content personalization for web teams of all sizes (sxsw 2015 talk)

Designing Experiences Under Pressure:

CMS/WCM/Experience Management Platforms:

3rd Party Optimizers:

1. Freedom from bothering programmers! Non-technical management.

2. Richness of data model; depth and fit-for-purpose.

3. Interface usability, high integration with other tasks/analytics.

4. Appropriateness of architecture to scale of activity, operational efficiencies.

5. Breadth of capabilities, special features like machine learning.

Evaluating Personalization Platforms

CMS/WCM Architecture:

3rd Party Optimizer Architecture:

1. Better interfaces to help organize personalization efforts—like a file system. Difficult to survey and organize complex activity.

Multi-part Personalization Programs with numerous rules, components, etc. Some systems have an idea of campaigns.

Reusable components—rules, content sets, etc.

2. Tracking at the level of the performance of the individual personalized component. Campaigns, segments, etc. are usually the focus of tracking.

What’s Missing From Current Platforms?

Where to start. So much possibility.

Necessary Content. Bet you don’t have it.

How to proof. The site no longer looks the same to all users.

Who owns this. Personalization needs a home in Web operations.

Organizing the effort. The need to keep track of personalization.

Technical challenges. Performance / storage can be significant issues.

What Are The Operational Challenges?

The Basic Flow of All PersonalizationActivity:

Four FrameworksTo Organize Activity:

Aligning with UX and Content Strategy

Documenting programs, campaigns, components, rules and audience segments

User state simulation and Collision Detection

QA and QA history

Tracking outcomes and tracking history

Staying Organized

Choosing a methodology

Dangers of getting it wrong

Continuous evolution of segments

Machine generated segmentation

3rd Party Data

Profiling Users

Beyond “Optimization”

UX, User Researchers, Content Strategists

Marketing Managers, Analytics Pros

Making the case

The need for Personalization Architects

Building The Team

The promise, the reality

Multichannel engagement automation

Theoretical and practical difficulties

Fragmented platforms, user repositories

The real best case scenario

Multichannel, Lifetime Love of Your Brand

Hey! I wrote a 250-page substantive book on this topic!

On Amazon:bit.ly/tbgpersonalizationebook

Me on twitter: @rjohnberndt@berndtgroup#one2oneweb