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A Digital Marketer's Guide to Platform Selection

What this webinar involves:

• Evolution of CXM
• Your CXM Choices
• Measuring CXM Maturity
• Tactics for Platform Evaluation
• Where to Begin Your Evaluation

Introduction:

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today! My name is Aaron Branson and I'm glad to have the opportunity to speak to you all today. As the Chief Marketing Officer for a digital marketing and system integration agency, it seems that I'm having new conversations every week with the heads of Marketing and also IT for companies looking for guidance in what they should be doing and where they should be heading to ensure they're equipped in the digital marketing space. So, I'm really excited to have the opportunity to boil down this topic down and provide a recommended approach to answer those types of questions.

In the next 15 or 20 minutes, my goal is to leave you with a contextual understanding of the platforms available, a framework for finding the best-fit platform, and a clear set of next steps to get you going. So, let's jump in… I'd like to start with a very short history lesson to get our bearings on the situation.

Evolution of CXM:

I think it's important to first understand where we came from in order to understand the situation we find ourselves in today. We're at a very interesting point in time for digital marketing. Alongside the growing influence of digital marketing, the technology platforms available have exploded – and we currently have this back-and-forth of marketing innovation that pushes the technology; and that technology in turn pushes innovation further forward.

So, today we have this concept of a marketing technology platform called Customer Experience Management (with several acronyms - CEM, CXM or sometimes just XM). Essentially, this category of marketing technology is the result of the growth and maturity of another system – the Web Content Management System (also known by a couple acceptable acronyms - WCM or CMS). 10 years ago, we basically had a separate system for each discreet marketing effort – the CMS to manage the website being one of them. Approximately 5 years ago, we reached a stage where the more advanced CMS tools began incorporating some key digital functions related to, but separate from, the website – such as social media, email marketing, and some analytics. The CMS became the integration hub of several separate systems. Today, in 2015, many of these same CMS platforms have grown to encompass so much more than simply the websites, that this new category of Customer Experience Management has been created.

Why is all of this background important? To make sure you can recognize what's what out there in the marketplace and have accurate expectations. Because of digital marketing's explosion, the CMO has gotten more of exactly what they've been asking for – control. Control over the technologies that enable the website, email, social, mobile, analytics, and so on. And with that control comes some added responsibility to make some very critical choices in the people, process and platform that will drive an organization's digital marketing success.

For today, we're just going to tackle that last P – platform and get you a starting point in the big job of evaluating and selecting the digital marketing platform that's right for your organization.

A Sea of Choices

From the basic CMS to the more robust CXM, we now have a ton of choices… Digital Clarity Group for example, states there are over 2,000 vendors in this space today.

These platforms cover the full spectrum ranging from the traditional CMS to this new category of CXM and hybrids in-between. What you see here is just a sampling of some of the more well-known vendors out there. I gathered this sampling using the Gartner Magic Quadrant report and then also sprinkled in some other well-known vendors that aren't quite big enough to make Gartner's list. And so I have these laid out left to right correlating where they fall on the spectrum of leaning toward CMS or CXM. For instance, traditional CMS's like Umbraco, more marketing feature-rich systems like Kentico and then full-blown CXM platforms like Sitecore. And just a quick disclaimer, there's no exact science to this order… just my experience and opinion.

Another thing to keep in mind when considering platforms is integrations with other systems that make up the total marketing ecosystem. Keep in mind your CRM like Salesforce and Dynamics, E-Commerce platforms like InsiteCommerce and Magento; and various ERP systems and Product Information Management Systems. What systems you have currently in place (and plan to integrate with) will also influence which of these systems is best for you.

Measuring CXM Maturity

Ok, before we run off checking out the features and usability of certain software vendors, the evaluation of the right platform starts with the evaluation of your own organization. Granted, we're talking about Platform and we don't have time to delve into People and Process, we can't help but touch on them as all three are interconnected. The CXM maturity model allows you to understand what platform is relevant to your organization – for instance, if your organization is not planning to make the strides it takes to go from Align to Lifetime Customer in 5 years, certain platforms may be overkill. And on the flip-side if you are near, or have aggressive plans to get to Engage or Lifetime Customer, one of the leading CXM platforms may be right for you.

A good starting point is measuring your organization's level of CXM (or digital) maturity. This probes what digital strategies are in place and what marketing activities are going on; but also what roles and governance are in place in the organization. For instance, is there a Chief Marketing Technologist, a Digital Marketing Director, one or more Digital Marketing Specialists? Does the initiative have executive level support? Is there a Digital Agency Partner involved… and if so, to what degree… are they more of an execution vendor or a strategic partner you bring to the table for planning and budgeting?

What you see here is a basic graduated scale of CXM. This is a light-weight version of the model so that you can get an introduction in the time we have. Rarely does an organization fit 100% neatly into one level, but through this exercise you'll pinpoint strengths and weaknesses which will be key to platform selection.

