In the world of digital marketing, content is king.
As Jacob Gallagher pointed out in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, companies across every industry – from clothing brands to fast-food restaurants – have adopted a new, single-word approach to branding: content.
That content, though, should not be considered sales material, at least not in the traditional sense. Rather, it falls under the umbrella of content marketing.
The term “content marketing†refers to the creation and distribution of online material (e.g. videos, articles, blogs and social media posts) that doesn’t explicitly promote a company. Instead, the material is intended to prompt interest in the brand, product or service by highlighting its value in a more subtle manner.
In an era when people are tired of feeling like they are being endlessly pitched, such a strategy makes sense.
However, with brands and companies creating more of this type of material – the headline of Gallagher’s article is: “The New Branding Strategy: Churn Out ‘Content’†– we are overstimulated with content online.
In a saturated market, discovering the best ways – and tools – to make content stand out is no longer a nice-to-have.
Digital-first consumers want companies and brands to engage with them on a personal level, and to treat them as individuals, not just more potential customers – which explains why personalization has become pivotal to 21st century marketing.
Indeed, nearly 100% of marketers surveyed in 2018 believed that personalization is key to building, managing and improving customer relationships.
And yet, as I wrote in another post, marketer are struggling to personalize contentOpens a new window across their marketing campaigns, especially at scale.
As such, there are an increasing number of tools to help brands with the effort.
Adobe Experience Manager
Adobe recently rolled out a new-and-improved Adobe Experience ManagerOpens a new window  (AEM), the company’s well-known content management tool for building websites and apps.
Adobe says its innovations in the tool will help marketers accurately deliver more personalized content across a greater number of channels and platforms by leveraging Adobe Sensei, the company’s cross-platform AI and machine learning technology, to automate and accelerate workflows in order to direct that personalized content to the right audiences.
For instance, AEM now features a Smart Tags option for video. It’s actually an AI-driven feature automatically identifying intelligent tags that correspond to actions, attributes and objects in the video itself, making each piece of video content far more searchable. “Gone are the days of manually sorting through hundreds of relevant clips,†promises Adobe.
The enhanced tool also helps marketers with cross-platform customer communications, allowing them to easily and quickly embed tailored, interactive content in customer communications.
Outreach
Although this is a software used predominantly by sales organizations, it also offers handy marketing advantages.
OutreachOpens a new window  is a CRM tool for sending personalized marketing messages to customers and to evaluate interest in specific products.
Users upload lists of their leads to the system which then tailors sales messages to each contact. This messaging is delivered via a ‘drip’ campaign, meaning that e-mail marketing is sent to each person on a staggered and predetermined schedule.
In all, the tool is great to help users build brand, service or product awareness, and can contribute to a company’s customer communication funnel. It also saves marketers time by automatically personalizing mass messages.
Pure360
Pure360Opens a new window is strictly for e-commerce personalization – particularly for e-mail marketing – but it offers serious help for marketers operating in e-tail.
The tool essentially enables users to craft unique, personal experiences for leads and customers alike – and it does so through automation.
The integration of consumer data in Pure360 is impressive. It collects valuable data based on consumers’ online browsing habits and preferences on a site. It then used that data to construct audience segments, enabling marketers to target specific consumers with specially-tailored content, messages and recommendations.
Moreover, once these segments have been defined, it’s then possible to establish marketing automation flows, such as e-mail triggers. Site visitors and existing customers will automatically be sent marketing messages and material aligned with their shopping behavior and past purchases.
Pure360 also allows marketers to get quite granular, providing data on exactly when each consumer typically opens e-mails. If the name of the game is lead gen, this feature is awesome because it can ensure that triggered and automated marketing e-mails are delivered to each individual at the time of the day that is best for open and click-through rates.
The tool also has a SmartBlock option that prevents visitors from seeing content and products that won’t be of interest to them. In other words, webpages are filtered to show consumers only what they will want to see.
Evergage
An important aspect of marketing personalization is incorporating real-time capabilities. And that’s where Evergage is useful.
The Evergage platform’s behavioral tracking technology can be used in any industry. This feature helps marketers gather vast amounts of information on their site visitors, such as their consumer intent, product preferences, devices used and geographic location.
All this data can be used to make sure each visitor is exposed to relevant content and pitches at the right time in the customer journey.
In addition, through machine-learning analytics the tool is even able to propose ideas for how marketers can enhance engagement across various digital channels in order to boost sales.