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Content management systems (CMS) have been a staple part of the marketing technology stack for quite some time. According to CMSWire research, 58% of businesses currently use a CMS, with a further 28% planning to adopt it in the coming years. Yet recently the concept of a CMS seems to have lost its luster in the face of more appealing or trendy alternatives — such as digital experience platforms (DXP). In the same CMSWire survey, only 25% of companies reported using a DXP, but 42% were planning to invest in the technology.
However, ultimately, great digital experiences start with content. A CMS is and will continue to be at the heart of a wider set of tools to create, manage and distribute content and stage personalized customer journeys across multiple digital channels and touchpoints. What’s changed is the complexity of digital experiences and customer interactions. Where a few years ago the CMS might have only been necessary to deliver content to a webpage, that is no longer the case. Customers are everywhere, so your content needs to be where they are — also everywhere.
It’s time for an evolved CMS.
What Does an Evolved CMS Look Like?
What businesses require from a content management system has changed drastically over the years, and any new addition or upgrade to the martech stack needs to take these modern needs into account. It’s not enough to push content into a single channel — this won’t be how you connect fully with customers. At the same time, multichannel orchestration introduces complexity for marketers. Your systems should be as easy and efficient as possible, to ease the workload on your internal marketing teams.
An evolved CMS should be able to handle this complexity, cater to multiple channels and audiences, scale as your business needs greater bandwidth and feature the tools to:
- Integrate business-critical systems and data sources
- Orchestrate experiences through multichannel content
- Scale to drive growth, ensure enterprise security and boost productivity
- Tailor experiences with data
Your Key Capabilities: Content Creation and Content Delivery
Customer touchpoints have become increasingly digital and multichannel over the last several years. Research suggests that 61% of all customer interactions happen online — a 5% increase from just a few years ago. Further, it takes between 5 to 7 touchpoints to make a sale. Ultimately, your audience consumes your message across different channels and over many different touchpoints. Content creation and content delivery thus remain the key capabilities to look for when implementing a solution that can deliver your message seamlessly.
An evolved CMS should be able to handle this with ease. Your content creators should be able to push content to a variety of different channels without jumping through a lot of hoops, ensuring your messages reach customers no matter where they are.
Your Checklist For Evaluating a Modern CMS
Content creation and delivery are the most important elements, but they shouldn’t be the only elements. For example, self-service is a powerful channel that can handle repetitive queries and free your workers for higher-level interactions. Self-service should include articles, tutorials or chatbots to address frequently asked questions. Your evolved CMS should be a single hub to manage multichannel content, to reach your customers anywhere at any time. You will also want a CMS that can easily scale as your content needs increase.
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Here are other important checkboxes that a modern CMS should tick:
- AI-assisted and AI-driven optimization tools
- AI chatbot integration
- Cloud-native and scalable
- Digital asset management
- Digital commerce capabilities
- Low-code integrations with critical business systems and data sources
- Multi-layer security and regulatory compliance
- Personalization capabilities and customer data driven experiences
- Search and content discovery
- Support for headless (API-driven) delivery and multiple frontend frameworks
- UI/UX tools to streamline cross-platform development
Conclusion
Multiple ongoing shifts in customer behavior are dictating us to rethink the tools and technologies we employ: from on-site to online, from in-person to digital, from audience-centric to user-centric. Implementing a modern, evolved CMS can bring about a host of potential benefits to the business, including increased revenue, reduced costs, better insight into behaviors and greater customer loyalty. By implementing a CMS with capabilities to handle today’s necessary multichannel touchpoints, you’ll be better positioned to acquire new customers, develop current ones and deliver consistent digital experiences, every time.
Learn more about creating great digital experiences for your customers with Progress Sitefinity.
