21 Digital Experience Trends to Act On In 2019

© 2019 e-Spirit, Inc. All Rights Reserved
21 Digital Experience Trends
to Act On In 2019
1
Heidi Unruh, Global VP Content Marketing

Web Content
Management

“More websites want flexibility in how their content is displayed and are instead
opting for more medium-agnostic web content management, most notably through
headless CMS.
Headless CMS allows users to post their content without worrying about a front end
that only formats properly on one type of device. As we enter 2019, content-driven
services and websites will have to move to headless CMS solutions to account for
the rapidly diversifying content consumption landscape.”
Jazmine Betx, G2 Crowd
1
Web Content Management Trends

“The era of the monolithic, single enterprise content management system has
come to an end and now companies need to think in terms of architecture for
content services, emphasis on the plural services. Many different personas exist
within the enterprise, and their requirements to interact with, produce, and
consume content all vary widely. The idea of content services aligns perfectly with
the need for dynamic user experiences that cater to those personas, not forcing all
users to a single ECM interface or Intranet.”
Tess Hanna, Editor of Content Management Solutions Review
2

“Stories have redefined the way brands communicate on Instagram,
and creative marketers are now learning to use this format to address
each stage of the customer journey, from awareness to direct
purchase. We'll see even more investments in this channel in 2019.”
Todd Grossman, CEO Americas, Talkwalker
3

“In 2019, brands are going to find it increasingly difficult to attract and retain their
audience’s attention on social media. The brands that develop creative content
strategies that tap into themes that are culturally relevant (and topical) to their
audiences, will win.
People don’t go on social to see content about your brand, they don’t care about
you or your brand. They want to be educated, entertained and inspired. The sooner
you realize that and start creating content that fulfills those needs, the better.”
Dan Knowlton, Co-Founder of KPS Digital Marketing
4

“Marketers should look to how they can use AI as a way to
understand what content a potential customer is consuming, whether
it is marketing generated content, support or technical documents or
user-generated, which will allow for more personalized customer
experience and high customer satisfaction.”
Lisa Matherly, VP of Content Marketing at McAfee
5

“Done well, video marketing produces amazing results. According to HubSpot, simply adding a video to
an email boosts click-through rate by a staggering 200–300 percent, and putting one on a landing page
increases conversion rate by 80 percent.
Next year, live video feeds will continue to explode, but the real differentiator going forward will be
originality. Interactive video and imaginative video marketing that encourages user engagement will
quickly outpace video for the sake of moving pictures. Consumers become bored quickly — brands that
use video to engage and excite users will win.”
Kerri Hale, Martech Business Writer
6

9
Digital
Experience

1
“In 2019, immersive storytelling and
location-based experiences will draw
customers to brands like never
before. As people crave the
experiential, the brands that
understand how to deliver them
narratively will see explosive
engagement.”
John Bucher, Mythologist/Narrative Strategist,
Telling A Better Story
Digital Experience Trends

2
“AI moves from personalized to predictive. AI lets firms use the
information they collect about the buying habits of a given client
to create a more personalized experience and predict future
actions. “I’ve been in consumer electronics for 30 years now,
and for 25 of those forecasting was done with [human] judgment,
a spreadsheet, and some Velcro balls and darts,” Limp said.
“Our error rates are significantly down since we’ve started using
machine learning in our forecasts.” United Airlines, Netflix and
Spotify are some other notable brands applying AI algorithms to
their customer data and creating win-win outcomes.”
John Bucher, Mythologist/Narrative Strategist,
Telling A Better Story

3
“With 2018 brought us micro-influencers and the
introduction of micro-moments. A micro-moment is a
brief moment in time; like when you’re purchasing an
item, researching something new, or discovering a
new site. On average, a consumer has about 150
micro-moments per day, while spending an average of
4.7 hours each day on their smartphones. A
successful micro-moment is comprised of 3 key
ingredients: Intent, context and immediacy.
In 2019, brands need to be thinking through how
they’re going to capture user interest and intent within
these brief windows of time.”
Jennifer Waigand, SocialToaster

