Blog posts by Brain Fuel

Blog posts by Brain Fuel2019-03-19T17:40:19.0000000Zhttps://world.optimizely.com/blogs/brain-fuel/ Optimizely World Personalization and Commerce in EpiserverI won't bore you with a ton of statistics on the impact of personalization on the user experience as I am sure you have seen a million stats. But, I would be remiss if I didn't set the context for this post with at least one statistic, so here you go: 88% of U.S. marketers reported seeing measurable improvements due to personalization — with more than half reporting a lift greater than 10%. Now that we are on the same page about the power of personalization, let’s talk about getting started with your Episerver personalization plan. When it comes to building (and implementing) your personalization strategy, it is important to think about the entire customer journey and how individualized content best supports placement of content and products. Knowing that Episerver supports a full spectrum of personalization - from tailored hero images on the homepage to advanced machine learning and personalized search, it can be difficult to determine where to start. One simple way to start with personalization is to think about whether you know something unique about your customer and if you want to show them different content or a different message? Let's take a look at some information you may already have on your users that you can use to build your personalization strategy How People are Getting to Your Site Knowing how visitors are getting to your site will allow you to use personalization to guide them through their journey. Users coming into your site via a PPC campaign or direct traffic or email all have different levels of knowledge of your company and are looking for different content or products. Executing personalization based on "entry channel" will allow you to personalize content on your main site to support their journey OR guide them to landing pages with tailored content that will help drive conversions. Categories of Pages People Have Visited Using visitor segments you can deliver personalized content when you know a visitor has shown interest in a specific category of products or content. Take a car dealership website for example. If a site visitor has looked at several two-door cars with lots of horsepower, you can assume they are interested in something a bit sportier and fun, than say… a minivan. Knowing the category of products they have consumed gives you a great base set of data to power some pretty effective personalization Previously Purchased Items According to a Forrester study, over 15% of visitors admit to buying recommended products and because Episerver is so strong in the commerce space this should be a no brainer. Honestly, if you are reading this and using Epi today it's probably one of the driving factors as to why you purchased Episerver in the first place. Each item purchased by a site visitor gives you an additional piece of data to use for personalization. On your homepage or on product pages, you can start with product recommendations for complimentary items to their previous purchased (think Amazon's 'You Might Also Like' content). So, what are you waiting for? It's time to get started on that strategy and implementing some personalization so you can show ROI. If you have any questions about getting started with Epi or want to discuss personalization, Epi commerce, or anything strategy HMU on twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/jgrozalsky">@jgrozalsky.</a> 2019-03-19T17:40:19.0000000Z

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The Battle of Content Strategy vs. Content ManagementIt is a great time to be alive. We are well into the content marketing era and as time goes on, more and more marketers are taking their website content programs seriously. Organizations are creating smarter content and tying website content to business goals and strategies. With that being said, we are still seeing a lot of random acts of content because people are confusing content strategy and content management. Content and content strategy is not something that you address once and you are done. Content requires maintenance in order to prevent random acts of content. Part of that maintenance is continuously evaluating why you are creating content, and to do that appropriately, there are two critical steps you need to follow: <ol> <li>Document your content strategy</li> <li>Measure performance against your strategy</li> </ol> So let's take a look at how these two play together and will prevent you from committing random acts of content. Document your content strategy According to MarketingProfs, 62% of top performing marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. Having a documented content strategy is key because it helps you gain buy in for the efforts that go into content creation (i.e. time, resources, etc.). Documenting your content strategy also creates alignment on who the content is targeting and engaging and identifies what you want users to do with the content. Making sure that you have a strong content process will ensure you are consistently creating quality content (and at scale). Measure performance against your strategy This should sound like a no brainer, but it is worth reiterating when talking about content strategy (and this is the real difference between content strategy and content management). Measuring the performance of content is critical to ensuring that you make smart decisions for content investments and how to evolve your content in Episerver. Obviously you want to look at your content performance at a high-level to see how often it is being viewed. However, the real data you need to be looking at are your engagement metrics. How far down are people getting on certain pages? Are people clicking on links and calls-to-action associated with certain pieces of content? Are some downloads getting more love than others? Are there themes in the content that people are choosing to engage with? These are all questions that have answers in your data and will not only help you validate how your content strategy is contributing to the business, but it will help you ensure you are evolving your content strategy to deliver content your audience wants. By adhering to these simple two steps, not only will your content game be elevated, but it will allow you to create a well-oiled content machine that then sets up your marketing team to explore additional opportunities like voice search, AI, personalization, machine learning and more.2019-02-04T23:18:36.0000000Z

