How to boost your company's marketing with Sitecore and content personalization

If we think of a content management system (CMS), several come to mind. Many of them vary in their level of technical complexity, number of available plugins, interface, integrations and a long list of other elements. Sitecore, is one of the most complete solutions on the market, especially if we consider its great possibility of customization.

Large companies with a very high level of digital presence use Sitecore as your CMS, however, they are not aware of all the available features that could boost their business.

In this post we will explain the main and most powerful marketing features offered by Sitecore, and how the personalization of content will take your business to the next level.

Sitecore's capabilities: their differential value

Differentiation is key to any product and service, and so is it in the case of CMS and what they offer to their customers.

In this sense, Sitecore is not only a very powerful CMS, but it has also developed its functionalities so that a company has a holistic view of customer data. Some of them are:

• Real-time data collection from site users and from interactions with campaigns and third parties, through integrations.
• Insights on improvements thanks to machine learning.
• Automation of the content personalization process thanks to artificial intelligence.
• Personalized multi-channel experiences.
• Scalable content management.

Multichannel content personalization: increasing customer engagement

Every business seeks to know, understand and connect with its customer. Sometimes we have a lot of information about how our users interact with our website, products or campaigns, but we don't know how to read that amount of information or draw the right conclusions to have the right strategies.

Inside Sitecore is Sitecore xDB which is a component that allows access to all the customer information most relevant to the marketing strategy, quickly, easily and cleanly.

But how does he do it? In simple terms, it tracks user behavior and interactions, drawing up analyses that will allow us to match the engagement value, a term that we will dive into later.

Appropriate channels for each type of content and customer

Depending on the types of customers a business has, the channels that a company incorporates into its marketing strategy and issues its communications will vary.

In this regard, and with the objective of creating a real and appropriate link with each type of customer, Sitecore is designed to personalize content being able to adapt it to different channels such as websites, mobile apps, printers, social networks, email, ecommerce, among others.

Thanks to its functionalities, it allows you to manage content, product information and digital assets.

Not for nothing their motto is”Digital Experience Platform”. Its objective is that businesses can effectively communicate with their users by delivering quality and, above all, personalized content.

How to get started customizing content in Sitecore

As we mentioned, this platform offers multiple possibilities to the user, both analytics and management. For this reason, it is very important to know the possibilities of Sitecore in order to make use of them and boost the business.

But what comes first in the set up of Sitecore marketing? Next, we'll explain key concepts and processes you should consider to get the most out of this platform through the engagement plan.

The starting point at Sitecore: the engagement plan

It is very important for a business's marketing team to know the impact that their objectives have on those of the business. For this reason, the Sitecore engagement plan is the main step you must take to configure the objectives and be able to make the right decisions with the right data.

In this sense, the objective of the engagement plan is to begin to see that your visits have different values, that is, to value user interactions on the website. This is called Engagement Value. For example, completing certain forms is equivalent to an x-value of your business objectives.

To get an order and value of the visits, our recommendation is to list all the interactions on your website in an Excel file, give them a value and implement it in Sitecore.

Completing this data will allow us to see in the Path Analyzer a complete map of each visit, what its value is, or in what phase of the customer journey It is.

In addition, it allows you to filter by parameters, buyer persona, get valuable and quick insights, know which channels are attracting the most, etc.

To take full advantage of this functionality and draw the right conclusions for your business, we recommend that you: Work on the engagement value at the beginning of the engagement plan.

Toxonomy & profiling: Customization according to user characteristics

At Novicell, the first step we take with our clients is to support them in understanding and defining the profiles that exist within their company's targets. This is a key step in customizing content and achieving business objectives.

Once the profiles are detected, the characteristics related to each profile are assigned within Sitecore. This will make it possible to identify each profile and to know what stage it is at in the customer journey.

For example, if we have identified a person who matches a profile of Buyer Persona, we can send a personalized email that more matches that profile; launch marketing automations; etc.

To successfully achieve this, taxonomy within Sitecore is paramount. This concept refers to how to structure your company's information so that Sitecore can then automate. That is, to establish which channels are used, which are the buyer personae, what are the stages of the customer journey. This will help to know which profile is converting the most or, for example, to know which areas of the country have the highest number of qualified leads.

With the parameters we give, we give Sitecore clues about which visits arrive on the web and how to categorize them.

Additionally, with the Experience profile, a kind of user profile is visible and we can know where they converted, where they clicked, how they interacted. The interesting thing is that, based on what has been defined previously, we can see which buyer persona fits.

Sitecore Success Story:

Adapting infrastructure to increase traffic/highlighted box

The scenario of a business can vary considerably from one moment to the next, especially if we consider such important changes in the global context, such as what happened with the Covid-19 pandemic. And in the face of this variation, it is essential to have flexible digital infrastructures that allow businesses to react quickly to their change needs.

In this regard, the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University had to considerably adapt the infrastructure they had with Sitecore in the face of the significant increase in their traffic.

Thanks to the flexibility and alternatives of the platform, they were able to receive 1 million pages viewed per day during the pandemic, multiplying traffic to the website by 4 without technical problems (38 million visits in 7 months), and resisting a 370% increase in traffic by Social.

Having platforms that are adaptable to changing situations is essential for the success and growth of a business.

Do you want more information about Sitecore?

Contact us! We will be happy to help you.