That principle has made customer experience a competitive differentiator for every business. From airlines to beauty conglomerates, companies are turning to digital experience platforms to create end-to-end customer experiences that are personalized, predictive and relevant. According to Gartner, this is fueling growth in the digital experience platform market, which grew to more than $3 billion in 2021 at a rate outpacing the average for the worldwide software market.

However, DXPs typically are not a single product; instead, they are constructed from a variety of mar tech applications. This creates a challenge for businesses that need these tools to connect and communicate with one another.

“There is a pain point here in that organizations are starting to build very complex tech stacks to speak to their customers,” said Nick Malone, Chief Operating Officer at Sitecore.

“The market is very clearly shifting away from monolithic, all-in-one platforms that offered everything in a tidy bundle but lacked the flexibility and agility businesses require to keep pace with today’s ever-shifting customer demands,” he said. “Modular, composable stacks are increasingly becoming the norm. If you can’t buy or you choose not to buy from one vendor, then you have to think about how you resolve the connection of all of these different tool sets.”

How tech infrastructures impact digital experiences

According to Malone, digital experiences are shaped by core capabilities under the categories of content, engagement and commerce, which also mirror the end-to-end customer journey.

A company’s content toolkit encompasses platforms and resources to plan, create and manage digital assets that drive digital experiences, including content creation and management tools. Engagement technologies, such as customer data platforms and analytics, complement the content toolkit. Commerce environments may range in complexity but involve components such as product catalogs, shopping carts, checkout, inventory management, pricing and fulfillment.

At each step of the campaign lifecycle, each of the components of a DXP has a vital role to play. That means the integration between these applications is critical to creating a more seamless customer experience and streamlining the marketing team’s efforts.

Maximizing efficiency within an organization’s content process is especially important, notes Malone, because it is the fundamental element of a personalized digital experience. According to Econsultancy, 65% of marketers say they spend more time creating content than any other activity in digital campaigns.

Traditionally, marketing departments have used multiple, disconnected tools often characterized by disorganized and redundant processes.

In a customer-facing example, a lack of connectivity between the systems that house a company’s customer data may result in consumers being served emails, recommendations or other content for goods or services they are no longer interested in or have already purchased — an experience that damages consumers’ enthusiasm or perception of a brand. CDPs present a solution to these deficiencies by unifying data from numerous sources, including social media and website activity, to …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron