Contentstack Fires Up Brand-Relevant, AI-Powered Personalization at ContentCon 2024

Austin is serious about its barbecue.

Just let that word sink in for a moment: Barbecue.

If your mouth isn’t watering, let me further tantalize you with a fiery visage of hot ribs and brisket slathered in a spicy sauce, dripping with smoky goodness, piled on a tray with extra-creamy coleslaw, black-eyed peas, and a few fried pickles for good measure.

Am I forgetting something? Snap! That gallon of lemony sweet tea to drown it all down. 

Oh, Austin. Must you do this to us? 

I’m sure this was always part of the plan for ContentCon, the annual Contentstack customer event that draws in composable trailblazers from across the digital experience frontier. It's happening right now, June 5-6, and the company is playing to a sold-out crowd. 

Hosting an event in the live music capital of the world is reason enough to drive the wagons yonder South. Heck, you might even see a future country star performing at the airport.

This city – which Contentstack calls home – is also awash with a vibrant art and cultural scene that balances out its booming tech corridor. But for me, the finger-licking fundamentals are reinforced in the gastronomic sector, where attendees are a stone’s throw away from amazing food. 

What’s also tasty about this year’s ContentCon? A packed agenda featuring a keynote from Erica Dhawan, a leading international speaker and management pro who advises people and brands on teamwork and collaboration in the 21st century. A great choice for motivating a crowd on how to innovate faster and go further in the digital world. There are also speakers on the docket from Air France KLM, ASICS, Cartier, and other leading brands.

And of course, there are some big announcements, leading with the unveiling of Contentstack’s new personalization features. I had a chance to connect with the inimitable Neha Sampat, who’s been helming the ship from the beginning, to unpack what this means for her company.

“I think the big and important point is that we believe that we're in a brand relevancy crisis,” she said right out of the gate. This is a theme I’d heard in a recent interview with Nishant Patel, Contentstack’s CTO. “Companies and brands are now prioritizing personalization really high, but they're struggling with how to do it right.”

According to Neha, she and her team have spent significant time over the last couple of years with customers, prospects, and partners, endeavoring to learn about why this personalization thing is so hard. Armed with deep insights, Contentstack has been working diligently on solutions to help address it. 

“If you go to the competitive digital frontline, the news we see is that stores are closing and more businesses are going online,” Neha explained. “There's a huge economy around online commerce. A lot of traditional brands, especially retail and commerce, are struggling with that. But it's everybody, because as consumers we’ve become used to interacting with the web and with digital. We believe there's an opportunity to have an experience edge with the right type of digital implementation, and a big piece of that from our perspective is personalization.”

So why this continued emphasis on personalization? 

Put down the barbecue, because if you’ve been in the CMS game as long as I have, you already know this word is sacrosanct. It’s like the Holy Grail buried in the Ark of the Covenant. And despite many attempts to harness it, leading CMSes and DXPs have struggled to realize a scalable solution worth its Texas petal sauce. 

“Personalized experiences in the past have been a lot of ‘one to many,' so it's been personalized, but not really personal."

But with the pandemic-infused acceleration across digital – and the more recent innovation in generative AI – personalization has been thrust to the forefront. Vendors and enterprises are seeing an opportunity to answer key problems that have long stymied the hunt, like the persistent dependence on IT and all the hands-on work that has made it impossible to scale. 

And despite the promise of AI as a panacea for automating the creation of variants (one of the core problems that has plagued personalization), gen AI is often tone-deaf to a brand’s idiosyncrasies and nuances, diluting the content's efficacy. 

“Personalized experiences in the past have been a lot of ‘one to many,' so it's been personalized, but not really personal,” she said. “So we're taking all the learnings from our prospects, all the struggles they've had, what we've learned since the introduction of AI to the mainstream, and pulling it all together to deliver something that's actually going to help customers solve a top priority.”

This all leads to the unveiling of Contenstack’s new personalization capabilities, which aim to address the long-standing challenges that digital marketers face in attaining a modern and genuinely fruitful personalization strategy. 