4
“To scale any business process, you must centralize and automate it as much as
possible. In the case of personalization, that means getting all relevant data in one
place, applying intelligence and decisioning power across that unified data source,
and then orchestrating actions across every single customer touchpoint.
A smart hub, i.e. customer data platform (CDP) or decisioning platform, is a “hub”
in that it can connect to any data source as well as to any execution channel. It is
“smart” in that it can unleash both AI as well as marketers’ deep knowledge.
Instead of disconnected decisions based on fragmented data, or never-ending
manual intervention, such a personalization brain centralizes and automates the
entire personalization process.
It can gather all relevant customer signals. It can centralize AI-based decisioning
on all that data. Finally, it can execute on those centralized decisions across any
channels—including the ability to personalize messages at scale by: 1)
automatically selecting optimal channels, and 2) drawing on past behaviors to
tailor content on the fly.”
Tasso Argyros, Founder and CEO of ActionIQ

5
“Since customer preferences and purchase behavior is
constantly changing, what brands consider their “customer
bases” are in continuous flux. This means the profiles brands
create of their customers must be flexible by nature.
The way personas influence the strategy of companies will
need to change, especially for marketers. Your decade-old
cardboard cut-out of ‘Millennials’ will not help you resonate
with the 20- and 30-somethings of today. It is time to put in
place personas that are inherently subject to change.”
Alex Jones, Content Manager, Brandwatch

6
“Since one opportunity that marketers predict will grow in
2019 is the need for blended data. From how you understand
your customers to how you report your results to executives,
the marketers that show the value of integrating different data
sources will be the ones most successfully proving ROI.
Steve Dodd of Socialgist spoke to us about the importance of
integrating data to get a more complete picture of the market:
“In 2019, marketers will need to be able to blend corporate
data (what you know) with social data (what’s coming).”
Alex Jones, Content Manager, Brandwatch

7
“Mastering the art of emotional engagement means knowing what is relevant to each customer on
an individual level. But with the increasing amounts of data being produced, how is it possible to
tailor communications to every single customer in your database? Imagine having 700,000
customers, 878 products on offer, 130 promotions running, and 50 different content
communications. You would already be looking at 35 billion+ unique possible conversations you
could have with your customers. The answer to that question is, of course, with the help of
technology.
Emotional connections at scale means automating the decisions on which individual customer to
talk to, what to talk to the customer about, and which psychological technique to apply. If you want
to connect with a customer, you need to know what motivates them and which psychological
technique resonates most. For example:
● The Sunk Cost Fallacy works by prompting people about their initial investment: “treat
yourself to dessert for only another $5”
● The Commitment Principle gets people to convert by starting small and making it easy to
commit: “Get started with a free account”
● Social Proof drives people who want to follow the crowd: “250k customers have already
said “yes” to this offer”
By integrating these techniques with AI-decisioning technology, it’s possible to determine the most
relevant technique for each individual customer. In other words, AI automates who to talk to, what
to say, and how to say it in real time. That is how marketers move customer engagement beyond
the transactional phase and start building an emotional connection.”
Regan Yan, CEO of Digital Alchemy

e-Commerce
Experience
Trends

“Ecommerce businesses must invest in technology that can identify digital “body
language” that indicates struggles or frustration. Once alerted, digital teams can
intervene to assist.
By providing real-time content and offers that can actually help with whatever your
customer is trying to achieve, you can turn an unpleasant experience into an
opportunity to delight. A lot of the technology is already here, but the last few pieces
of the puzzle will fall into place over the next couple of years.”
Lauren Burgess, Decibel
1
e-Commerce Experience Trends

“Goodbye “Omnichannel”, Hello “Omnipresence”. In 2019, retailers will look to ways to continuously engage
with shoppers as they pursue their shopping journeys – to be omnipresent. Consumers simply don’t think in
terms of channels. This isn’t 1998. No one is sitting around and thinking, ‘Hey, I think I’ll do some online
shopping.’ For many years, and certainly, in 2019, it’s all just ‘shopping.’ Shopping journeys now go
through a variety of branded touchpoints, digital for sure, but physical touchpoints too, and they are
nowhere near linear shopping journeys. Brands need to be nimble, agile and responsive to shopper needs,
and they need to deliver seamless, friction-free paths for their shoppers to navigate. At the end of the day,
it doesn’t matter where the transaction takes place, as long as the transaction takes place within the
brand’s ecosystem. It’s a holistic approach to the retail experience, and it’s something retailers, particularly
old-school, legacy retailers have learned the hard way.”
Ray Hartjen, Marketing Director at RetailNext
2

