Tailored digital experiences that respond to the need of each end-user are the next step on the path of digital maturity. In this webinar, Dave Sawyer, Lead Optimization Strategist at FFW, and Kasia Sinczak, Lead Content Strategist and User Researcher at FFW, and Eric Fullerton, Product Marketing Manager at Acquia, will outline the steps necessary to deploy a successful personalization strategy. Content creation, storage, and access are easier and cheaper than ever before. Organizations are beginning to compete on delivering multi-message, multi-channel strategies to the right prospects at the right time. Behind the scenes, this involves a coordinated effort between a complex set of variables including marketing technology tools, content, the right mix of talent, and a willingness to experiment. None of these variables are as important or complicated as the human being ultimately responsible for the purchase decision. The most impressive technology stack, biggest data warehouse, and well-planned content calendar are useless if they lack the empathic understanding to give users what they need to take action. Whether thinking about personalization for the first time or looking to improve your approach, join Dave, Kasia and Eric to learn about ways you can start converting prospects to customers with personalization.

1. Planning for the
Personalization Journey:
From Empathy to Engagement
Acquia Webinar • February 7, 2019

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Great experiences on
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3. Dave Sawyer Kasia Sinczak
Lead, Content Strategy
& User Research, FFW
kasia.sinczak@ffwagency.com
Kasia has been on the frontline of
digital transformation for 12 years in
both the information management
and UX fields. She is passionate about
connecting people to information
through usable and useful systems.
Lead, Insights and
Optimization, FFW
dave.sawyer@ffwagency.com
Dave has 20 years experience in web
development, digital publishing, and
website optimization. For the last 7
years he has worked in the digital
agency space and has pursued his
passion for automating, measuring,
and optimizing digital experiences.
Eric Fullerton
Product Marketing,
Acquia
eric.fullerton@acquia.com
Eric Fullerton is a Product
Marketing Leader for Acquia's
personalization and journey
orchestration products. Eric’s
passion for solving for the future
of digital comes from living it
first-hand for the past ten years.

4. 1. Destination Personalization
2. Personalization Readiness
3. The Five Pillars of Personalization
4. Now What?
5. Acquia Platform Overview
6. Q&A
Agenda

5. Destination Personalization

6. What is the pot of gold at the end of the
personalization rainbow?
To leverage all available data about a user to
respond in real-time to their interests and needs
CAPABILITY
ORGANIZATIONS
WANT

7. A change in the user’s state:
awareness, engagement, conversion
OUTCOME
ORGANIZATIONS
EXPECT
What is the pot of gold at the end of the
personalization rainbow?
To leverage all available data about a user to
respond in real-time to their interests and needs
CAPABILITY
ORGANIZATIONS
WANT

8. The person
you want to
reach
The person
viewing the
information
The Right Person

9. What you
say
What they
need
The Right Content

10. When you
deliver
information
When they
need
information
The Right Time

11. Getting there:
the struggle is real...
Survey respondents indicated data-driven
personalization tactics were the most difficult to execute
Survey: What are the most effective online
tactics used vs. the most difficult online
tactics to execute in a digital marketing
strategy for companies worldwide?
% of Respondents
Source: Ascend2, 2019 Digital Marketing Strategies, Oct. 10 2018
% of Respondents

12. Why do some
organizations
struggle?

13. Omni-channel journey orchestration
Personalization has become a very
<technical> conversation
Data Ops
Cookie Consent
Master Data Management
Web Analytics
Data Layer
Data Science
Segmentation Engines
Experimentation Platforms
Integration Platforms
Tag Management
Customer Data Platforms Data Strategy
ESBsContent Management Systems Data enrichment platforms
Identity Management
Marketing Automation
ABMDecision engines
ETL
APIs

14. Martech is now MarTECH
Martech landscape in 2018 includes 6,829 marketing technology
solutions from 6,242 unique marketing technology vendors
Source: chiefmartec.com

15. Gartner polled over 600 marketing leaders across industries in North America
and the U.K
“Marketing technology budgets continue their march forward with
no signs of slowing. Up from 22% of the budget in 2017, technology
now accounts for a whopping 29% of the total marketing expense
budget”
Technology represents the single
largest area of investment in marketing
resources and programs
Source: Gartner, CMO Spend Survey 2018-2019

16. But what about the person?

17. … the content?

18. … the time?

19. Personalization Readiness

20. What do I need to prepare for a data-driven
personalization strategy?

21. The Five Pillars of
Personalization

22. User Content Staffing
Tech
Stack
Experiments
1 2 3 4 5

23. Pillar #1
Understanding
Your Users

24. First, determine who you want to reach and what you
want them to do
● Can’t be all things to all people
● What makes sense from a business perspective?
Define your target audience

25. Empathy
The missing ingredient in your digital stack
● Personalization is about delivering the most relevant experience to
each individual
● Empathy is about understanding what an individual is feeling, what
he or she is experiencing, and what his or her needs are
● To truly deliver what is relevant to audiences at each step in their
journey, you must arrive at empathic understanding of your users

26. Talk to your users!
● User interviews
● Usability tests
● Listen in on support
calls
● Deep research:
ethnography, diary
studies
Arriving at empathy

27. Use data to help
complete the picture
● Web Analytics
● Session Recordings
● Customer data from
other platforms
(support portal, call
center stats, CRM, etc)
Talk to your users!
Arriving at empathy
● User interviews
● Usability tests
● Listen in on support
calls
● Deep research:
ethnography, diary
studies

