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DXP essentials for building apassionate customer baseMoving beyond acquisition to increasing customer lifetime value
In collaboration with Cathy McKnight, TCAContents

DXP essentials for building a passionate customer baseExecutive Summary							

3Introduction								

4What a DXP is and isn’t							

7Helping existing customers be better customers				

9

Selecting a DXP to help beyond audience acquisition				10

DXP: Empowering the entire customer journey and cultivating advocacy

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Customers now expect
their journeys to beengaging, highly
personalized, andomnichannel. To meet thisevolving challenge, there isa new frontier in marketing
technology: the Digital
Experience Platform (DXP).
This paper explains what a
DXP is and what it can dofor you.

Customer expectations for the organizations they dobusiness with are evolving. They now expect theirinteractions along the customer journey to be intuitive,
effortless, personalized, and engaging. They also want
to be able to communicate with businesses in whatevermanner suits them at a given moment – in other words: anomnichannel experience.
In order to meet this challenge, organizations are looking to move beyond content
management systems (CMS) into deploying more powerful Digital Experience
Platforms (DXP), with functions that reach beyond content into every facet of thecustomer journey.
A proper DXP can unify disparate solutions into a more unified martek stack,informed by analytics and AI technology, to streamline the production of these
personalized experiences at scale. Customer communications management,
CMS, digital asset management (DAM), CRM, and more working in harmony givecustomers what they want without overwhelming staff.
Selecting the right DXP for your organization is a multi-step process that benefits
from close attention. First, evaluate your exact needs, then assess what’s available
on the market and what these options would require to implement. Identify potential
partners based on your highest priority needs, hold interviews with them prior to
RFPs to get a more refined response, then finish with a paid proof-of-concept tomake sure what you’re getting will do what you need.
In the peer-to-peer review and social media age…getting customers to go to bat
for you is priceless. Key to achieving that is making their experiences feel like yourorganization understands and directly addresses their wants and needs. Deploying
a DXP can deliver tremendous dividends in not just acquiring new customers, but
retaining them and turning them into advocates as well.

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Today Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) are doing for content channels andcustomer touchpoints — including brick-and-mortar outlets — what content
management systems (CMS) started doing for printed marketing material andwebsites more than two decades ago. Despite that similarity, the difference
between DXP and CMS is massive.
DXP takes things beyond CMS to deliver a differentiated customer decision journey(CDJ) and help companies stand out from the exponentially increasing competition
they face on all fronts. Unlike CMS, DXP focuses on delivering the best possible
customer experience through understanding, and trying to anticipate, whatcustomers are looking for.
DXPs are evolving at a far faster rate than ever seen in martech before to better
meet marketers’ needs. Staying ahead of the curve requires having the ability to
speak with, gather data from, and listen to audiences to develop the perfect pitch toengage a prospect, then turn them into customers and fans.
With the proliferation of channels and content, as well as the increasing ease ofspinning up new digital outlets, audience acquisition and retention is increasingly
difficult and expensive. A recent ProfitWell study1 shared some revealing data on
why having the right DXP model is so important:• Customer acquisition cost (CAC) has increased by nearly 50% over the past five
years for both B2B and B2C companies.
• Content quality is increasing, but content effectiveness is dropping with the average
number of shares per post falling by nearly 90% compared to two years ago.
• Offers have less tenacity. Measured through lead velocity, offers’ effectivenesswas once typically six months, but today that effectiveness has decreased to lessthan three.
Perhaps these numbers are why so many marketers (and DXP vendors) spend
a disproportionate amount of time and effort focused on addressing customer
acquisition, and re-acquisition, to their detriment. According to Marketing Metrics,
the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, as opposed to 5-20%
for new prospects.
Organizations need to look further along the CDJ to cultivate deeper relationships
with audiences and customers already aware of what the brand has to offer. In an
era when customers are being bombarded with messaging seeking to entice themaway, cultivating loyalty is essential.
To do this, companies need to move beyond a CMS-centered martech stack serving
up a prescribed customer journey that talks at customers. Far more effective is
one built on a DXP-architected ecosystem with integrated data, automation, andexperience layers. This enables strategic, relevant, and compelling conversations
with targeted audiences throughout their journey with the brand.

