Enabling a Data-Driven, Personalized Customer Experience with Sitecore Customer Data Platform & Sitecore Personalize

Today, brands need to target each of their customers at the right time, on the right channel and with the right message. However, they struggle to personalize experiences throughout the customer lifecycle because their data is scattered and inaccessible.

Two platforms many leading enterprises use today to overcome this challenge are Sitecore Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Sitecore Personalize. As cloud-native solutions that break down organizational data silos, Sitecore CDP and Sitecore Personalize capture, integrate, unify and segment all customer data to deliver highly intelligent, omnichannel, personalized experiences. They are dynamic multitaskers that work behind the scenes to manage, process and convert data across all customer touchpoints. Below is an overview of each product and how they work together.

Sitecore CDP Integrates Your Data

On its own, Sitecore CDP recognizes individual users and identifies their unique tendencies with data-driven customer and lifecycle insights.

Sitecore CDP creates a single, contextual profile for every unique site visitor, whether the user is identifiable or anonymous. This is achieved by tracking and collecting real-time behavior data as a user interacts with multiple channels, touchpoints or devices.

(Credits for images - > Sitecore Deep dive training PDFs)

Sitecore CDP provides a 360° view of your customers by collecting, unifying and segmenting data:

Data Collection
Sitecore CDP accumulates and analyzes individual first-party customer data from multiple online and offline sources in real time, without storage limitations. The distinctive types of data include:

• Behavioral interactions and customer attributes, such as preferred channels, session types, most active days, spending habits, likeliness to buy products, loyalty and service history
• Profile details, like age and contact information
• Customer service and campaign engagement data
• Key identifiers, including custom organization ID

Sitecore CDP also maintains this data as needed for processing.

Profile Unification
Sitecore CDP’s most important function is its ability to consolidate single user profiles and connect specific properties and attributes to identities. This is done by linking multiple devices to a single source of truth once a visitor has been identified and deduplicating their records.

Segmentation
Sitecore CDP features an easy-to-use interface for non-technical users. It enables users to access, create and manage segments with basic and advanced functionality, including segment discovery and predictive analytics. You can also import and deploy custom models that are built in other data environments into Sitecore CDP.  The use cases below showcase a few ways non-technical users can leverage Sitecore CDP’s segmenting features:

Sitecore Personalize Activates Your Data

Sitecore Personalize enhances each customer touchpoint through omnichannel A/B testing, decisioning and personalization.

Sitecore Personalize offers real-time personalization and experimentation in a stand-alone product. It is built on a predictive decision model and notation (DMN) standard that enables you to model and make decisions based on business rules. 

(Credits for images - > Sitecore Deep dive training PDFs)

Through its personalization, omnichannel experimentation, decisioning and activation features, Sitecore Personalize can deliver an optimized 1:1 customer experience — in real time — across all channels:

Personalization
Sitecore Personalize provides the necessary context to determine relevance for every customer experience.

Omnichannel Experimentation
This feature helps you manage digital decisioning. It leverages predictive analytics and collects and reviews data from the customers who interact with your digital platforms to figure out the best action or offer for them.

Decisioning
The decisioning function allows you to create rules and simple or sophisticated decisions with AI and predictive analytics to determine the best experience for customers. This feature helps you make smart decisions that can enable you to effectively engage with your customers.

Activation
The activation feature sends segmented users additional subscription and promotional offers. If a user activates an offer, their action will trigger email, social media or SMS campaigns, depending on what you’ve activated.

Combining Sitecore CDP & Personalize to Deliver World-Class Personalized Experiences

Together, Sitecore CDP and Personalize power omnichannel personalization with actionable insights, helping you deliver an unparalleled customer experience.

While Sitecore CDP and Sitecore Personalize provide powerful functionality separately, they work best when combined. If you implement both Sitecore CDP and Sitecore Personalize, you can:

• Enable smarter segmentation
• Create lookalike audiences and sync them to paid media for precise retargeting
• Harness transactional and historical customer data for decision models and segmentation
• Embrace a “privacy-by-design” approach that protects your customers and your brand
• Train and level up your machine learning algorithms with even more data
• Access advanced analytics

(Credits for images - > Sitecore Deep dive training PDFs)

To help you determine whether to implement Sitecore CDP and Sitecore Personalize, here are some common use cases that may sound familiar:

• You are trying to find and target the right audience and improve your organization’s segmentation process.
• You want to deliver meaningful and memorable customer experiences and create customer loyalty.
• You are trying to gain a 360° view of the customer.
• You’re unable to innovate quickly because a large amount of your customer data is stored in legacy, slow executing or inaccessible databases.
• You would like to create seamless, personalized journeys for your customers, such as targeted campaigns, using your own data on paid media channels.
• You want to deliver personalization in real time.

You can learn more about EPAM’s Sitecore practice and expertise on our partner page.