals, emails and everything in between, the DXP automatically builds up a detailed profile of each user that can include:

• Location data

• Behavioural information such as the type of content that interests them, purchase history and search behaviour

• Demographic data such as age, gender, marital status, income, etc.

• Psychographic information such as values, attitudes and beliefs

2. Analytics

Analytics allows organisations to continually analyse user behaviour across all channels; you can track search terms, clicks and content engagement to ensure you are delivering the right content for your audience. In addition to this, Analytics will ensure your content complies with the latest accessibility guidelines and is optimised for the audience that you’re trying to engage.

Armed with information, it then becomes possible for organisations to develop content, features and functionalities that are tailored to meet the specific needs of any given audience type. The next time a customer engages with your organisation via your website, social channels or app, for example, the DXP ensures they are served the most appropriate content based on the data that it holds on them. This could include different content layouts, tweaked calls-to-action or personalised imagery to name just a few.

3. Multi channel content delivery

The key to this multi-channel deployment capability is the ‘headless’ nature of the platform. Traditionally, CMS platforms are structured so that you have a user interface that used to push content into a database. Then there’s a presentation layer that displays the content to users, typically in the form of HTML templates. This presentation layer is the ‘head’. This was fine when organisations only had to deal with desktops, laptops and mobile devices but would break down if required to integrate with social media platforms, CRM systems, wearable devices etc. So off with the head and in its place comes a content API that can integrate with every conceivable channel. This means content can be created, managed and published to one platform and pushed to all your channels without the need for multiple logins or timely content duplications.

A headless CMS enables the delivery of content that can serve multiple channels.

Organisations that effectively provide personalised experiences stand to gain a massive advantage over their competitors through an increase in customer satisfaction, acquisition, retention, conversions, sales and revenue. That, coupled with the simplification and automation of complex and time-consuming processes, means a lessening of the burden placed on marketing teams, allowing them to focus their time on more meaningful activities.

Personalisation is, of course, just one aspect of the many benefits that a DXP can bring an organisation.