1 https://www.profitwell.com/recur/all/content-marketing-customer-acquisition-cost

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The complexity of today’s marketing ecosystem
Today’s digital-dominated world creates and relies on ever-increasingly complex
environments of technologies, processes, and teams to deliver the customer
designed journey. Rather than being a mostly-marketers mandate, teams fromacross the organization play a crucial role in successful audience engagement andthe delivery of customer satisfaction.
Reliant on content-driven digital experiences, these medleys of touchpoints aremanaged and fed by both controlled and uncontrolled content from the likes ofinfluencers, executives, marketing, sales, customer service managers, and evenother customers. These contributors are adding their insights and assets throughdifferent processes and technologies, resulting in a myriad of distinct digital
experiences. Yet to the targeted audiences, these experiences are intrinsicallyconnected, and directly reflect (well or poorly) on the business’s ability to create
cohesive, integrated value.
Meeting the challenge of creating fans through the marketing and sales journeymust be done at the enterprise level, with an enterprise-ready ecosystem of teams,
processes, and technology.
Today, many marketing organizations seem stuck chasing the technological needsof internal content/experience silos, then trying to enable them with approaches
that optimize each separate layer of the customer’s journey. It is common to see
multiple technology solutions managing data, activating content, and measuring theconsumption of siloed experiences at disparate parts of the journey.
The barrier to delivering the right content to the right audience at the right timethrough the right channel is not a shortage of technology. On the contrary, in manycases, there are too many technologies involved.
A CMI Content Management and Strategy study2 found that half of all marketerssurveyed named “too much technology” as their top frustration, followed closely by
the challenge of “integrating the technologies” (49%). The study also revealed that73% of marketers still say they either have not acquired the right technology forcustomer experience or are not making optimal use of the technology they have.
After decades of research and millions of vendor-invested dollars, mostorganizations still approach digital marketing strategy with siloed engines thatpower separate, channel-specific experiences. This is becoming ever moreunsustainable. The way forward is a self-learning, connected network that can
optimize and provide a unified view of the customer’s journey. That’s the promise of
today’s DXPs.

2 https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2020_B2B_Research_Final.pdf

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What a DXP is and isn't
There are many schools of thought on what constitutes a DXP. The common threadis that a DXP enables the end-to-end management – from creative conception toasset archive - and optimization of contextualized digital experiences across multistep customer journeys. The area of disagreement is whether this can be achievedin a single source solution, or requires a framework of best-of-breed integrated
technologies that work together.
The evolution of today’s DXP has been driven over decades by companies’
increasing need to:• Differentiate from their competition• Stand out in the midst of an explosion of digital channels (social media, streaming,etc.) competing for consumers’ attention• Drive more customer engagement, and ultimately more revenue• Deliver more contextual and aligned real-time experiences across multiple
channels
While DXPs are the next iteration of marketing technology that started with content
management, they are not a glorified CMS. This new vein (or more so, artery)feeding the customer journey leverages core elements of less mature technologies
like content management systems (CMS), web experience management, marketing
automation, and early commerce solutions.

Figure 1: Evolution of DXP capabilities
There are as many opinions and vendors as there are possible features andfunctional aspects of a DXP. Which elements are most important depends on
your business needs, goals, and maturity – both technological and of customer
experience.

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A comprehensive list of important DXP functionality could include:

Figure 2: Foundational DXP Capabilities
The benefits of a DXP with this depth of functionality are abundant, but even at its
most basic level, a DXP gives organizations the ability to deliver the connected andconsistent experiences critical to building customer satisfaction and loyalty.
There are a few core DXP functions that are essential to delivering on that promise:
1. Inclusive customer data management and analytics
Customer analytics provide the necessary insight for "aha" moments and help directwhere effort should be spent to improve customer experience, resolve roadblocks
on the journey, and create content that will be most effective.
2. Repurposing and contextualizing content for delivery & continuity of the journey
Delivering consistent and relevant content to touchpoints across online and inperson platforms is essential for a positive customer experience. DXPs enable brandexperience consistency across the continually expanding channels customers areengaging through.
3. Open and flexible architecture and platform design
Flexibility and agility are at the core of an effective DXP. Architecture supporting
this is built around a collection of services, typically organized around businesscapabilities, that are easily maintained and independently deployable.

