Why the personal touch is crucial to keeping your customers engaged

Contentstack is a Business Reporter client

Brands are facing a relevancy crisis – but personalised digital experiences can help you stay in demand.

Let’s face it, the online content market is saturated. Brands have realised the importance of digital experiences and, with AI in their toolbelts, are churning out content at blazing speeds. But most AI-generated content is mundane and watered down, and overcrowded digital channels are becoming increasingly ineffective.

Competing in our digital-first world is a whole new game. The bar has been set higher for content that customers actually pay attention to and engage with. To gain an edge, your company’s content needs to be distinctive, authentic and, above all, personalised.

But personalisation is hard and requires a lot of time and resources to achieve at scale. It’s no surprise that many brands are turning to AI to give them a boost. While it’s true that AI technology can drastically speed up processes, used carelessly it only adds to the existing landfill of meaningless word salad plaguing today’s digital experiences.

If you’re in marketing, you will quickly appreciate the maths behind the problem of personalisation at scale, and why it’s often unrealistic. For example, let’s say a B2B SaaS company needs to personalise just one single copy block for their audiences in four different geographic locations, for six industries, four personas and three customer segments. That one single block of copy has now multiplied to 288 pieces of content.

To solve this problem, most brands today are incorporating some version of AI tooling into their workflows. But where do those tools fall short? To start, large language models (LLMs) don’t have access to specific and relevant information about your brand or your audience, so all the content an LLM generates doesn’t have your brand voice and it doesn’t target specific readers. Instead of standing out and capturing attention, the content fades into the background.

To produce truly worthwhile content, brands need to direct AI in smart and specific ways. However, directing AI technology still involves drawing on development resources and using manual processes that slow down time to market. These processes are also tremendously difficult to scale.

Traditional content management systems, add-on products and legacy solutions might paint a picture of sunshine and rainbows, promising to seamlessly integrate with your brand to create personalised digital content. But the reality is usually a lot messier. Add-on and hacked-together solutions quickly become a drain by locking your company into inflexible and outdated workflows, while saving you little time. Meanwhile, other simpler, free tools just don’t measure up when it’s time to scale.

That’s why you need a different kind of solution from a different kind of company, built in the modern era and focused specifically on innovating solutions for the new landscape of personalised digital experiences.

While AI offers remarkable potential for creating personalised experiences, it isn’t enough on its own. AI is incredibly powerful at generating content and predicting customer behaviour. Still, it must be finely tuned to your brand’s unique voice, values and product information to unlock its full potential to truly connect with your customers.

The effectiveness of AI-driven personalisation hinges on its ability to reflect your brand’s personality and communicate authentically with your audience. AI models must be trained on your brand’s specific data, encompassing unique value propositions, preferred messaging styles and linguistic nuances.

This ensures that every piece of content accurately reflects your brand and resonates with your target audience, fostering genuine connections and enhancing brand loyalty.

Creating AI-generated, brand-relevant content is just the beginning. The next step is integrating this content with a robust decision engine capable of discerning which content should be served to each user in real time.

This decision engine evaluates various factors – user behaviour, preferences, contextual triggers – to adjust and deliver personalised experiences that captivate and convert dynamically.

Importantly, the engine needs to be integrated into the CMS and operate with few to no IT dependencies if you’re truly considering scalable personalised content.

To make this all work at scale, the entire process must be automated. This involves leveraging our advanced tools, such as Automate, to seamlessly integrate AI capabilities with automation workflows. And we’re not just talking about automating the behind-the-scenes processes that creatives and content authors never see. We mean automating the creation process itself, to reach maximum scalability and maximum impact – from creation to delivery.

By automating these labour-intensive processes, businesses can ensure consistency, speed and accuracy in delivering personalised content across all customer touchpoints, regardless of how baffling the maths may be.

Choosing the right technology partner is crucial to achieving personalisation success. It’s imperative to collaborate with vendors who not only have a proven track record but also offer deep expertise in your industry.

A partner with experience in delivering scalable, personalised solutions can accelerate your journey, helping you navigate complexities and achieve your goals confidently and efficiently. Contentstack’s AI Accelerator program is built to take customers from zero to fully deployed with AI in just 45 days. The program includes access to comprehensive tools, workshops with Contentstack’s Technical Solutions Organization and Academy courses. This is just part of our commitment to our customers’ enduring success.

Personalisation is the key to differentiating your brand from competitors in today’s saturated online market. Many companies prioritise quantity over quality and pass up personalisation in the name of efficiency and scale.

With Contentstack, smart automated personalisation becomes your new reality, even when you need to deliver content to multiple audiences and endpoints. Contentstack’s composable content platform combines the power of a composable headless CMS with the intelligence and efficiency of AI-powered personalisation.

Empower your developers and creatives to make nimble decisions and maintain your brand voice at all times, on all channels.

It’s time to reimagine personalisation and unlock unprecedented possibilities for your brand.

For more information, visit contentstack.com

Source: independent.co.uk