Neha calls this “Personalization Reimagined,” which reflects the impact of Contentstack’s people and technology in helping customers realize the potential of personalization.

“Having polled our partners and our customers and having deeper conversations was about trying to understand, ‘what are you stuck on and why are you stuck?’ We've got a technical solutions org at Contentstack that helps customers sort of get unblocked, and they help connect the dots for our SI partners and customers in using our technology in a way that's going to help them be efficient – so they can accomplish what they're trying to do.”

Personalization Reimagined

The last time I met with Conor Egan in person at MACH TWO in Amsterdam, he gave me the low-down on the company’s foray into AI. Since then, Contentstack’s VP of Product has been vigilant in leveraging those capabilities in pursuit of personalization. During our recent call, he described this journey to discovery and how understanding the customer’s barriers to entry was key.

“We looked at what was stopping people from really doing this at scale,” he said. “A lot of people have dipped in their toes, maybe personalizing their homepage a bit. But they're not really doing it at the scale you need to get that edge and stay relevant.”

According to Conor, Contentstack sought to tackle three main problems with its solution. First, if you're using a third-party personalization provider (common in composable stacks), you'll have a completely different production experience where content is split across platforms. This had to be harmonized. 

“You see this with companies that have added personalization through an acquisition,” he clarified. “They kind of bolted it on and it's a different experience of authoring and producing that content than what you're used to in the CMS. So number one, we had to bring that into the same experience.”

The second problem is obvious, and one that we’ve already mentioned: more content for more audiences. Generative AI is transformational in its ability to help achieve this, but as Conor pointed out, it’s still not on brand – and still not fully aware of the all-important context.

The final problem is making it all work. “We have to have a solution that really operationalizes this,” Conor said. “So you're not doing it as an afterthought once you've already set up the original experience. You're doing it as you go, and it's built into content production.”

“We keep saying ‘at scale,’ because we're really not trying to just check a box and say ‘yes, you can technically do it.’ We really want you to be able to do it with basically all the content you're creating. So we set ourselves a really high bar.”

Contentstack overcomes these three challenges with its new solution – which, according to Conor, is the only enterprise headless CMS with native personalization. It provides a more streamlined alternative to integrating a third-party service and includes an array of new premium features. It also includes the company’s rubber stamp "no-fail promise" customer support services.

The gem of the crown is Contentstack Personalize, an A/B/n multivariate testing and segmentation engine that removes obstacles tied to the implementation and operationalization of personalized content. If you’re not familiar with A/B/n, it’s a type of A/B testing (also referred to as a “split test”) in which two or more variants are tested against a control. 

Also in the stack is something called Brand Kit, which acts as a writing assistant to produce brand-relevant, AI-generated content at scale. The intent here is to align with your brand's style, messaging, and defined Voice Profiles.

There is also a bevy of new extensions for Contentstack Automate, which enable teams to develop fully automated sequences that address the complete lifecycle of personalized content and experiences. And finally, Contentstack announced expansions to its Contentstack Academy and a new AI Accelerator program, which includes additional tools, training, and support to help achieve success on practical AI use cases – all within a matter of weeks.

Contentstack’s new features are focused on the central promise of actually achieving the brass ring and delivering impactful personalization. “We keep saying at scale, because we're really not trying to just check a box and say ‘yes, you can technically do it.’ We really want you to be able to do it with basically all the content you're creating. So we set ourselves a really high bar.”

Contentstack Personalize delivers the right story every time

Contentstack Personalize is focused on overcoming the key challenges of personalizing content. We already know that organizations face complex implementation requirements with multiple tools that need to be integrated, and marketers are forced to rely on technical teams to get things done. 

As a native capability of its headless CMS, Personalize gives marketers control by eliminating much of the friction that plagues the personalization process. It provides an immersive, integrated production and editing experience with key features. This includes advanced A/B/n Testing that enables users to experiment with content variations to divine what resonates with audiences and ultimately drive better results.

