Key Takeaways from the Sitecore Experience 2020

The Sitecore Experience conference 2020 was all about powering marketing through human connections. Hosting hundreds of market leaders and technologists from around Europe, it offered a day of insightful keynotes and inspirational customer stories, as well as the opportunity to network and meet other Sitecore partners. This blog provides a summary of our key takeaways as well as a more in-depth focus on some of our favourite talks.

What the event theme was all about:

This year’s conference was centred around emotion, experience and personalisation. In our increasingly digital world creating genuine connections with customers is more important than ever. Businesses have now realised that superior customer experience is a key driver in gaining a competitive advantage and that the best way to increase that customer experience is through building an emotional bond – a human connection – between the customer and the brand. Sitecore AI is making it even easier for organisations to increase customer experience with its auto-personalisation capability.

The first guest keynote we attended was given by Ryan Skinner, Principal Analyst from Forrester Research, who talked about how organisations can use content to create empathy. He talked about how in our increasingly digital world creating genuine connections with customers is more important than ever. In order to achieve this, organisations need to relate, meet the needs and provide personal experiences for the customer through the content they produce. Content that produces emotion is known to be the strongest driver of customer experience and loyalty and is therefore, key in gaining a competitive advantage. Skinner referenced the Sitecore Content Hub as a useful platform for creating content at scale. It acts as a base for all disparate content as well as a platform that helps streamline, speed up and simplify every part of a marketer’s job.

In-depth breakout sessions:

Following an amazing lunch which gave everyone the time to network and connect with fellow marketers and Sitecore partners, the breakouts commenced with Tim Pashuysen, the co-founder and chief strategy officer of the Sitecore Content Hub talking about ‘Measuring content effectiveness.’ One of the main aims of any business is to become more efficient, whilst producing less content and achieving better results. He used the Maturity Model to highlight why an iterative approach is needed, in which companies understand why and which content is most effective in order to feed this back into the cycle. Businesses can, therefore, receive a greater return on investment by increasing the quality not volume of their content, highlighting the need to work smarter not harder when producing content.

The final, breakout we attended was given by Dr. Cristina de Balanzo, who provided a fascinating look into the mind of the consumer and how brands can use the science of neuropsychology to make better connections with their customers. At our core, humans are not logical but emotional. Emotion is, therefore, a crucial component in building strong relationships between people and brands. She then went onto explain what makes humans tick, from using stories, simplicity, movement and authenticity in content. Understanding what makes humans tick is essential to creating successful content and can also provide significant competitive advantage.

How to tell a great story:

To round off the Sitecore Experience 2020, Steve Clayton, Chief Storyteller and General Manager at Microsoft, provided a fascinating keynote address. The powerful session detailed how using a combination of stories, photographs and storytelling can truly impact the impression you give to your customers for years to come.

Here at ClerksWell, we’re big on Sitecore, but we’re even bigger on Sitecore Personalisation and creating unique, engaging experiences for your customers. If you’d like to learn more about website personalisation and what it can do for your business check out our previous blog on just that here.

If you’re thinking of starting a web project using Sitecore and want to talk to some lovely experts don’t hesitate to contact us here

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