Definition:
A Digital Experience Platform, also called DXP, is a set of integrated technologies with a common objective to help organizations plan, create, manage, deliver, and optimize personalized and in-the-moment customer experiences.
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Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) Critical Capabilities:
Today, there is greater complexity in meeting customers' expectations when they engage with organizations and brands they do business with.
Building meaningful experiences with customers' needs and wants at the heart of everything presents a timely and necessary opportunity for market growth for any brand willing to face tougher competition and an ever-changing world. In this context, Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) seem to be a strategic technology investment to help achieve this business goal. According to Markets and Markets, the Digital Experience Platform market has been growing from $7.9 billion in 2019 to a projected $13.9 billion by 2024.
To help inform your decision in looking for the right DXP that best suits your business goals and operational roadmap, I suggest you look for the following five critical capabilities as a base for your technology selection:
- Data Capabilities: Knowing and understanding your customers should be the cornerstone of any successful experience. First, I recommend you look for DXPs that help you ingest, structure, and govern all of your customer data. Second, I recommend you choose a solution with solid Identity Graph capabilities to solve customer recognition use cases across all channels. Lastly, most brands are looking for ways to make sense of their customer data by using customer journey analytics, data visualization, and AI and machine learning capabilities (more on that last one below). A CDP solution to fulfill these capabilities can dramatically increase the success of all the above.
- Content Capabilities: Content is king (still), and it represents the compelling story you tell to your customers whether they interact with you online, offline, and on any of your owned, earned, and paid media. For this section, I suggest you look for a DXP with support for Asset Management capabilities to ensure all your assets are created, maintained, and delivered in a streamlined process. Since you will most likely be using your content across different systems (internal and external), I also recommend you look for any headless content management system (CMS) capabilities. Finally, it is recommended you also look for testing capabilities to experiment and find the best-performing content to be delivered to your customers.
- Delivery Capabilities: Delivering the experience to your customers is a must and not necessarily the only thing to focus on to make a good lasting impression with your customers. For this section, I suggest you select a DXP with a wide range of execution channels (such as social, search, display, email, text, mobile push, and in-app notifications, to name a few). Since Journey Management has increasingly shown evidence of improving customer experiences, you might also look for any support on this front. Lastly, as many tactics and channels will operate simultaneously to engage with your customers, I also recommend looking for channel delivery optimization and prioritization depending on where each customer is on their journey with your brand.
- Artificial Intelligence Capabilities: Today, it seems challenging to scale any business without AI and Machine Learning. Whether you are looking to find hidden business opportunities in the customer data you have, score your best customers or the ones who are about to churn, make content recommendations, choose between the best performing channel to use for each customer, or anticipate your customer's needs and wants, chances are you might be looking for AI/ML capabilities to help you accomplish the above.
- Work Management Capabilities: The above critical capabilities are all equally important. However, ensuring your internal teams are aligned in understanding your organization's objectives and how they execute toward your business goals can make or break the implementation of a successful customer-focused engagement strategy. For this reason, I recommend you look for planning, collaboration, and resource allocation management capabilities.
Online resources to learn even more about CDPs:
- Forrester's Wave for Digital Experience Platforms, Q3 2021.
- Gartner's Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) Reviews and Ratings
Join the conversation and share your views and experiences around DXPs by leaving a comment below.
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