Personalize takes multivariant testing to the next level, providing 10x the number of variants – allowing for nearly infinite combinations. It’s super flexible and packed with control, so you can easily add components to a page or adjust a base version so it’s pushed to every audience.

An example of Contentstack Personalize managing variant content 

From a segmentation standpoint, Personalize lets you build relevant and meaningful connections with almost limitless permutations of targeted content. And with AI, you can scale it all to a multitude of audience slices. 

Conor said that a major productivity piece comes at the beginning, so the technical setup happens upfront with developers leveraging Contentstack’s SDK on a test page. Through iterative versions, they arrived at a solution that truly abstracts the IT burden from the ongoing testing – putting marketers in control. 

“After the setup, marketers can do as many tests and personalizations as they want without having to go back to it. We actually had a version that would require some developer input to do that, and we scrapped it and started over again. So we've even learned from our own mistakes along the way, and I think where we landed is a really, really elegant solution.”

As was announced at ContentCon, Personalize is now available for early access, and you can opt-in starting today.

Contentstack Brand Kit: brand-relevant, AI-powered content

While generative AI is enabling brands to create large volumes of content, the output is still largely generic. You probably know this firsthand after using various tools or struggling to train resources on a specific target. The results are often uninspiring.  

Enter Brand Kit – a new service that sits on top of Contentstack’s AI Assistant, the native LLM launched last year. Brand Kit allows marketers to create high-quality, AI-generated content specific to its brand across all channels and platforms. The process is also fully automated via new AI connectors within Contentstack Automate.

Brand Kit adds two dynamite functions to Contentstack’s headless CMS. The first is Knowledge Vault, a repo of your brand assets. This can be composed of your documents, customer insights, and platform context – everything the LLM needs to supplement its knowledge and enrich its output.

Contentstack Brand Kit allows you to apply Voice Profiles and Knowledge Vault

Brand Kit also includes something called Voice Profiles, which are customizable AI rules for shaping your content's tone, style, and language. Voice Profiles provides a good deal of flexibility based on audience, intent, or channel, so you can tune things accordingly. 

“By providing content to our Knowledge Vault, it now can be aware of your products and services,” Conor explained. “And when layered on top of our Voice Profiles, you can set a level of formality or how technical you want [your content] to be, but also provide other context and writing samples. So you could have a voice that you use for social, a voice that you use for your documentation, and even a voice that you use for your.com [website]. And these two things work in conjunction.”

Brand Kit is available to all customers and is already being used by brands like Golfbreaks, MongoDB, and others.

New Contentstack Academy and AI Accelerator program

If you haven’t experienced the all-new Contentstack Academy, it’s worth dropping that rib, cleaning your fingers, and browsing this slick interface. 

“It’s in our DNA to help customers succeed throughout the entire journey and be very hands-on in their success,” Conor said. “

The Academy portal is powered by Contentstack’s signature LMS, which was previously an off-the-shelf solution. The entire experience has been rebuilt from the ground up on its homegrown Contentstack system.

It’s killer. The UX is clean, easy to navigate, and super intuitive. It’s also packed with great resources from top to bottom. It’s really an inspiring stage for learning, and it’s all ungated – so anyone can access it. 

(Hint: if you’re hankering for the original recipe, you can still get back previous Academy site through a link in the alert bar. But come on. Once you try this brisket, it’s over…) 

This next evolution of the Academy is hyper-focused on educating customers on composable digital experiences – and this includes executing and managing personalization strategies. Along with crash courses on Contentstack products, the expanded Academy includes best practices for building teams, choosing marketing tools, developing a content center of excellence, and more.

“We've expanded the content to be not just Contentstack specific, but to also [include] topics like, what is AI? How does it work? What are the best practices for change management in an organization? How do I structure my team if I want to go composable? So we really view this as something you engage with very early in your journey, and then it will also have more detailed coursework for our specific products.”