“Consumer data across all enterprise systems and touch points will be imperative in 2019, as retailers must
focus on the importance of the customer’s entire journey. Last year I predicted how AI would be the main
focus for retailer’s websites and while it did come true, the data from these AI programs are not unified or
actionable. Usually the AI customer data is only effective and maintained within that exact AI program. In
2019, retailers must invest in technology that unifies the entire customer journey to enable a 360-degree
view of the customer and their shopping behavior. Retailers need to act on the entire view of the customer
to compete in an ever-growing D2C environment online. Consumer engagement is entering a new level in
2019 and will only be possible by investing in complex data software and exploring ways to collect and
leverage data in their sales, CSR, and marketing.”
Devin Fitzpatrick, Founder & CEO, CDF Consulting
3

“In the near future, many more retailers will turn to AR capabilities to show off their
products and, in time, virtual reality will usher in a new wave of immersive customer
experiences. Imagine “walking” through a jewelry store and trying on rings – without
ever leaving your home. The possibilities are endless.”
Lauren Burgess, Decibel
4

“We’ve already seen growth in people searching for products by voice and expect that
this will continue in the coming year. The next phase of voice search will enable
people to find items however they describe them and in any language. Brands may
take this a step further. Instead of apps, websites, and mobile responsive checkouts –
brands will focus on creating a single interface so that consumers can do it all in one
go, simply by using their voice. According to research from Gartner, by the year 2020
30% of web searches will be done without a screen.”
John Vary, Futurologist, John Lewis Partnership
5

“Technology adoption in stores will accelerate. However specific retail verticals will adopt
different tools and technologies, such 3D scanning for clothing stores. Retailers will use digital
signage but there will also be “stores of the future” using more advanced or novel technology.
Using touchscreens to learn more about a particular product will be integrated throughout the
shopping experience as well as pairing augmented reality experiences. Self checkout kiosks
will eventually be commonplace, with mobile point of sale options similar to what is used at
Apple stores.”
James Giglio, CEO of MVP Interactive
6

“With the trend toward hyper-personalization and ever-more stringent definitions of
seamlessness, successful retailers will be the ones who can understand the fluctuating
needs and expectations of their customers — whether in the digital or physical sphere.
Leveraging behavioral data and putting customer experience at the heart of
decision-making is the key to building successful, omni-channel (rather than cross-device)
journeys. And today, everyone can access and integrate advanced metrics into their
workflow.”
Jonathan Cherki, CEO of ContentSquare
7

“With the endless amount of data you have available, the technology that can analyze it and help you put it
to use, and the tools available to scale that information across interactions, your audience members should
feel special all the time. They’re already bombarded with more content than they can handle, and you don’t
want to just add to the noise.
Technology doesn’t have to make you more impersonal. It can make marketers better communicators. Use
it to (securely) collect relevant data, and turn those data points into insights that can guide your messaging.
The more advanced these tools get, the higher your audience’s expectations for genuine, helpful,
personalized content will be.”
John Hall, Forbes contributor & author of the best-seller “Top of Mind”
8

e-Spirit . . .
A Digital Experience Platform
to create and deliver
personalized, content-rich
experiences
anytime, anywhere, to
outperform competitors
Visit www.e-Spirit.com
Technology for
a Digital
Experience
Edge
About e-Spirit

21 Digital Experience Trends
To Act On In 2019
Heidi Unruh, Global VP Content Marketing
unruh@e-Spirit.com

21 Digital Experience Trends to Act On In 2019

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (19)

Similar to 21 Digital Experience Trends to Act On In 2019

Similar to 21 Digital Experience Trends to Act On In 2019 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

21 Digital Experience Trends to Act On In 2019