Umbraco Engage Enhances Digital Personalization to Drive Higher Conversion Rates

Ah… personalization. Like it or not, it’s still the Holy Grail. And we’re still in search of its full potential. 

While the promise of scalable personalization remains a bit elusive for many companies (there are a bevy of reasons for this), CMS and DXP platforms have discovered some finely cut diamonds in the rough – making it much more attainable. 

Some of that success can be credited to the force-multiplying effects of generative AI on things like variant testing. But it’s also due to having more of the right tooling, analytics, and best practices in place to shepherd the journey. 

The impact of AI can't be understated. At some point, it seems entirely feasible that we'll arrive at completely autonomous hyper-personalization, so every customer has a fully curated experience without batting an eyelash. For now, we’ll settle for the incremental gains – and how a new breed of innovative tools is helping marketers achieve success with their personalization efforts. 

Case in point: Umbraco, an open-source .NET content management system provider, recently announced the general availability of Umbraco Engage. Born three months after the company’s acquisition of the Dutch-based uMarketingSuite, Engage is a new add-on for Umbraco CMS that instantly provides organizations with meaningful analytics around visitor interactions with web content.

At its core, Umbraco Engage enables marketers to take a “learn, adapt, convert” approach to personalizing their digital experiences and optimizing content to boost conversion rates and improve ROI across their digital platforms. It has the potential to help businesses create dynamic digital content that’s continuously informed by real customer interactions. 

Engage is packed with power in all the right channels. It provides server-side analytics and customer 360° profiling to surface deep insights, stats, and heatmaps on critical metrics like pageviews. It also provides real-time A/B testing, enabling teams to adapt content to the needs of diverse audience segments. 

Having this layer of intelligence right at your fingertips will undoubtedly give marketers quick and relevant data around content engagement, allowing them to optimize more fluidly.

“Engage provides businesses with intuitive tools, all within their familiar CMS platform, and we’re thrilled to now offer this powerful set of content optimization tools as a first-party solution,” said Mats Persson, CEO at Umbraco. “This launch brings immediate value for our partners and end-clients, empowering them to meet the growing demand for tailored digital experiences. Personalization and content optimization, that work in practice, are now essential for driving conversion rates and ROI – a trend we’re excited to support with Umbraco Engage.”

Powering personalization for marketing teams

The benefits of personalization – and its impact on customer experience – are ubiquitously evident, and there's ample research to support a brand's investment in personalization technologies and strategies. A McKinsey & Company study found that 76% of consumers were more likely to purchase from brands that personalize their experiences, and 78% were more likely to refer friends and family to those brands. 

Beyond the tangible effects on purchase conversion, personalization can also improve other business and financial dimensions for brands. In fact, the same study found that personalization can reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 50%, lift revenues from 5% to 15%, and increase marketing ROI by 10% to 30%. 

McKinsey also reported that digitally native direct-to-consumer brands – ones that own the customer transaction and put first-party data at the heart of their marketing decision-making – derived approximately 25% of their revenue from personalization. Not too shabby. 

Umbraco is clearly driving more focus and attention around personalization based on the company’s innovation roadmap. As noted, the launch follows the announcement of Umbraco’s acquisition of uMarketingSuite, a content personalization tool that has become popular in key industries like financial services, healthcare, and the public sector, where privacy regulations restrict the use of third-party data. 

Existing uMarketingSuite customers will continue to benefit from the product's A/B testing, 360° profiling, analytics, and content personalization. Because Engage is now part of Umbraco, organizations also have the confidence and reassurance that ongoing product development and support will be delivered by a larger team at Umbraco HQ.

According to Rune Strand, Umbraco’s Product Communications Manager, marketing teams can immediately gain value from these new content personalization and optimization tools within its CMS.

“As soon as Engage is installed on existing or new sites, marketing teams can instantly see how well web content is performing,” he said. “Pageview analytics and statistics are all at their fingertips within the Umbraco CMS interface. Being able to see heat maps that show precisely how users interact with your site can be game-changing for identifying which content is working well and which needs to be retired, refreshed, or personalized.”

Out-of-the-box insights

Umbraco has scored a win by making this level of data more accessible to marketing professionals, content editors, and CRO specialists. With the add-on, users can gain actionable insights based on interactions with existing content and more effectively personalize and optimize information for new and returning website visitors and customers.

Additionally, teams will be able to make data-informed decisions and take swift marketing actions within the Umbraco editing environment. They can proactively improve content performance using the tool’s real-time A/B content variant testing to improve digital experiences and boost conversion with more relevant, custom-tailored content. 

Umbraco Engage provides clear analytics and performance metrics

“People who create web content should be able to see how well it performs and make necessary tweaks, all within the CMS,” said Leon de Wildt, the Commercial Product Manager for Umbraco Engage and the founder of uMarketingSuite. “Umbraco Engage is designed to help organizations tailor digital experiences in response to their own interaction data. Using the in-app reports, marketing teams can make changes that measurably improve engagement. Businesses can use Umbraco Engage to continuously improve the digital experience and boost conversion rates, whether that means more people filling out a form, buying a product, engaging with content or signing up for a webinar.”

Umbraco is also addressing regulatory and data privacy considerations – something the company has long been a fierce proponent of. With Engage, marketers will be able to use server-side analytics and first-party data to satisfy compliance with data and privacy laws while accessing the platform's benefits.

Umbraco Engage works out-of-the-box with other platform add-ons like Umbraco Forms and Umbraco Commerce. For example, integrating Umbraco Commerce and Umbraco Engage enables digital marketers to view order history on the visitor profile level. This can help power eCommerce sites that recognize returning customers, serve personalized product information, and interact immediately with abandoned shopping carts to help boost sales. 

Umbraco Engage is available now, and Umbraco digital agency partners can access discounts, exclusive webinars, and free demo licenses based on their partnership agreements. If you’re a uMarketingSuite customer, there’s also a path for upgrading to Engage by February 24th, 2025. You can learn more about Umbraco Engage here. 

Why it matters

Umbraco continues to drive a unique position as an open-source .NET content management system. With a fervent community of over 220,000 active members worldwide, they’re benefitting from a wide bench of innovation as more contributors participate in advancing the CMS and its capabilities.

Personalization remains a challenge for all parties, from vendors to customers. It’s no longer the “undiscovered country,” but it needs to be defined around a brand’s specific goals. Further, there are many challenges associated with executing and maintaining a successful strategy. Having access to the right tooling – specifically around analytics and insights – can help provide a solid foundation for marketers and deliver better outcomes. 

AI will further disrupt the landscape, but Umbraco has a distinct advantage with a proven and “friendly” brand that will be key to cementing loyalty. By all accounts, the uMarketingSuite acquisition was a smart move as it looks to expand features, remain in competitive parity, and drive greater agility for marketing teams. 

UX is also pivotal. Having meaningful data closer to the CMS – and integrated within the editing workflow – will enable users with more control and faster decision-making, which could ultimately improve conversions and grow the bottom line.

And that’s the real Holy Grail. 

Looking for guidance on Umbraco?  Talk to us. 

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