Along with its enhanced Academy, Contentstack is also offering a new AI Accelerator program, which takes customers from zero to fully deployed with AI in 30 days. Sounds aggressive, but Conor said that they have all the resources to accelerate the program.

Contentstack's AI Accelerator features a range of AI connectors

“When we talk to customers, there's any number of reasons that they haven't brought AI into their organization,” Conor said. “And [AI Accelerator] is really targeted at helping them get there. It's a combination of all of the software you need to get up and running as well as any specific Academy content that we’ve built to onboard people to AI. We also offer in-person sessions or over Zoom with our architects that are AI experts.”

The program provides access to comprehensive tools and resources including AI Assistant, five enablement sessions with Contentstack's Technical Services Organization, and five self-paced Academy courses. It also includes AI connectors for Automate with up to 5,000 executions, allowing you to create smarter workflows through a range of AI partnerships, integrations, and LLMs - including ChatGPT, Amazon Bedrock, Azure ChatGPT, Google Vertex, and more. 

There's also access to the new Brand Kit featuring 1 Brand Vault. 

Backing it all up with a “no-fail promise” to customers

Contentstack’s Customer Care program has been on a pedestal within the composable quadrant. When I first spoke to Neha about it last year, it underscored a weak spot in MACH architectures, where enterprises were seeking to address the critical accountability gap around composable stacks. When something fails, who’s responsible?

We also discussed Contentstack’s fierce commitment to customer success and how its “no-fail promise” is an important differentiator in the market. The company makes this very clear in its public manifesto, which can be read on its website. 

With its new personalization features, Contentstack is doubling down on its commitment to helping customers achieve real results. They boast a 98% customer satisfaction rate and 97% customer retention – not too shabby. 

The program is broken into three parts: “Care Without Compromise,” which offers a dedicated account team, 24/7 live in-app support, and faster issue resolution; its world-class Technical Solutions Organization (TSO), bringing regular health checks and workshops to customer relationships; and of course, the Contentstack Academy, which rounds out the experience with ongoing learning and resources. 

Not all vendors at this level offer the depth of support or the concentrated bench of services that Contentstack provides. This is definitely a key differentiator when considering the complexities and challenges of going composable. 

Trying new recipes in the barbecue pit

Fact: good barbecue is never boring. 

Sure, you might go to a certain spot because it’s consistent and reliable. But a sage pitmaster is always willing to try new things – and that’s how we end up with different styles, variations, and destinations. 

Content, it seems, is a bit like that. We’ve got a baseline of words and images, but we’re always trying new twists on the recipe. How will people react to it? Will they love it or hate it? How many wet wipes will they need to clean their face?

The answers to those questions allow us to perfect the product, but the experiments never end. Because barbecue – and content – should never be boring. 

While AI is a game-changer, much of the promise of Contentstack’s personalization is around operationalizing the process, so it’s fast and efficient. One of the great use cases Conor provided was for personalizing a basic landing page. With these new features, you can loop through every audience, apply your Brand Kit in the right voice, and create variants for each segment – and that all takes maybe 10 seconds in the background. 

Now, if you’re writing for eight different audiences, the real benefits kick in. Contentstack’s features will rewrite the content that you want personalized, and then put it into a review state so a human can review everything. That saves a huge amount of time simply by operationalizing the process.

It goes without saying that Contentstack has always been an innovative pitmaster, and ContentCon is an opportunity to showcase its delectable creations in a big way. Since last year, I’ve watched them harness AI in truly novel ways. These new personalization features illustrate how they’ve already evolving the potential beyond the basic generative features – and this is exactly what the market is seeking. 

Contentstack may have dismantled some of the biggest obstacles to making personalization work, but the real magic still comes down to people. There needs to be as much emphasis on education and helping users overcome the challenges to prove out the benefits. Making it all easier is a big part of the battle, but the soul of content still belongs to us. 

Besides, even if AI knows how much sauce to hit your brisket with, it can't tell you how it tastes. 

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