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Thought Starters for B2B Personalization<div class="entry-summary"> The overarching concept of personalization is to improve the customer experience on a site by utilizing information to present unique content that’s specific to each individual site visitor’s needs. </div> <div class="entry-content"> That being said, when it comes to personalization, there are two distinct types of personalization and ways to deliver personalized content: Explicit personalization: When a visitor’s profile or specific actions dictate the personalized content that is delivered. Implicit Personalization: When a visitor’s behavior and content consumed informs the personalized content that is delivered. While both types of personalization are powerful, for those B2B organizations just starting out, explicit personalization is a great way to get your toes wet and demonstrate the impact personalization has on the customer experience and is straightforward to execute with Epi. One simple way to start with personalization is to think about whether you know something unique about your customer, do you want to show them different content or a different message? If the answer to the above is yes, then BOOM, you have personalization. To break it down to get more specific and actionable personalization rules, you can start to play some fill in the blank If I know a user’s_______________, I want to show them ______________ So for B2B organizations getting started with explicit personalization, where should you begin? Below are some thought starters for you.  <ul> <li>Conversion-based personalization is great because it helps you progress users through their journey. There’s no need to waste valuable website real estate promoting an action that a user has already completed. So go ahead, swap out content and CTA language to promote the next action you want users to take. </li> <li>Location-based personalization is powerful because it makes a business feel more accessible by promoting offices, team members, events or work that has been done in a location that is near the site visitor. </li> <li>Time-based personalization is great, especially for B2B organizations, as the sales cycle can range from immediate to more than a year, with multiple site visits and touch points along the way. Delivering fresh content based on a visitor’s last visit timeframe ensures the visitor feels recognized, sees fresh content that you want to promote while still feeling they can pick up where they left off during their previous visit. </li> </ul> Obviously, that’s just a taste of some of the types of explicit personalization B2B organizations can use, but hopefully that gets the gears turning. With use of other Epi functionality including Advance (content suggestions), Perform (for product recommendations). and Find (search), your personalization will become more automated overtime, but getting started with some ad-hoc perosnalization will help you mature into some of those more robust and smart features Epi has to offer. </div>2018-09-20T18:01:26.0000000Z

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Planning for Personalization within EpiserverPersonalization is easy. Well, let me rephrase. Implementing personalization and delivering personalized content/products within Episerver is easy. When you look at both Perform and Advance and the ability to deliver personalized recommendations based on some pretty powerful algorithms, personalization is more accessible because the tool you're using is pretty smart. However, while implementing personalization within Episerver may be easy, planning for personalization and knowing where to start can be tough.  I've seen the challenges my clients go through. Whether it's truly understanding personas, creating enough content to support personalization, and even getting organization-wide buy-in for personalization, personalization planning can be intimidating.  When personalizing with Episerver, it is important to define the criteria for your various visitor groups/segments. By thoroughly segmenting users, you will not only increase your marketing maturity but you will be well equipped to meet the rising demands of your customers. Now the next step is figuring out how and where to start.   Below are a few of the exercises that will help get your team aligned and ready to execute more sophisticated marketing strategies within the experience platform.  <ul> <li>Understand your Visitor Groups: This is hands down the most important step, and while it seems like a no brainier, you would be surprised how many different opinions there are of who an organizations target audience groups are and how to best reach them. The bigger the organization, the more ambiguity is around the intricacies that make up the various audience groups. It is so important to not just identify visitor groups, but to go beyond the surface. Focus on identifying what makes them tick, what motivated them to come to your site or interact with your brand. Once you begin to better understand the who and why, you can begin planning more strategic and tailored marketing to each one of these groups. And then, using a tool like Epi's Insight for visitor intelligence, you can continue to refine and update your visitor groups.</li> </ul>   <ul> <li>Define and Document the User Journey:  Once your visitor groups/segments are identified, the next step is to define and document the steps in their journey - both at a high level and at the visitor group level. Visitor groups may have a similar overarching journey, but each will have intricacies in terms of duration in the phase - some may have more phases, fewer phases, etc. You get the idea. When defining the journey, it is key to start to think about what the intent is in each step for each audience group, and how site content and marketing efforts align to the journey. Once this is defined, documented and blessed by the powers that be at an organization, this will make all ongoing personalization more straight forward because you will have a better understanding of how user's are moving through the site and how pathing algorithms are being used to deliver content and product recommendations.</li> </ul>   <ul> <li>Align Content to Visitor Groups and Journey Phases: One of the key deliverables that comes out of understanding audience groups is a content matrix that aligns your audience groups with the user journey phases. At this point you will begin identifying the pages and content that will help move users through each journey phase. What you may come to find is that you don’t have content that supports users at each phase, and that is OK. The purpose of moving through this exercise is to identify those gaps. When you are building a website, you typically think about the content you need for go live, and not about how you can have 1:1 dialog with each user. As you move through this exercise of aligning content to audience groups and phases, you will identify missing content and inevitably start to create content for visitor groups and their journey.</li> </ul> Once you have all of this documented, you are that much closer to implementing personalization within Episerver and delivering tailored experiences for your visitors that will keep them engaged with relevant content based on their profile and expressed interests.2018-04-13T20:08:07.0000000Z

