The ways we receive content are often lagging behind content capabilities.
Dynamic content is a staple of modern marketing and customized web experiences. Our ability to manage content in a CCMS at ever higher levels of granularity is matched only by the increasing sophistication of our tools for building and tagging content. Add to these increased automation and computer learning, and it’s clear that content delivery is ready for another round of innovation.
Delivery bottlenecks
With componentized data modules and advanced CCMS enabling fast, smart content configuration on demand, the possibilities related to the creation of personalized content are virtually endless. What is not endless are the ways users encounter content. Websites, social media, ads, emails and newsletters: We can customize content on demand and deliver on these platforms, but we are still running into problems when it comes to controlling delivery on a granular level and avoiding pile-ups related to speed and performance.
“How can we optimize delivery of dynamic content?”
We’ve been here before. In 2001, Greg Parker, CEO and president of SpiderCache, prophesied to ComputerWorld, “There is huge growth occurring in dynamic content. People are moving away from static ties [sic] to dynamic content-driven sites, and that exposes the bottleneck [dynamic content] causes…. [Traditional caches] can’t handle the performance required for the speed of delivery of dynamic content.”
His company sought to address this problem for web sites by building a more dynamic page-caching capability, which was good for the time but does not fully address content delivery in the era of apps and messages. So the question is: How can we optimize delivery of dynamic content?
Going where the users are
Optimizing delivery requires identifying where users are interacting with content. Innovative content delivery ideas in 2001 are ready for retirement since apps are common platform where content is being delivered. Apps provide the opportunity for real-time feedback to content delivery engines, so algorithms can take advantage of that feedback to send content with more intelligently than is possible when sending content to a website. And that may be changing soon. Some industry experts caution that the app marketplace may soon collapse given the dominance of platforms like Facebook, so there may be limited utility in investing the time into building out an innovative delivery infrastructure for mobile apps.
So where can content delivery be optimized? Newsletters and emails still remain a vibrant and engaging delivery method. With audience segmentation rules allowing a CCMS to build tailored content, more granular and specific content delivery could come from turning attention to the modules of a newsletter: inserting a customized event calendar based on user location, promoting specific products and services based on individual user engagement metrics and so on. Rather than separating a newsletter delivery into broader “campaigns,” a CCMS can manage user profiles and build a unique product on demand.
“Forms essentially act as a type of content.”
Optimizing forms
Forms, where users voluntarily submit data, are one of the most invaluable assets for content managers. While behavioral and engagement data can inform an algorithm, as well as show and potentially predict patterns, forms offer a direct pipeline of data that can be integrated straight into a CCMS.
The relationship of forms to content and delivery is more than symbiotic. Forms essentially act as a type of content. They can be optimized and made dynamic based on user behavior.For instance, if your profile shows that a particular shopper on an e-commerce platform has a high bounce ratio, you can deliver a simplified form that asks only for the most vital information. A user who returns again and again to a platform and spends a significant amount of time on certain sites can be paired with a form that focuses on data related to his or her browsing patterns. By being able to gather specific, in-depth data from users, the ability to glean even more granular insights about content grows. This in turn fosters CCMS sophistication, enabling pinpointed, dynamic delivery.