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4. Intuitive personalization and context awarenessContextual personalization helps businesses target the right shoppers at the righttime in the customer life cycle. This mechanism digests every audience interaction
and then leverages those insights to automatically improve the next customer
experience, regardless of touchpoint.
5. Integrated and easy to use artificial intelligence and machine learning
Perhaps most importantly, but often least understood and leveraged, artificial
intelligence built into DXPs provides brands with actionable insights across theentire digital customer experience. AI fuels engagement and advocacy by making iteasier for audiences to find the information they want when they want it.
Enabling an intentional cycle of audience satisfaction beyond acquisition yields
happier customers. That in turn can deliver higher dividends over time in the form of
repeat purchases, referrals, and building a positive brand reputation.

Helping existing customers to be better customers
Rather than simply driving revenue by flooding the top of the funnel with potential
new customers, DXPs can also enable revenue growth by keeping existingcustomers happy through two-way communications in the channel of their choicethroughout their journey with the brand.

According to the Gartner Group, 80 percent of your future
profits will come from just 20 percent of your existingcustomers.

Getting this right takes time, patience, the right partners, and the right DXP.

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Selecting a DXP to help beyond audience acquisition
Companies often look at new marketing-enabling technology through a lens ofcustomer acquisition – “how will this <DAM, CMS, MAP, DXP, etc.> help us get
more customers, sell more, etc.”. Whereas to successfully provide the experiences
customers need to become and stay fans, this needs to shift to a lens of customer
retention “how will this DXP help us deliver the right experiences to delight ouraudience?”
The following five steps will help you find the best fit DXP technology vendor andimplementation partners.
Step 1: Evaluate the need
When considering an investment in a DXP, your initial questions should be:• Do we need a new/another technology solution, or do we have what we needalready?
• Should we update, rather than replace, our existing technology?
• Could we solve our problem by improving our content, assets, and/or adjusting
our processes?
• Will this new technology enable and accelerate our strategy’s time to market andhelp achieve organizational objectives?
Taking the time to consider your organization’s unique customer satisfaction needs
is a critical first step. Implementing new technology or migrating from one solution
to another is incredibly disruptive and time-consuming. It can take a company up to
two full years to select, implement, and migrate content onto a new platform, even
before the challenge of user adoption and training begins.
Checklist:• Evaluate current customer experience related technology• Consider existing strategies and processes• Identify related business challenges• Identify key technology shortcomings• Confirm the need for new technology
Step 2: Compile DXP and implementation partner requirements
When gathering these requirements many important questions need to beanswered.
• What systems will the DXP need to integrate with?
• What types of content are being managed, and what channels do they support at
the different stages of the customer journey?
• How long will the DXP take to deploy?
• Who will implement the technology?

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Gathering requirements at the outset takes time and effort but is well worth it.
Be sure to interview or run group sessions with representatives from all impacted
stakeholder groups. Include representation from management, lines of business,marketers, and IT.
Understand what success looks like to each stakeholder. Ask them what they hopefor, or are trying to achieve, with the new DXP. Don’t forget to gather their current
pain points with delivering the best customer experience. Providing some insights
into what a DXP can and can't do, such as the list of DXP capabilities listed earlier
in this paper, can help stakeholders think beyond their current pain points into therealm of what is possible.
The next step is to distill the details of wants and must-haves down. Identify up toten priority needs for each DXP vendor and potential implementation partner.
Checklist:• Identify key stakeholders• Gather requirements• Review and consolidate all requirements collected• Identify trends and common themes from requirements• Identify 5 to 10 priority needs• Validate the identified priority needs with key stakeholders
Step 3: Use your priority needs to identify qualified partners
With the priority needs identified, it is time to compile a list of potential vendors thatcan meet them. This is one of the most difficult steps, as vendors often look similarin what their DXP solution can do. To narrow the list, look beyond what the DXPs
commonly share, and find the differentiators that matter to you.
• Need customer journey mapping? – does the DXP offer that tool?
• Is your company moving to all SaaS solutions? – what are the available“installation” options?
• Are you looking for a one-throat-to-choke or a best-of-breed approach tofunctionality?
• What is your budget? – What is the DXP’s total cost of ownership?
• What is the total time to market?
Vendors often go to market with similar lists of capabilities, so make sure to dig
into how those features function and the processes that they support to determine
which might be the best fit for your needs. Ideally, your shortlist will include threetechnology vendors.
Once your shortlist of technology vendors is complete, you can buy direct, if
possible, or define a parallel list of potential agencies. Ask each of the short-listed
vendors to recommend two or three potential implementation/channel partners.
Investigate each partner’s methodology, size, capabilities, vertical experience, andculture, as well as their ability to meet your prioritized needs. It is essential to speakwith reference customers about their experience working with them.

