I recently read a statistic from analyst firm Gartner which stated that by 2016 89 per cent of marketers expect to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience their brand, product and service delivers to the client or the consumer. A truly personalised user experience can make a customer feel highly valued, which is almost impossible to achieve through print or billboard adverts. If organisations use consumer data in a smart way, they can ensure that the content they share is always relevant to the recipient and as a result build a relationship with their customer based on trust, loyalty, and above all offer products or services that they know the customer will like.
Today in this digital era we hear a lot around content personalisation and content orchestration whether that be for enterprise users, applications, systems or consumers, and technology is at the centre of all of this. People spend twice as much time online compared to 10 years ago, fuelled by increasing use of tablets and smartphones. Indeed, the rapid growth in mobile devices is changing the way many of us act in all aspects of our lives. As a result, we are consuming more content than ever before, but we now consume this content in a variety of different ways.
Organisations, especially those who derive revenues from publishing content, therefore need to be fully aware of the growing significance of not only what consumers want to consume but how they want to consume it and be able to provide the right content, in the right format in a personalised way to consumers. In order to achieve this there is a need to gain insight around what users or consumers are doing with our content. What did they read? What did they download? What did they send it to others? What did they try to copy and paste? This insight not only helps understand what customers are interested in but can also help steer organisational strategy – for example answering the question ‘what should be my focus area if consumers are only interested in 20 per cent of my content?’
Increasingly readers want content that is quick and easy to consume. Content should be available in all kinds of different formats and often that content needs to be dynamic and contextual. For example, while a research company might produce a 100 page in-depth report, consumers probably won’t be interested in buying the entire report. They might however be inclined to buy specific parts of the report that are most relevant to them.
An interesting example of how the publishing industry is changing how it serves up content is Conde Nast. This American publisher recently announced its partnership with the popular social media app Snapchat aimed at giving consumers exclusive access to seven of the publisher’s events. The partnership will make use of Snapchat’s Live Story feature to provide users with behind the scenes footage from exclusive events by collating Snapchats from attendees including celebrities, editors and more, putting this all into a collective, personalised story and making this available for 24 hours after the event.
While this is one example, in my experience most content creation and content management systems don’t have this capability. Instead, the majority of content management systems focus on the content and the lifecycle of the content from creation to managing to storage.
Seeing a gap in the market, we recently launched mCaaS, a SaaS based digital content brokering platform, which delivers the ability to leverage and generate information that is highly personalised and specific to the end consumer. mCaaS can monitor customer behaviour patterns which can be further used to fine tune the content for the right set of customers and also provide the opportunity to provide differentiated pricing.
This delivers opportunities for premium personalisation capabilities which not only retains loyal users but can also drive revenue up by charging for material that has not been previously charged for. At the same time mCaaS provides content analytics and user behaviour insight around when and how users consume content. The applications for this platform are many and varied.
For example, one of our customers, an international market research company, is using the mCaaS platform to generate new revenue streams and monetise their digital content. As a result this company is now realising revenue growth of 18-20 per cent on top of BAU (business as usual) and 20 per cent monetisation increase through segmented content.
Likewise another customer, an international travel and hospitality company, is using the mCaaS Platform to monetise core entertainment products enabling a 10-15 per cent straight saving through intelligent product recommendation and increased business growth with improved product recommendation. For the retail industry, the solution creates a ‘sell a look’ for consumers enabling retailers to virtually get, make, share and buy a look through innovative digital content consumption. The solution is helping retailers increase their business through a self-guided tour of “get a look” and “make a look” for their consumers.
Clearly it is essential to use customer data in an intelligent way to create a positive user experience. Personalisation that makes customers feel valued and delivers content that is relevant to them will make customers loyal and sticky. At the same time it is also essential to engage directly and regularly with customers in order to obtain a level of constant feedback that can help to refine and improve the techniques behind positive personalisation.
Published in: ITPro Portal
is Senior Vice President & Head of UK & Europe at Happiest Minds Technologies. Isaac brings diverse experience ranging from strategy, operations, delivery to building markets in India, UK & Europe. He has over 30 years of experience in the technology industry, of which 20 of which have been in UK & Europe. He has worked with companies such as Fujitsu, Steria (Xansa), TCS, E&Y, and Strong Memorial Hospital.
