As the president of Uniform, can you provide an overview of the company’s mission and vision in the digital experience personalization space?
Uniform is committed to providing a cutting-edge visual workspace, designed to empower digital teams in their quest to seamlessly integrate content, data and technology from various sources. Our ultimate goal is to enable the creation and delivery of exceptional multichannel experiences, driving success and innovation in the digital landscape.
Uniform is known for its expertise in delivering personalized digital experiences. Could you explain how Uniform’s technology works and the benefits it offers to businesses?
Uniform’s visual workspace, known as Canvas, gives digital teams a way to assemble experiences from any source of content, data or technology and then target those different experiences to various audiences. It allows marketers and merchandisers to deliver the most relevant content and offers to customers based on their behavior, and other contextual data from various customer data repositories such as customer data platforms (CDP), customer relationship management (CRM) systems, etc. Rich, relevant experiences drive improved conversion rates and increase customer satisfaction. Customers feel understood and appreciated when brands deliver experiences that reflect their preferences.
In your experience, what are some of the key challenges that businesses face when it comes to implementing effective digital experience personalization? How does Uniform help address these challenges?
There are two large challenges that businesses face as they strive to optimize personalization The first is analyzing data to identify the right segments and situations they want to target at the right moment. The second challenge is creating enough content to deliver in each of those situations. With modern CDP and CRM technology, there is now a rich set of customer data that can be activated to drive the identification of customers(who) and indicate the right situations(when). Now, with generative AI like ChatGPT, content can be generated for any and all segments and situations. As an example, in Uniform, as a marketer is creating a targeted experience, a plugin can call ChatGPT, give it the base content and the situational context, and receive back a targeted, optimized piece of content that matches the intent and situation of that targeted experience.
Can you provide an overview of the Composable CMS Evaluation Guide recently released by Uniform? What was the motivation behind creating this resource?
“Headless” and “composable” started as developer-led trends where the benefits and trade-offs were fairly well known. However as the number of customers (and vendors in the space) grows rapidly, we had been hearing from individuals in the market that many of the guides and best practices were written before this shift. The value propositions and even what to expect for various features are completely different now, so we wrote this guide as a way to help organizations navigate these new approaches and technologies.
In the guide, Uniform aims to simplify the nuances of headless technologies and help brands evaluate headless CMS solutions. Could you explain the key criteria and considerations that the guide covers for selecting a headless CMS vendor?
The guide is divided into four main sections;
- Background analysis and planning
- Advice for meeting your strategic goals
- Vendor evaluation (including functional and non-functional criteria)
- Considerations for composable stacks (looking at the larger martech landscape and how CMS fits alongside other needs)
One of the biggest things we wanted to highlight was that the actual RFP format should be completely different from what you might be used to. In the past, you would often have a giant spreadsheet and along with your shortlist of vendors you would rank and weigh dozens or hundreds of criteria and pick a winner. How you evaluate vendors in a composable world is completely different and not just based on the criteria itself. You should now evaluate and test theSaaS or open-source models with real teams, software and integration scenarios. In a composable world, how things work and fit together is just as important as what a vendor may provide.
The guide emphasizes the benefits of a DXCP-first approach like Uniform. Can you elaborate on how this approach ensures loose coupling and prevents monolithic dependencies in the context of headless CMS integration?
There are two major problems in headless CMS implementations: content model pollution and glue code. Content model pollution is where you end up hard-coding visual cues to the front-end such as alignment, or a design treatment to select. This is usually done after initial go-live as marketers start needing control over the presentation. Headless implementations without a digital experience composition layer lack the flexibility for marketers to build new visual structures themselves. So, these structures end up getting added to the model over time, which is a poor practice and basically starts hard-coding your design into what should be an agnostic model.
Similarly, this approach has issues that are echoed on the front-end. You must then start building components that are locked to this design (and the design cues in that content model).
The Uniform Mesh approach means building with a layer that allows you the flexibility to build new design components and variations for different channels and audiences. As this occurs, you are also mapping to your underlying content model and front-end designs – while keeping both completely free of tight coupling and dependencies to Uniform.
Uniform’s platform serves as a bridge for integrating both legacy and headless technologies. How does Uniform facilitate the integration process and help brands avoid the initial friction that often comes with migration?
