Drupal 8 for Marketers: Personalization

In Part 1 of this series, I outlined the ways Drupal 8 supports your SEO efforts, giving you the best opportunities for your customers to find you. But what happens once they get there? If we’re doing our jobs as marketers today, we are aiming to provide a personalized web experience for each of our prospects and customers with integrated campaigns and creative content. The great news is Drupal 8 is designed with this in mind. There are several new features and pieces of functionality that will help marketers focus on creating innovative strategies instead of having to worry about what’s possible.

Campaigns and Data and ROI -- Oh My!  

One of the best parts about being a marketer in present time is our ability to automate, test, and measure all marketing activities. Today, companies have unparalleled insight into what customers and prospects like and don’t like and can serve up personalized content based on those insights. Marketers can pivot in real-time and anticipate almost every scenario. Could you imagine what Don Draper would have done with such a depth of detail? (Maybe he wouldn’t have needed that minibar in his office!)

At Mediacurrent, we use several services including analytics tools, software to push out communications, social media widgets and gated content forms to build our database. That’s a lot of integrating with our website and many of these analysis and automation tools didn't exist in 2011 and are easier than ever to integrate with Drupal.

More good news - Drupal 8 ‘s web services initiative makes sharing meaningful data with external systems easier than ever. With the ability to convert Drupal managed content into standardized data sharing formats, there are no limitations on which marketing tools you can choose from. Marketers can now have all our systems properly integrated into our Drupal website, allowing us to mine that marketing gold. Great news for those of us self-proclaimed data nerds who believe in Dan Zarella’s philosophy - “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.”

If Content is King - Drupal 8 is the Stagecoach 

Now that we have our integrations, marketers need to be able to act by creating and publishing content that increases conversions and SEO rankings and gives our prospects and customers what they are asking for. In addition to creating quality content (which I mention in every post for a reason) we need to get it published! But sometimes, even though we try, that can be a multi-step process. In fact, I’ll share my typical process with you:

• Write Blog
• Share with Teammates
• Edit and Finalize Blog copy
• Add copy to WYSIWYG editor
• Save and Preview
• Notice spacing is off, go back to WYSIWYG to fix spacing
• Save and Preview
• Spacing on Headers is off, go back to WYSIWYG to fix
• Save and Preview
• See one final typo....(you get the idea)

Drupal 8 has addressed this with a new easy-to-use integrated WYSIWYG editor and an on-page editor complete with the ability to see how your images will respond on tablet and mobile. You and your team will have a simplified interface to add, edit and remove content, drastically reducing the time from concept to publish. Great news for large and small (but mighty) marketing teams alike.

Even better, now that you have these tools, you can focus on what is arguably the biggest challenge facing marketers right now - creating a customized marketing strategy and digital experience for each segment of your audience including geography, device type and language. This allows all of your content creators to have a much more seamless and unified experience.  

Drupal 8 helps marketers ensure we are reaching all segments of our audience, regardless of device, access, or language. To learn more, don't miss our Marketer's Guide to Drupal 8.