What Is a Content Experience Platform (CXP)?

The age of computers is also the age of confusing acronyms – and a new one has just joined the mix: the CXP.

A CXP, or content experience platform, is the latest way to solve the age-old problem of giving leads, prospects, and customers exactly what they need without requiring a one-to-one handholding approach from your company.

This is no small thing since today’s customer journey is all about real-time, personalized experiences, from social media to blogs to workflows within apps. We have systems to execute this goal, from the relatively stodgy CMS (content management system) to the newer DXP (digital experience platform).

However, with the ever-increasing demand for companies to prioritize content creation, it’s time for a whole new approach to digital content: the CXP.

If you’re relatively new to this digital marketing term or have never heard it before, it’s time to correct that. CXPs are quickly overtaking older, more tired systems that can’t provide the same agility, integrations, and single-minded focus as a platform devoted entirely to the content experience.

From e-commerce to SaaS companies, everyone can benefit from this kind of marketing automation. It allows you to take your customer data to the next level while offering your prospects and users more choices than ever before about how to run their businesses.

If you’re obsessed with customer success and want to see how a CXP can help you increase satisfaction and profits, read on.

What Is a Content Experience Platform?

It’s somewhat challenging to describe a CXP because it shares so many characteristics with other types of comprehensive content management.

In a nutshell, though, a content experience platform is a piece of software that allows you to aggregate every aspect of your content marketing in one place. Whereas formerly companies cobbled together experiences from a range of mobile apps, messaging services, and other digital asset management tools to produce a whole user experience, the CXP is an all-in-one service.

“Content experience platforms are the new way forward to offer users a more dynamic and personalized way to interact not just with websites but with any digital touchpoint,” explains Aragon Research. “This market is poised to revolutionize how enterprises market to buyers.”

A CXP allows you to collate all your customer touchpoints into one platform, then gives you the tools to create an omnichannel distribution system agnostic of your customers’ device or platform.

Through it, you can organize every single content asset of any type, segmenting them according to which buyer persona they apply to. The software then uses machine learning to match content experiences to customer behavior throughout the entire lifecycle.

The upshot is the total optimization of personalized customer experiences across all digital channels without distraction from other business needs (e.g., website management, payments, and so forth). This allows you to engage your audience in a single journey optimized for SEO and their interests.

To understand the total value of a CXP, it’s essential to take a quick look at how it’s different from its older cousins, the CMS and DXP.

Content Management System (CMS) vs. Content Experience Platform (CXP)

A content management system, or CMS, is the golden oldie of content software. Epitomized by WordPress, it’s a platform that enables you to manage your website and blog, upload content, and provide digital experiences to customers.

Through integrations with the CMS, you can import and export contacts, provide downloads to people, run audio and video, and even conduct courses. You can turn a CMS into a CRM (customer relationship management system) by importing customer relationship information- contacts, roles, user behavior, etc.

Digital Experience Platform (DXP) vs Content Experience Platform (CXP)

A digital experience platform, or DXP, takes things to the next level. Its functionality ensures a consistent digital journey across channels, collating every aspect of a user’s interaction with the company.

Through APIs and cutting-edge functionality, the DXP seeks to make the customer feel as though they’re experiencing one environment, even if they are immersed in many that the DXP is marrying together.

DXPs can manage content but may also tackle business tasks such as inventory, payments, advertising, analytics, and customer portals.

So. . . What's the Difference?

If you think a CXP doesn’t sound all that different from a CMS or DXP, you’re not wrong. It’s less in the purpose and more in the execution, however.

Like other platform types, the goal of a DXP is to personalize the journey for the customer. However, there isn’t the same focus on content. And like the others, a CMS is geared toward creating a relationship between the user and company but fails to create one single journey that makes the user feel like the only person to whom the company speaks.

Simply put, the CXP strips utilitarian task management out of the equation (e.g., web development, as you’d get with the CMS, payments from a DXP) and focuses purely on the content journey.

From Aragon Research, this “new market for content management solutions has gone beyond the web and digital experience approaches of the past to produce buyer journeys that are interactive, individualized, connected, dynamic, and rich.”

The goal, they add, “is to drive customer loyalty and retention with a solution that supports speed and flexibility and is personalized to buyer demands and behaviors.”

