With more of our lives spent on devices for leisure and work, delivering personalized content experiences by channel and device is a critical need for brands to connect with their customers.
And with the last 18 months or more lived in different stages of pandemic lockdown, our digital consumption dependencies have only increased. Businesses that are slow to recognize the need for personalization are surrendering the chance to engage with their customers in ways that drive both conversion as well as longer-term connections.
Consumers have the technology in their hands to get what they need quickly and with the least friction possible. It’s at their fingertips through always-on, always-accessible smartphones; it’s waiting for them at home via that voice-activated smart speaker in the corner.
The good news is that businesses also have the tools they need to deliver tailored experiences to specific audiences through the power of personalization.
Brightspot CMS, for example, comes with pre-built audience targeting and segmentation features to quickly enable personalized digital experiences. Let’s take a look at how this works across several different use cases.
Know your audience—and the delivery device
The simplest example of personalization comes with the ability to tailor the experience based on whether your reader is accessing your site using a desktop computer versus a mobile device.
Previously, developers would need to code what these different experiences would entail, a hugely labor- and cost-intensive process that could very quickly break down as new formats, technologies and device types emerged.
Today in the Brightspot CMS, a site admin or editor can easily establish a mobile-only Audience Target (in the Sites & Settings area of the CMS). The process takes only a few minutes (watch the video below to see it in action). Then, using the Variation tool on any content asset or page, a mobile-specific variation can be created that will render any time a user views the assets using a mobile device.
What does this mean in the real world? With screen real estate at a premium on mobile devices, content producers can prioritize the experience to ensure that a user sees the most relevant content at the top of their screen instead of having to scroll through the same page objects you might find in the desktop version.
For example, an eCommerce retailer may want to show a product video with pricing and a click-to-purchase button on mobile, whereas the desktop leads with a full gallery of product images and a callout to read a product review from a trusted trade magazine.
Meanwhile, a sports media company is promoting a live in-person event with a well-known athlete. Driving promotion through paid advertising means 75% of page views of the event registration are from users on mobile devices. To maximize the return on their advertising investment, the company creates a page variation for a mobile-only Audience to show the sign-up form at the top of the screen with the athlete’s image to promote. The result? Signups increase as visitors don’t need to scroll to see the call-to-action.
One-to-one connections through a single platform
The challenge with digital personalization has always been how to scale across large audiences but still speak in the most authentic voice to connect with the individual on the other side of that screen.
Some marketing tactics, like personalized messaging in email newsletters, are relatively simple with the right CRM integrations that can customize subject lines and delivery messages by name, location and other known personal attributes gathered through various forms and marketing channels.
Other tactics, like localization and geotargeting, can require more sophisticated setup and infrastructure to deliver localized experiences based on language types or a user’s specific IP address.
Marketers and content producers, however, don’t need to depend always on complicated development support to start connecting with audiences on a more personal level—they can do it with tools that are already available in Brightspot CMS.
Let’s start with content- and topic-view count.
We know a reader has engaged with a certain type of media and/or topic on our website—say, videos of fall soup recipes.
As a culinary website content producer, I can create a new Audience target in Brightspot CMS for users who have viewed video recipes on the site more than five times in the past seven days. We have an exclusive offer for a free "Best of Thanksgiving" recipes e-download written by our magazine editors, which can be promoted alongside related video content the next time this subset of site visitors returns to engage with our content and brand.
Alternatively, we wish to show two different views of our latest digital publication: one for existing subscribers and one for prospective subscribers.
With Brightspot CMS, these two pathways can be easily integrated without relying on dev support to tailor each experience. By creating respective subscriber and non-subscriber audiences, it’s now possible to build one page showing all the articles, columns and videos from your monthly issue.
Based on audience segmentation, our existing subscribers can view links to exclusive, behind-the-scenes video outtakes with that month’s celebrity chef interviewee. In Brightspot CMS, a page variation for non-subscribers replaces the link to a promo highlighting the exclusive video and call-to-action to subscribe for access to this member-only content and other exclusive offers.
Modular means more ways to make your content work across channels and in many voices
We’ve explored how easy it is to build out audiences and variations to quickly support targeted digital publishing and personalization.
Now consider this opportunity of content personalization combined with the flexibility offered by a modular content approach.
Meaning?
Take the power of your investment in content as a whole (materially, as well as the time and resources to produce), and break it down into modular components than can be re-used and repackaged dependent on audience, device channel and more.
So instead of a single content block—say, a standalone article—that acts as your workhorse across all your channels and touchpoints, why not deconstruct so it comprises a title, summary, promo card, chapters and more that can be inserted as modules whatever the channel and consuming audience dictates?
Now, with a menu of modules with which to build out your new "story," these can be organized and displayed based on the audience-specific segments and variations that you’re already identified to drive greater personalization.
Taking this idea one step further, your modules can be translated and re-used as needed, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach to content across languages where certain pieces of the modular content puzzle may not make sense for full translations. The end result? A library of assets that work for your organization’s specific needs rather than expending time, money and resources that are not needed or revenue-impacting.
Technology shouldn't be the roadblock to personalization
The benefits of delivering personalized content experiences are clear.
And with an integration-ready, fully flexible CMS like Brightspot, the tactics to get it right are readily available without any huge technical overhead or lift.
By leveraging the utility of in-built audience and segmentation tools, CMS users can nimbly and quickly set multiple variations to deliver the right content and features to end users specific to device, channel, interests, demographic profile data and much, much more.