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The Struggles are Real: How to Avoid Implementation and Re-Platforming Pitfalls<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> </head> <body> After Episerver Ascend, there is always a flurry of activity related to re-platforming and redesigning. The excitement of new features and functionality gets the wheels turning around adding new products to a MarTech Stack, customers start talking about redesign needs and CX enhancements, and prospects who were on the fence are now fully invested in Epi. And while all of this can be fun, whenever you are thinking about a new implementation, things quickly become that much more complicated because both IT and marketing have a lot at stake and frictions often arise. While everyone agrees that the project needs to be successful, how stakeholders define success can vary significantly across departments. While Epi is hands down one of the most straightforward systems I have worked with in my years in the business, there are still common pitfalls that you see across technologies that you need to be aware of (and avoid) when it comes to replatforming on Episerver. In many cases, CMS implementation struggles and failures are due to poor planning, lack of follow-through, or merely misaligned expectations. By making planning a top priority, you can head off many of the problems you are likely to encounter and set yourself up for success. <ul> <li>Setting Yourself Up For Success: Remember why you selected Epi and how the platform will support your organization goals. My most successful projects have started with having my clients take a step back, clearly identifying their goals, and then using those goals as a constant reminder throughout an implementation project. With goals defined, we tackle the “what does success looks like” question.  This in turn informs our tracking metrics, reporting, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This groundwork is crucial. Investing time and effort in planning upfront will save you from pouring time and money into a platform you will be unable to use in the long run and will make sure you are collecting data from the get-go so you can start using some of the amazing features like Perform and Advance sooner than you thought.  </li> <li>Communication is Crucial: Another key area is communication and expectation setting. Failing to set goals with team members can also lead to a disparity in the expectations of those involved with the results. It is imperative that you take time to ensure everyone affected has a clear understanding of your goals. Some people may be initially resistant to change, or even the specific platform you chose. To counter this, help them connect the dots. In a broader sense how will the chosen CMS help your organization? Precisely how will the changes impact them personally? Also make sure to take a look at your training plan so that you are tailoring trainings for each audience affected by the implementation. Everyone learns differently so a quick hour or two of desktop sharing isn't guaranteed to get everyone up to speed. Ideally, you will want to give a series of smaller training sessions, as many employees learn best in a small group setting. Don’t forget to build in time for follow-up workshops as necessary. The more effective the training the higher your adoption rates will be.  </li> <li>Hope is Not a Strategy: Not all implementation failures occur before or during launch. The success of your Epi adoption depends heavily on what you do post-launch. Unfortunately, just implementing the platform and hoping  everything goes smoothly is insufficient. It is vital for you to monitor how users respond to the changes you have put forth, and to optimize the experience accordingly.</li> </ul> To execute a successful Epi implementation and avoid disastrous post-launch failures, ensure that you have a clear plan in place at the outset of the project, a plan in place for what to do when issues arise and a plan for training employees. And finally - because it cannot be said enough - never stop re-evaluating against your success criteria. Epi has a lot of to offer, so making sure you are maximizing your investment and using the appropriate features to achieve goals will ensure you're delivering the best customer experience and contributing to business growth. </body> </html>2018-04-11T17:16:22.0000000Z

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