So, again, before worrying about the various platforms and vendors, this is where I recommend you start. Look inward and evaluate your organization's digital maturity level and define a roadmap of where you want to go. If you need assistance with this, I'd be happy to discuss this step offline sometime.

Tactics for Platform Evaluation

Alright, after first stepping back and looking at your CXM maturity level and strategies, it's time to get more tactical in terms of evaluating platforms.

Narrow the Field:

First of all, we have to narrow that field of 2K vendors down to something you can reasonably work with.

These 5 factors can help you narrow the field down and eliminate those that are irrelevant to your organization.

Starting with #1 on the list, Function… this will harken back to the results of your Digital Maturity assessment. Did you find your organization is in the market for a CMS at this point or clearly looking at the CXM end?

Next, the Technology Stack. Within your organization, IT may have standardized on a specific stack to lower maintenance costs. Or if you plan to develop or support the platform in-house, what technology stack is your organization experienced with. For instance, if you have a team of .NET developers, a Java or PHP platform may not make sense.

Then consider #3, Infrastructure… do you aim to host this platform on-premises with your servers, or outsource the hosting, or perhaps you are looking for a SaaS model.

The next one, #4, is in the list only because it's an unfortunate reality. There are several myths that fuel the fight of Open Source vs. Commercial and as a result, some organizations have a mandate to only use one or the other. If I had it my way, this factor would not be on the list (or at most would play a small factor), but if the reality is that this is a factor for your organization, you have to play the hand your dealt.

Lastly at #5, to help filter the list of vendors if you still have more than you like to have in your pool, you can also refer to research publications like Gartner or Digital Clarity Group as a means to qualify the vendors that make your short list.

Evaluation Criterion and Process:

That brings us to our second step. After narrowing the field, you want to end up with a manageable pool of vendors that are all reasonable candidates for your organization. Now the evaluation process can really get underway. I have 5 recommendations that you work into this process.

First, set up a Feature Matrix (also called a Decision Matrix). This is a sub-process in of itself in which you and your team determine the capabilities/features required and also assign a weight to each one. Such features categories to consider are Marketing Automation, Content Personalization, Multivariate Testing, and Analytics. Those are feature categories… you may have specific features or requirements within those areas.

Your core team will get together after research and demos to score evaluated platforms to result in objective overall scores and also a breakdown of scores per feature. This serves as a great tool in maintaining an objective point of view.

The feature matrix is a very analytical tool so I recommend complimenting this with User Stories. For user stories, think about what precisely you and your marketing do today or wish to do more effectively and write it out. Here's a hypothetical…

As a digital marketer, I want to be able to craft multiple variations of the website's homepage hero component and automatically show the current user the version that relates best to them based on where they came from, what search phrase brought them to the site or maybe where they are geographically. I then want to be able to see which version is getting seen most frequently and which ones have the highest rate of click-through.

With a set of specific user stories like that, you'll be able ask vendors during the demo to show you precisely how their system solves that challenge – giving you more assurance of the platform's capabilities and a more apples-to-apples comparison. Be sure to use both of these tools (the matrix and the user stories) to drive the demo you receive.

During the demo, I recommend you focus on the platform's ease of use, ability to change and adapt to your business, and also think about multi-channel mgmt. – not just the website. Also, when selecting and implementing any new platform, prepare for quite possibly a substantial content migration process. While that may be more of an implementation issue than a platform issue, it's worth asking what the platform can offer to help rather than hinder that process. Such solutions could drive down total cost of ownership.

Now, after the demos, you have may have it whittled down to a select few. If after reconvening with the team to score the matrix, and considering how each platform solved the user stories during the demo, you are still on the fence; #4, a Proof-of-Concept may be necessary to get a clear winner. Most likely you'll be able to identify a unique business need that perhaps the vendor can pull together something to show you and prove the capabilities. This may be a demo of another existing customer's solution that fits what you're asking for… or something implemented in a sandbox to show you.

Also, #5 on the list… consider the partner ecosystem. A platform is only as good as its implementation… the higher your investment in the platform itself, the more you want to protect it by ensuring there are good implementation partners with proven track records to support you from start to finish and beyond. Be sure you can find trusted agencies that can provide business and system integration strategies, User Experience design, sophisticated development practices and business user enablement services like training, support and consulting as your organization “gets your sea legs” so to speak.

Where to Begin?

So, where to begin? How do you get there? And, do you even know where you're going?

That last question is actually the first one to answer. I encourage you to think Strategic before Tactical. You first need to understand where your organization is today in the CXM maturity model and shape a roadmap to define where you want to be. Then at the tactical level, use these platform questions to end up with a short list of relevant, well-matched platforms to evaluate. Third, plan your evaluation process and get organizational buy-in along the way.

This first step of evaluating your organization is one thing I'd be happy to help you with. If anyone is interested, I invite you to reach out to schedule some time to discuss. We can start by conducting a brief CXM maturity model survey of your organization and provide a recommended roadmap.

So, that's a wrap! Thank you for your time and I hope this 3-part framework will help give you some guidance in making the right choice in digital marketing platforms.