One of the biggest pain points for any migration is actually moving the content from one system to another. This is not just because there are often differences in how content is stored and modeled, but you need to then train your staff, manage cut-over and often work in two places at once.
Uniform allows teams to start building experiences from day 1 and consume content from various sources, old and new (or even swap them out). This means that you can minimize disruption at every stage – no need to stack all the risks of retraining, cut-off and new CMS go-live to all occur simultaneously.
The guide follows the release of the CMS Comparison Guide. Could you briefly explain the purpose of the CMS Comparison Guide and how it complements the Composable CMS Evaluation Guide?
As you know, we partner with many vendors and have a lot of experience in the space. The CMS Comparison Guide really came out of these efforts to help quickly identify some of those functional criteria and how some vendors stack up against those.
In comparison, the CMS Evaluation Guide goes far wider and deeper – really covering everything from all functional and non-functional criteria, to strategic advice on how you should look at your overall evaluation approach.
What industries or sectors can benefit the most from Uniform’s personalization solutions? Are there any specific use cases or verticals that Uniform specializes in?
The best way to think about personalization is that it’s a way to make sure every moment spent with a customer is maximizing the value you can deliver to them.
Any industry that cares about their customer’s experience will benefit from personalization. There are exceptions to this of course. Commodity industries that don’t need to cater to customer needs might not see the benefit of this approach. On the contrary, industries that are service-oriented, or where trust plays a large role in the customer’s experience benefit greatly from personalization. Financial services, travel and hospitality and luxury and beauty are examples of industries that take customer experience very seriously, and use it to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Uniform emphasizes the importance of delivering consistent experiences across various digital channels. Could you elaborate on how Uniform enables this consistency and why it is crucial for businesses?
Consistency and continuity of customer experience are critical to building loyalty with customers. When customers tell a brand things about themselves, those customers expect the brand to remember them, and what has happened in their relationship in previous encounters. We’ve all experienced the situation where we’ve contacted a call center and explained our situation to an agent, only to be transferred to someone else where you have to explain everything all over again. This experience frustrates customers, and the solution is to demonstrate your knowledge of customers across their entire journey with you, regardless of where that interaction happens. Uniform allows brands to utilize data from all of their customer data systems, like CDPs and CRMs, to shape the customer experience, provide offers and recommendations, and even continue conversations where they left off on digital properties and other digital touch points like email, chat, etc. This kind of continuity shows customers the brand values them and remembers them. At the end of the day, loyal customers expect you to be loyal to them, and consistency and continuity are how a brand does that.
How does Uniform support omnichannel personalization? Can you explain how businesses can achieve a seamless and cohesive experience across multiple touchpoints using Uniform’s solutions?
There are two elements to this: Coordinating customer data across all of your channels and activating that data contextually. Today, most brands are using a CDP to centralize customer data and ensure all of an individual’s data is resolved into a single unified profile that can be utilized across all channels. Uniform worked with leading CDP vendors like Segment to bi-directionally share data about a customer and their behaviors on digital channels, and consume that data to shape customer experience on those same channels. Things learned on digital properties can be utilized in other channels such as email, chat and call centers, and those other channels can inform the next digital property visit. There are many strategies brands can use including lifecycle segmentation, best-next-offer targeting, persona-based segmentation or a combination of these. The key point is that data needs to be shared across all channels, and that data needs to be easily activated in a clear and consistent manner.
Looking ahead, what are Uniform’s goals and aspirations for the future? How do you envision the company evolving and contributing to the digital experience personalization landscape?
As generative AI becomes more mainstream, the ability to create additional segments, in finer detail will empower deeply personal experiences for clients. More channels will likely arise with these new technologies, including augmented reality (AR) and agent-based experiences that are AI-powered. All of these will require more content, presented in compelling ways, and with more nuance. Brands will need the ability to do more of this, at scale to keep up with rising customer expectations, and Uniform sees itself as a key technology to unlock this future.
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Darren Guarnaccia, President at Uniform
Darren Guarnaccia is president of Uniform, a digital experience composition platform (DXCP) on which developers and marketers can control their digital-experience stack. As a leader with deep expertise in blending best-in-class product-marketing and product-management strategies to overcome business challenges, differentiate products, and drive exponential growth, Darren oversees marketing, product strategy, and enablement at Uniform. LinkedIn.