There are about 4.66 billion internet users today, with unique preferences and needs. In this competitive online market, the only way businesses can provide top-notch services is by carrying out detailed content profiling of their customers to understand their behavioural insights and preferences.

According to Forbes, brands should take an omni-channel approach in the next normal to drive exceptional customer experiences across channels. Sitecore Content Profiling has emerged as a one-stop solution to all personalization needs. Sitecore Content Profiling forms the bedrock of all the personalization needs. The Sitecore Experience platform empowers marketers with the right tools to target their customers with relevant, and personalized content - to create experiences that convert into measurable outcomes for brands!

So, What exactly is Content Profiling?

Content Profiling helps marketers create specific customer segments according to their needs, preferences and behaviour. This helps them target each group separately and ensures that customers receive relevant marketing communications about a specific product/service/offering at the right time, exactly when they are looking for it . Such real-time content personalization helps in customer acquisition and leads to higher conversion rates. Content Profiling is a powerful tool for marketers to predict and analyse visitor attributes on their website.

Although, Sitecore's Content Profiling tool is easy-to-use, most marketers are unable to utilize it to its full potential owing to lack of optimising its elements.

This blog aims to explain the use cases of the different tools and elements to help you gauge a better understanding of behaviour, action and interests of your customers.

Some of the basic terminologies and concepts are explained as under:

• Content Profile
• Profile Keys
• Profile Values
• Profile Cards
• Pattern Cards
• Personas
  
  

1. Content Profile:

Located in the marketing control panel, content profile categorizes visitors based on their preferences and behaviour as they navigate through your website. It bifurcates visitors under separate interest buckets basis the activity or product, they were engaged with. This kind of departmentization of the website visitors help marketers analyse customer preferences, actions and budgets.

2. Profile Keys:

Profile Keys are an integral part of Content Profiling, they enlist the different aspects of a visitor's profile. Marketers can assign different numerical profile values to every profile key to track and analyse how a visitor interacts with the website.

Profile keys categorize a website visitor based on their behaviour or persona, for example - a visitor can be categorized as an 'Impulsive Buyer' if he tends to buy impulsively or a visitor can be categorized as a 'Researcher' if he tends to research thoroughly before making a purchase. While Sitecore provides a set of default profile keys, it also lets marketers create their own profile keys basis their nature of business and target audience.

3. Profile Values:

Profile Values help marketers assign a unique number for each item on the website that the visitor interacts with. These values get accumulated as a visitor navigates through the website, giving way towards the formation of a contact profile. Profile values provide key insights to marketers about customer preferences and helps them optimize their websites and segment their contacts.

Profile Values collects a large variety of information pertaining to the pages viewed by contacts, goals completed by them and the path traversed through the website, this helps in creating personalized customer journeys. Visitors with high profile values can also be treated as a potential lead and can give way to generating huge sales opportunities.

4. Profile Cards:

Profile Cards are a combination of different profile keys with pre-defined values. Profile Cards can help marketers assign standardized profile values to different items across the website. These cards help in identifying and segmenting contacts while assigning relevant content on the website.

5. Pattern Cards:

Pattern Cards are a combination of profile keys with threshold values which is used to match or segment visitors to its closest behavioural pattern. As a visitor interacts with a tagged content with profile cards matching the threshold, a pattern is created for further personalization.

6. Personas:

Personas are fictional characters that represent different groups of visitors/contacts within a target audience, who are inclined to behave in a certain way and perform a defined set of actions on a website. Profile Cards can be created against a particular persona to predict how they will consume the content on your website. Personas can be created while setting up profiles for your content.

Visitor content profiling is the first step of the personalization process. It helps marketers and businesses engage and acquire new customers based on their interests and browsing pattern.

How do we leverage Content Profiling to generate relevant and personalized content for customers? More on this in our upcoming blog! Stay tuned to our blogs and write to us at marketing@espire.com for your queries.

Espire is a Sitecore global partner with multiple Sitecore projects delivered for global locations and clients across multiple industry verticals. We are enabling digital transformation & personalization by crafting awe-inspiring Customer Experiences. Get in touch with our experts for a quick demo and to learn how you can leverage Sitecore platform for creating impressive customer experiences, faster time to market and boosted business returns in the new normal.