Improving the customer experience is something that almost every marketer is focused on. While many of the headlines are about how Amazon has changed the way we experience the B2C world, the B2B world has taken notice and is taking action to improve the customer experience. However, while e-commerce was once considered to be merely a transactional process, it has evolved into more of a content-driven experience. The goal is to create better experiences for customers based on delivering personalized content that is tailored to each customer’s unique interests.

What impact can customer experience have on your company? According to a report from PwC, Experience is everything: Here’s how to get it right, “73% of all people point to customer experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions. Yet only 49% of U.S. consumers say companies provide a good customer experience today.”

So why the disconnect? For marketers, the key is to leverage technology that can help deliver the right content to the right customer on the right channel at the right time. Taking a content-driven approach differentiates you from your competitors.

Here are three examples of companies that took a content-driven approach, which resulted in increased revenue and improved the customer experience.

Empowering Digital Marketers

TSI Holdings, one of Japan’s largest fashion retailers with revenue approaching $1.5 billion, has grown at a rapid pace. As with many ecommerce retailers, the growth caused new challenges for the digital marketing team. With 20 of the company’s 38 brands selling online, TSI Holdings launches new digital storefronts at a rapid rate, which means that its digital marketers need the autonomy to create their own web content without relying on the IT team to implement site updates. The company needed to find a way to reduce the content bottleneck to react to customers’ needs in real-time and deliver brand-specific content, such as product images and descriptions, that meets each customer’s needs.

“We work with many brands within our company, and all of the brands have different rules for creating content,” explains Maho Takahashi, Manager for Digital Business Development Division at TSI Holdings. “We wanted to give the brands themselves more power over what kind of content they could upload to their own websites.”

TSI Holdings devised a strategy where marketers within each brand could quickly create content that fit each customer’s unique interests. This included managing the text and images for all types of digital experiences without needing any help from the IT staff. Executing on that strategy meant that each digital marketer could customize and maintain brand identifies on multiple storefronts and campaigns, as well as provide support for multiple languages.

As a result of this strategy, TSI Holdings tackled many of the issues that multi-brand

e-commerce companies face, such as adherence to corporate messaging, image guidelines, and language consistency. Reducing time-to-market is critical for TSI Holdings. By giving digital marketers the freedom and flexibility they need to address changes to content in real-time, content editors can now create new content 2.5x faster and update site content 1.5x faster. 

Tailoring Content Based on Customer Preferences 

For many large retailers that have multiple technology platforms, it can be hard to tap into customer data to get a truly complete view of each customer. What are the customer’s preferences for shipping? What was their last order? Did they have to call customer service to complain about a late shipment? With all of the power that today’s technology offers, why is it so difficult to get a unified view of the customer?

For GROHE, the challenge went beyond simply getting a better view of its customers. The key was finding a way to make product content more engaging and e-commerce experiences more relevant. GROHE, one of the world’s leading providers of sanitary fittings for water products, has over 60 websites in 80 countries. The company face a challenge that many international companies do — fragmented data across multiple silos that don’t communicate optimally with each other. This includes GROHE’s own internal customer systems, data from wholesalers, retailers, dealers, and sales agencies.

GROHE knew that it needed to help its digital marketers get a 360-degree view of its customers to improve its e-commerce experience. As a result, GROHE combined over 60 websites into one global website with one customer interface. Why is this important? The digital marketers in each region can change images, messages, and promotions based on a holistic view of the customer. Plus, customers can view this type of personalized information across any mobile channel.

Personalizing Content Spurs Purchasing

One company I spoke with, which is one of the largest retailers of baby and children’s clothing in the United States, had to find a better way to personalize content. The marketing team had a very specific requirement—find a way to produce multiple versions of the same content based on each individual’s unique interests. Simply put, they weren’t equipped to deliver the right content to the right person on the right device in real-time.

A few months prior to the 2017 holiday season, the company moved forward with a new content management platform that was tightly integrated with its e-commerce platform. The company quickly pinpointed the importance of having a system in place that could manage the vast amount of content in real time based on each customer’s specific interests. The key was to ensure that the digital marketing team had full control over the content without enlisting the help of the IT team, which would slow down the entire process.

The company implemented the new content-based strategy, which gave digital marketers the ability to manage and change content, rather than relying on the technical team. This reduced the time to market for its product line.

Superior Content Means Superior Customer Experience

Taking a content-driven approach helps digital marketers improve the customer experience by providing them with the personalized content they need and want to make informed decisions. Empowering digital marketers to execute content strategies in real-time also saves time. Understanding each customer, what their preferences are, and tailoring offers to their needs, goes a long way to increasing customer loyalty and raising revenue. It’s a win-win for everyone.