By stripping out the boundaries between multiple systems and managing every content experience from one place, you can drastically reduce the time a customer spends in transition. That leaves them with a more incredible feeling of engagement, which makes them better leads, prospects, users, and promoters.

Therefore, while an enterprise company could use a CMS or DXP + many integrations to manage social and email campaigns, blogging, and video, there would still be natural juncture points for the user. With a CXP, the entire goal is to remove those points so the journey feels flawlessly personalized for the individual experiencing it.

How Marketing Teams Use CXPs Throughout the Customer Journey

So where is the CXP useful throughout the customer journey? In a word, everywhere.

Most enterprise companies today have any number of content arms. These include:

• Social media

• Email marketing

• Blogging and webpage copy

• Landing pages

• Advertising

• Case studies and use cases

• Videos and webinars

• Audio files

• Podcasts

• Books

… the list goes on and on. They also have to manage a googolplex of collateral assets, including images, templates, boilerplate, videos, audio files, Adobe files, brand assets … and the list goes on.

Traditional experience management is so complex because you must constantly log into the backend of a zillion apps and make changes in a million dashboards to use all these assets effectively.

A competent marketing team chooses to put all of these assets into a single system: the CXP. Then, whenever they need a particular piece of content, they only have to look in one place.

Even better, the content experience platform helps to align each distinct customer journey with the appropriate buyer persona and collateral that meets their needs so that you can take the thought out of it. Goodbye, manual bucketing and personalization; hello, AI.

If you’re using it right, the answer to “how marketing teams use CXPs throughout the customer journey” is “every single time they have to do anything related to the content experience, period.”

Common Integrations With CXPs

This only works, however, if each piece of new content is easily accessible. And since you will inevitably need to use other platforms to create the right content experience, a good CXP must integrate flexibly.

Marketing Automation Apps

To achieve the digital transformation that comes with using machine learning to aggregate all your emails, landing pages, social campaigns, product offerings, and microservices all in one place, your CXP must play nicely with your other marketing automation apps.

The idea is not that the CXP replaces them as one monolithic system but rather enables them to be their best selves by removing the barriers along the customer journey. As such, app integration is critical to speeding the customer experience along.

Social Media

Social media comprises a considerable part of the web content experience. It’s not only an excellent place to promote relevant content; it’s a great way to measure customer behavior and customer engagement surrounding each piece of content.

For that reason, integrating with social apps is a must. This allows your marketing team to see which types of web experience matter most to customers and prospects, then replicate those experiences over time.

RSS Feeds

Though it seems a bit old-school, many people still use RSS feeds to curate their content consumption experience today. Millions of sites in the US alone offer this functionality. In fact, RSS feed usage has climbed steadily since 2000, only recently taking a dip.

Learning Academies

While the possibilities of a CXP are staggering (dare we say endless?), this last integration gives it the most oomph. Many companies fail to realize that customer onboarding is a type of content, so you should give it the complete personalization treatment.

In addition to offering simple training modules, your customers should benefit from webinars, white papers, quizzes, and tests. Your CXP should integrate certification and celebration into the content experience – because only when customers feel true success do they become the superfans who bring you valuable word-of-mouth business.

There are many ways to approach a learning academy, of course. If you want to combine scalability with pinpointed segmentation and a rich customer experience, a CXP is the only way to go. If you choose right, you can roll your learning academy into your CXP on the same platform, ensuring total integration from the start – not to mention affordable pricing.

Now, just how do you get started?

How to Choose a Content Experience Platform (CXP)

It can feel confusing to choose a CXP, and not only because it seems similar to a CMS, CRM, or DXP. Also, there are several choices out there and ways to approach the content journey for your customers.

However, while you could get bogged down in choices for the rest of the time, your best bet is simply to choose a good CXP and try it. Once you have a handle on the power of a platform dedicated solely to content, you’re unlikely to look back.

From automatically training your customers to making them feel like the only ones in the room, a CXP guarantees a much higher level of engagement with the people who matter most to your business.

Have questions or comments? Want to know more? Ready to give it a try? Raven360 is here to help you spin the straw of scattered content plans into the goal of a complete content experience. All you have to do is book a demo today.