28. Use data to help
complete the picture
● Web Analytics
● Session Recordings
● Customer data from
other platforms
(support portal, call
center stats, CRM, etc)
Talk to your users!
● User interviews
● Usability tests
● Listen in on support
calls
● Deep research:
ethnography, diary
studies
Create a shared
understanding of
who your users are
● Encourage team
members to actively
observe during user
research
● Personas can help teams
align on motivations,
frustrations, behaviors,
and opportunities
Arriving at empathy

29. Pillar #2
Content

30. A personalization effort needs to deliver content
● Align business goals with compelling content served up
at the right time
● Use empathy to understand the appropriate behavioral
triggers and the moment at which they should be
delivered
Content (Strategy) is King

31. Creating and maintaining effective content is a
deliberate effort
● Assign ownership for accountability
● Document workflows and processes, including tools used
● Train staff
● Include content effectiveness review and testing as part of
governance
Governance

32. Content is best enabled for
personalization when it is enriched
with structure:
● Metadata to make it machine
understandable
● Tagging to make it targetable
● Taxonomy is the glue that
connects content to users
Enrich Content with Structure
Content Tagging for
Personalization
Traditionally, tagging has been
used to classify the content’s
categories, topics, or subject matter.
In a personalization strategy, we
can also use tagging to describe the
who (the persona the content is
intended for) and the when (the
stage of the customer journey the
content is relevant to).

33. ● Personalization requires
generating a higher volume
of content than a static
experience
● Targeted variations of content
are needed for alignment to
each audience segment
● Modular component approach
allows greater flexibility, but
also introduces variables
Multiple Variations of Content
Image Source: Acquia

34. ● Atomic design provides a flexible design system of reusable
components
● Atomic content extends this to the CMS architecture – enabling more
flexible reuse and rearrangement of content
● Building blocks of highly contextual experiences
Atomic Content
Atoms Molecules Organisms Templates Pages

39. Pillar #3
Staffing

40. ● Do you have the staff required to deploy personalized campaigns?
● Personalization is a multidisciplinary capability:
Technical
Implementation
Content
Authoring
User
Research
UX
Design
Content
StrategyAnalytics
Multidisciplinary team

41. Pillar #4
Tech Stack

42. An integrated set of technologies that provide the following capabilities:
● Maintains unified customer profiles that track users from anonymous to known
● Tracks custom interactions (event tracking) in user profiles
● Ability to connect data in user profiles to a customer data warehouse and/or other sources
● Enables segmentation of your audience based on implicit and explicit data
● Enables targeting of various types of content to audience segments based on rules
● Ability to configure experiments (A/B tests) targeted to distinct segments
● Support various privacy features including opt-out and cookie consent
● Provide analytics and custom reporting capabilities
What is a Personalization Tech Stack?

43. Pillar #5
Experimentation

44. The personalization journey should start
and end with data
● Information-gathering during planning
● Gather user feedback on campaigns
before you launch them
● Monitor, evaluate, and compare in-flight
campaigns, tweak as necessary
● Apply learnings to future campaigns
Evidence-based approach
Be helpful, not creepy
Make sure your
campaigns are effective
and targeted without
being creepy; the goal is
to build a relationship,
not damage it

45. Arriving at an evidence-based approach
2. TESTING1. PLANNING 3. EVALUATING 4. SUNSETTING

46. Now what?

47. Run a personalization pilot that is limited to one organizational area:
● One business unit, one product family, one service offering, etc.
● Lower-risk opportunity to create, test, and learn
● Establish a working hypothesis for how a specific touchpoint could be
improved through personalization
● Deploy personalized campaign as a targeted experiment
● Measurement is key: Benchmark and use results to socialize the capability
Suggestion: Where to begin

48. Conclusion

49. ● It’s easy to get lost in stats, but don’t forget there’s a human
behind that demographic
● Create and maintain compelling content
● Invest in staff as well as tech
● Test and evaluate
● Iterate and learn from
mistakes
Summary

50. ● Personalization Prerequisites (blog series):
https://ffwagency.com/personalization-prerequisites
● The Basics of Real-Time Personalization (free eBook):
https://ffwagency.com/resources/basics-real-time-personalization
● Personalization Best Practices (recorded webinar)
Presented by FFW and Acquia
https://www.acquia.com/resources/webinars/episode-4-personalization-best-practices
Additional Resources

51. Let’s succeed together!
ffwagency.com
@ffwglobal

53. Acquia’s Vision

54. OPERATORS
MARKETERS
DEVELOPERS
Acquia Experience Platform

55. Acquia Platform

56. Acquia Experience Platform

57. Our Continued Promise:
Freedom

58. 58 ©2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary

59. A 3 Step Strategy for Personalization Success

60. Acquia Lift
Personalize content and
customer experiences to
drive engagement,
conversions, and loyalty
Acquia Journey
Connect disparate systems
and orchestrate actions on
any channel or touchpoint
Acquia Profile Manager
Collect data to build unified user profiles and segment visitors
based on unique characteristics
Acquia Personalization Portfolio

61. Questions?
ffwagency.com | @ffwglobal
Acquia.com | eric.fullerton@acquia.com

62. SUPPLEMENTAL SLIDES

63. ● Budgets for labor
and agency services
on the decline
● Investments in
MarTech increasing
CMO Budget
Percentage going to people and programs
Source: Gartner, CMO Spend Survey 2018-2019

65. ©2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary

67. ©2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary

68. Personalization wins customers

69. 1. Build dynamic user profiles
2. Intelligent personalization & segmentation
3. Powerful recommendation engine
4. Cross-channel customer journeys to engage anywhere
5. Insight through analytics
Optimize