In the spirit of innovation, which is the cornerstone of e-Spirit’s mission, today we introduced exciting new capabilities of the FirstSpirit Digital Experience Platform (DXP) at our annual customer and partner summit in Munich. Read the news release here.
Overview
New DXP innovations include the next generation of our omnichannel marketing capabilities, featuring advancements for real-time omnichannel content delivery. Other notable enhancements include Predictive Targeting, AI-driven Content Creation using Natural Language Generation (NLG) and Shoppable Videos. These innovations will help CMOs and their marketing teams to improve delivery of omnichannel digital experiences to drive more engagement and revenue.
Here are some of the improvements!
New Cross-Phase Omnichannel Capabilities
The rise of omnichannel marketing has been a boon to all industries and it’s easy to see why. According to Aberdeen, companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers, as compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel strategies. And Forrester adds that “A truly omnichannel operation that spans the customer life cycle will optimize revenue, deliver capital efficiencies like cost savings, spawn operational efficiencies, and improve the customer experience overall.” To help customers, e-Spirit has introduced new cross-phase omnichannel capabilities to FirstSpirit Anywhere, the FirstSpirit omnichannel marketing component, which enables personalized digital experiences in real time via any channel at scale.
Here’s how it works: First, create new channel content using an intuitive FragmentCreator UI. e-Spirit’s Omnichannel Manager then enables marketers to review and optimize the channel experience prior to publication. Using the next generation of FirstSpirit CaaS, channel content can be delivered as-a-service to wherever it’s intended to go—mobile, website, voice activated device, store, IoT, digital sign, social network, app—in milliseconds. It’s lightning fast. Delivering content across multiple channels has never been easier.
We’ve also made improvements to e-Spirits AI-driven segmentation and content optimization capabilities. This is important because according to Forrester, “The world is changing, along with consumers' expectations of experiences and communication from brands. The paradigm for customer engagement is shifting from large, monolithic experiences that serve everyone to smaller, more contextual experiences that companies serve to consumers in just the moment they need them. B2C marketers must adopt the right strategy, operational best practices, and technology to win, serve, and retain customers in this new environment.” We’ve introduced advanced machine learning-based Predictive Targeting that takes personalization to a new level. Predictive Targeting does the heavy lifting for marketers by analyzing and optimizing the performance of each content variation across every channel in real time, helping marketers serve unmatched cross-phase personalized experiences at every step of the customer journey. Once a personalization opportunity is uncovered, marketers have the flexibility to take immediate action, activating the appropriate predicted targeting to drive the most uplift in revenue for each segment—all with a single click. It doesn’t get much easier than that!
New Content-Driven e-Commerce Capabilities
Consumer demand for video content continues its momentum in 2018. As a result, customer experience leaders are taking steps to eliminate the disconnect between the content they produce and the purchasing process to make shopping experiences more fluid and enjoyable. Why? Because video “makes us feel. And, increasingly, how you make someone feel is the reason people choose to do business with you,” says Caren Cioffi, executive VP and general manager at Brightcove. That’s why we’ve added Shoppable Videos to our existing suite of retail-focused capabilities. Shoppable videos help retailers capitalize on these feel-good micro-moments of influence, which according to Google are “intent rich moments when decisions are made and preferences shaped”. By making videos more interactive and engaging with clickable links, customers can view product information and make a purchase while in the moment, regardless of the channel they are on.
New AI-driven Content Creation Capabilities
Lastly, to help marketers create more content with limited human resources, we’ve introduced Natural Language Generation (NLG). NLG automatically generates high-quality text, such as e-commerce product descriptions, promotional text, SEO-relevant descriptions, job descriptions, and more, at scale—greatly increasing productivity and time to market. This innovation is a result of a strategic partnership between Retresco GmbH, one of the leading companies in the field of AI-driven content automation, and e-Spirit. With this partnership, e-Spirit is incorporating NLG into its Digital Experience Platform, allowing customers to tap into the power of AI-driven content creation.
Alexander Siebert, founder and CEO of Retresco notes that “Customers are looking increasingly for digital experience solutions that help them reach new economies of scale. AI is quickly becoming a great enabler in this age where digital content is expanding at an unprecedented rate. The strategic partnership between the companies will help e-Spirit customers increase productivity and time to market.”
Here’s how it works: The NLG engine uses linguistic algorithms to render structured metadata into human-readable text that is indistinguishable from content written by people. The NLG engine ensures that the:
- tone is correct, consistent, and coherent; and
- grammar, spelling and syntax are correct without the need for review and approval.
In this way, NLG can be used to automate repetitive tasks, such as frequent updates of the same text or non-creative mass content production. This cutting-edge capability can be a real game changer for organizations that produce a lot of content.
The Bottom Line
e-Spirit CEO, Jörn Bodemann, says it best: “80% of companies today are struggling to deliver experiences that meet customer expectations, making the need for digital experience technologies more critical. These new capabilities represent a leap forward in the DXP space, in particular for the FirstSpirit Digital Experience Platform. We’re committed to giving marketers advanced tools that solve their strategic challenges while simplifying digital complexity for increased time to value and a digital experience edge.”
About e-Spirit
The FirstSpirit Digital Experience Platform powers enterprise-class, personalized digital experiences for some of the world’s largest brands and more than 10,000 websites globally. How can we help you?