As the digitisation of the world continues apace there’s an increasing number of digital channels for marketers to manage, from corporate websites and social media channels to programmatic ad campaigns, to name a few.
This means it’s often laborious for marketers to log onto each of them and make updates, eating into the time they could be carrying out far more valuable tasks.
The good news is the evolution of content management system (CMS) technology has led to the creation of the digital experience platform (DXP), which is in effect one intuitive platform that allows marketers to make changes across all of their digital channels, freeing up their time to be more efficient elsewhere.
However, efficiency is not the only benefit it brings. Because of the data sharing, collection and analytics functionality DXPs provide, they enable marketers to deliver highly personalised customer communications across a variety of touchpoints, boosting customer conversion and revenue.
By doing this DXPs help to provide a standout customer experience, especially crucial since a recent study from Salesforce revealed that over half (52%) of consumers said they would probably switch brands if the company they were currently engaging with didn’t personalise communications to them.
It’s this ability to personalise through DXPs that enables the organisations that use them to punch above their weight and deliver a customer experience that currently only the tech giants such as Google, Apple and Facebook are able to; and importantly, a personalised experience their competitors might not be offering.
DXPs are designed to be user friendly and help marketers to produce and upload content easily on any digital platform. An important part of this is the ability they provide to deliver consistent and complementary messaging online and in-app. DXPs can also be tweaked to deliver a unique platform that suits marketers’ needs and those of their organisation, often without costly extra IT support.
DXPs are built to be flexible. They have to be with new digital touchpoints launching all the time, all of which need to be integrated onto the platform.
Another additional benefit of DXPs is that they deliver value beyond the marketing function. They can help improve an organisation’s operational capabilities using the data analytics and sharing functionality within the platform. This allows businesses to learn from their internal processes to improve their efficiency, while at the same time help to prevent the siloing of data by different departments, which doesn’t help anyone.
Using DXPs in this way enables organisations to make big savings by removing overheads they no longer require. This could include getting rid of three systems that deliver data collaboration, because a DXP does the same job in one intuitive platform.
Ultimately, the DXP is a CMS platform that rules them all – making it much easier and faster to create, tweak and communicate marketing campaigns, and deliver consistent personalised communications online, as well as encourage greater efficiency and cost savings within organisations.
With fast-evolving CMS technology it was always a matter of when, not if, DXPs would appear. And while DXPs have been talked about for some time, it’s only recently that the platforms have delivered on their promises in an everchanging multi-channel and multi-touchpoint world.
For those marketers who don’t currently have a DXP on their radar, the question is, can you afford not to delve deeper into the value and benefits they bring?
Luke Campbell is a director at Xigen
