Content Automation: The why, what and how of personalization at scale
Increasing customer-centricity and efficiency have both been on the marketing and sales executive agenda for several years. With consumers shifting to digital channels and economic uncertainty squeezing budgets, organizations need to adapt to stay afloat. The focus on increased customer-centricity has led to personalization projects across industries, many of which have not been able to deliver on the promise of personalized interactions at scale.
In order to drive personalization and ensure efficiency in operations, the approach for content production and management becomes increasingly important, but is often forgotten until it becomes a bottleneck. Major shifts in both capabilities and needs are currently impacting the possibilities to automate different parts of the content lifecycle. The recent advancements in generative AI are also opening up new perspectives on what content production and management could look like in the near future. Content Automation is a key building block to unlock personalization at scale in an efficient manner.
Personalization is on the executive agenda
Research shows that 71% of customers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions and experiences, and 76% get frustrated when this is not the case (1). Companies across industries have recognized this and raised the bar in terms of developing personalization capabilities, whether it be through product recommendation engines, next best action algorithms or lead scoring-based nurture programs.
However, scaling up personalization efforts brings its own set of challenges, sometimes in unexpected ways. In particular, the impact that personalization and automation has on content teams is often overlooked. As companies progress closer towards a 1:1 level of personalization, they will experience an exponential increase in the amount of content needed. Moving from mass communication to a few strategic segments, to dynamic audiences and to 1:1 personalization, is a jump in both the complexity and volume of content on each step of the journey. Content teams were never intended to absorb such growing demands. As a result, lead times get stretched and quality begins to suffer. Content teams find themselves struggling to keep up or being unable to deliver.
Efficiency is a prerequisite for scale
Growing demands for efficiency mean that content teams and budgets cannot simply be scaled up. Even if the volume of content in your organization will grow tenfold over the next couple of years, it is safe to say that content budgets will and should not grow at the same pace. The reality is that employees spend more than 40% of their day on manual or administrative processes (2). Thus, rethinking the way we work with content end-to-end is a far better option.
This is where Content Automation enters the picture. With the right tools and processes, you can both future proof your content operations for the age of personalization and automation, while also unlocking efficiencies that enable creatives to work smarter, not harder. However, this is easier said than done.
When we ask our clients about trends to be aware of, in order to future proof their marketing and sales organizations, Content Automation stands out. According to them, the trend is extremely important for their future marketing and sales, but their marketing and sales function’s ability to face the trend is poor.
Now we have covered the why of Content Automation. If you are interested in the what and how of it, download the article in its entirety below. There we cover the development areas of Content Automation and how to take the first steps.