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Checklist:• Determine the most relevant technology framework• Confirm your available budget for technology licensing and support as well as
service provider integration, strategy, and support costs• Assess your current implementation team’s (internal or external) strengths
Do they meet your needs? If not:• Consider if you prefer/require a local partner• What skillset gaps do they need to fill for your team?
• Do you want a partner to teach the team along the way?
• Does your organization have any additional requirements, such as insurance,
certifications, or classifications to be considered?
Step 4: Get to know potential partners outside of the typical RFP process
With a shortlist of vendors and partners in hand, you can now forgo the canned
vendor demonstrations. Instead, consider holding on-site information exchanges
with your potential partners. These provide you with time to share yourrequirements, budget, timeline, pain-points, and other concerns in detail and withmore context, so prospective partners can then provide a more thorough andtailored RFP response afterwards.
The RFP process is an initial step in what will hopefully be a long, mutually beneficial
partnership. Avoid the checklist approach by writing this essential document
based on user scenarios and what you learned during the face-to-face informationexchange sessions. While this takes more time (and the Procurement Team may
not like it) the added effort will garner more meaningful responses and create acollaborative environment for you and your prospective partners.
Making the right choice for your organization up front can lead to huge savings interms of implementation, staff time, training, etc. Picking the wrong one can lock ina miserable, expensive march to a solution that’s ultimately not up to your needs. It’s
worth taking some extra time now to avoid that.
Checklist:• Define scenarios for potential partners to demonstrate during the informationexchange• Include participants for the information exchange session from all of your key
stakeholder groups. Provide them with a ranking score sheet to evaluate andcapture notes for each session• Avoid RFP templates with requirements that aren’t relevant to your organization• Create a scenario-based RFP to enable respondents to provide context for theircapabilities, rather than a checklist• Allow ample (at least three weeks) RFP response time
• Host a call to allow potential partners to ask questions• Include all data from information exchanges and RFP responses in your final
evaluation process

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Step 5: Hold a paid proof-of-concept
Today’s industry-leading DXP solutions offer far more functionality than everbefore. This expanded scope, combined with the need for it to integrate with otherenterprise applications, further increases their overall value to the organization.
However, this complexity also increases the risk of a failed implementation.
To help avoid this, schedule an on-site proof-of-concept to ensure the selected
technology works in your environment as completely as it did during early
demonstrations. Do this by having your preferred vendor and implementation
partner demonstrate how the DXP will satisfy one or more of your specific customer
journey engagement requirements.
This small investment of time and money will allow you to assess the additional
qualities of your new partner and provide it with an opportunity to gather additional
knowledge to predict the scope of your engagement more accurately. Uponcompletion, it is appropriate to request a refined proposal.
Checklist:• Choose only one technology vendor and one implementation partner toparticipate• Define the scope of work to be executed by the implementation• Identify which integrations will be tested• Ensure the proof-of-concept team is made up of the individuals who will beassigned to your project

DXP: Empowering the entire customer journey andcultivating advocacy
The successful organizations of tomorrow will create connected networks of highly
specific, interactive content experiences across paid, owned, and earned media
throughout a customer’s journey. These businesses will grow based on their ability
to create deepening trust with long-term audiences, rather than simply managing
siloed transactions at individual steps along the buyer’s journey.
Successful organizations consistently deliver content-driven experiences acrosscustomers' journeys based on their passions, questions, needs, and wants.
DXP infrastructure can be leveraged to develop better and more personalized
experiences for those individuals, transforming them into committed, passionate
fans and advocates.

About TCA
Founded in 2010, TCA is the leading content strategy consulting, research, advisoryand education company. TCA helps Marketing Leaders map new paths, and evolve
content and communications strategies. Visit: contentadvisory.net.

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OpenText, The Information Company, enables organizations to gain insight throughmarket leading information management solutions, on-premises or in the cloud. For
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