Why Agencies are Turning to Digital Experience Platforms

Now you may be thinking to yourself, that’s a lot of buzzwords in one title. Well, it is. But let me tell you why it’s the truth. Let’s start by defining what a content hub is and then we’ll dive into how agencies can deliver the quickest ROI for their enterprise clients by utilizing this pluggable architectural approach to content marketing.

A content hub powers omnichannel content delivery through the use of extensible APIs. Contentstack is a prime example of a content hub. Other industry terms you may have heard of to describe a content hub include decoupled CMS, Headless CMS, Content as a Service (CaaS), or an API-first CMS. What makes it a content hub is the extensible API’s and its ease of integration with various industry-leading content management tools. It’s a pluggable architecture model, or hub and spoke, where you can quickly connect the best of breed or existing legacy tools into one central content marketing hub.

Microservices: An Integral Part of Digital Experience Platform

Another buzzword you may have heard of before is “microservices,” but what does it mean? Everyone these days assumes an all in one platform is the way to go, but let me tell you why all-in-one doesn’t mean the quickest road to success for your clients. With a microservices approach, your enterprise clients may already have five or more of the spokes to their content hub within their organization. During your discovery phase with an enterprise client, you will quickly discover what these tools are. Here's a short list of the most popular tools:

1. Marketing automation: Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce Pardot, and ActiveCampaign.
2. Translation services: Qordoba, Acclaro, and Moravia.
3. Digital analytics: Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, and Adobe Analytics.
4. SEO: SEMrush, Moz, and Brightedge.
5. Video hosting: Brightcove, Ooyala, Youtube, and Vimeo.
6. Digital asset management: Box and ECMs.
7. CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM, and Pipedrive.
8. A/B and multivariate testing: Optimizely, Google Optimization, Marketo Real-Time Personalization, and Adobe Target.
9. Machine learning and AI: IBM Watson and Qordoba Text Intelligence.
10. E-commerce: SAP Hybris, Shopify, and Snipcart.

The beauty of a content hub is that these existing in-house solutions that your customers and prospects have already made the time and investment into can plug into a content hub. Your customers may be halfway there and not even know it. This is where as their agency, you can be the hero and guide them down the path of getting them into those personalized content experiences quickly vs. an all in one platform, or traditional CMS, where there will be some additional training on the integrations performed around how to navigate the now bloated, and most times watered-down experience within a single interface.

Content Hubs and the New Digital Transformation

What are CIO’s, CDO’s and CMO’s looking to do these days? You may have heard the term “digital transformation.” This refers to changes made by applying digital technology to traditional methods that bring new types of innovation and creativity. For example, getting out of the old legacy way of thinking and into the new world of personalization, AI, and AR/VR. A few years ago, a digital transformation might be considered simply making the move from an on-premise site to the cloud. Now 90% of the market is on the cloud, the question, “Are you cloud-hosted?” doesn’t typically come up anymore. It’s just assumed you are. The new, more powerful meaning of a digital transformation is how companies market to their audience. How do we build new personalized experiences that are not solely focused on the web? What about AR/VR? How can we use AI? What is going to give me the quickest ROI and show that we are an innovative leader in our industry? You guessed it, with a content hub at the core you can accomplish these initiatives with agility and speed.

Let’s dive into each of these use cases a little deeper.

Creating a Personalization Engine

A good example of digital transformation is personalization. With a content hub at the core, this is where your content and asset variations will live. For example, a different version of the content, ad, or image can be presented to a person based on his or her persona, location, or interests. Adding personalization tools is as simple as adding a javascript code snippet to the front-end code, and now you’ve unlocked a personalization engine. With a combination of these two tools you can now, know who your audience is, and start segmenting what content and assets are presented based on data, such as geolocation, and other demographics that these tools support.

Moving Beyond Text with Augmented and Virtual Reality

AR/VR is a similar story. Apple iPhones are now supporting an AR Toolkit, which can power augmented reality experiences for mobile customers. At Contentstack we have enterprise clients, such as large clothing retailers, who are taking full advantage of this feature. The AR component allows you to try on clothes on your iPhone before you order. Another retail use case is a furniture retailer who is using AR to preview home products within their homes. The image asset can be hosted within the content hub and quickly integrated with this AR integration. VR solutions are also possible, such as a gaming experience where content is powered within the VR application.

Applying Artificial Intelligence to Your Content

Another example is machine learning and AI. Today, we are on the cutting edge of AI and machine learning. Qordoba just announced a new text intelligence platform that integrates via API’s to your content to provide content marketers with brand, style, and emotion. Through this integration with your content hub, marketers will be able to quickly refine content like they have never done before to help improve conversions faster than ever.

In summary, by utilizing a content hub such as Contentstack, agencies are empowered to guide large enterprise digital transformation journeys with speed and agility. ROI is realized quickly by enabling your clients to become an industry leader in the latest market trends and seeing greater conversions by providing a more personalized experience.