Why The Modern Marketer Needs Less Code, But More Control

With new channels and consumer demands continually emerging, marketers are somewhat forced to become more tech-savvy to deliver relevant marketing campaigns and customer experiences at speed.

Marketers, and the companies they work for, who fail to keep up with the latest innovations or struggle to adapt would have to face the inevitable consequence of being left behind by their competitors. But should the modern day marketer be left with no choice but to learn code in order to launch on Alexa Skill or build a landing page that integrates with the company CRM?

dotCMS customers are reaping the benefits of our 'NoCode' solution for marketers, so we thought we’d share our insights.

How Marketers Are Competing in the IoT Era

According to research conducted by Accenture and the World Economic Forum, organizations can survive this digital age by differentiating in the following three ways:

Delivering on Customer Experience

A study by Walker predicts customer experience will overtake price and product as a key differentiator in the year 2020. And according to McKinsey, 70 percent of buying experiences are based on how a customer feels when they interact with a brand.

That interaction between brand and consumer is becoming increasingly vital. Early adopters of customer experience — which goes beyond just a product or a service — have reaped the rewards. We all know how enjoyable it is to shop at IKEA, for example, which is one of the key reasons we return.

Consumers crave these experiences, prioritizing brands who deliver them over their competitors. On the flip side, failure to provide an excellent customer experience is a costly mistake, as in the US alone, the estimated cost of customers switching brands due to poor service is worth $1.6 trillion.

Hyper-Personalization

Customers, especially millennials, want to feel unique when they are engaging with a brand; they don’t want to be exposed to experiences that are not relevant to them. In the study conducted by Accenture, 75 percent of consumers would prefer to buy from a brand that provides an offering that has been tailored to their individual preferences.

Amazon is the king of hyper-personalization; their recommendation engine powers 35 percent of their conversions. Amazon sends personalized recommendations via emails based on the consumers’ search history, items in the shopping cart and previously purchased items.

Speed

Speed is nothing new — but it has never been so vital to the quality of the customer experience.

Putting website and app speed to one side, when a new product launches, or a new event is announced, or when a new device emerges, marketers need to react immediately to capitalize on the buzz. That includes launching landing pages, designing micro-sites and editing existing content in order to give up-to-date information.

3 Factors Inhibiting The Modern Marketer

Okay, so brands need to deliver a memorable, personalized and speedy customer experience, but with most marketers lacking technical know-how, there are some obstacles in the way:

1. Oversized, Outdated Monolithic Systems:

Traditional monoliths are a marketer’s worst nightmare. They were usually born years ago as small digital solutions, but have now snowballed into a giant back-end system that manages the company website, apps, CRM and marketing automation. It’s huge, daunting, and hard to use. Sound familiar?

2. Lack of Support from IT:

Maintaining a monolithic system requires a lot of time and resources from IT. The IT teams are unable to complete any requests to improve the system due to lack of capacity. That means that new landing page will just have to wait.

3. Marketing Teams Have No Direct Control:

Since the infrastructure is in the hands of the IT team, marketers have little or no control over how to deliver their campaigns. They have to either learn to code, or wait their turn.

The 5 'NoCode' Pillars of Excellence

For marketers to deliver a digital marketing campaign successfully in the modern day, brands must adopt a 'NoCode' platform. In a recent dotCMS webinar, Stefan Schinkel, Chief Sales Officer at dotCMS, outlined the 5 'NoCode' Pillars of Excellence:

1. Speed

Speed is the new currency. The faster you can deliver your content to your customer, the better. A 'NoCode' platform enables marketers to publish new content in a matter of a few clicks. They are also able to create complex multi-step workflows in seconds.

2. Customer Experience Orchestration

With a 'NoCode' solution, marketers can deliver a consistent customer experience and create content only once and be able to repurpose it across all applications and devices. And with globalization being an important factor, you can even translate your content into different languages via an API that can translate it for you.

3. It’s a Team Sport

Delivering a customer experience is a team activity. It involves marketing, sales, customer service, operations and IT teams all working together. A 'NoCode' platforms enable teams to align and collaborate more effectively thanks to its lower barrier to entry. Brands can also work with outside agencies to design and implement new digital marketing campaigns too.

4. Innovation

A 'NoCode' solution enables marketers to have more control in how they deliver their content and their campaigns. This frees up the IT team’s resources to work on next-generation applications, like intuitive apps and modern frameworks. IT teams can also integrate and update your marketing stack with reputable APIs in hours or days, rather than months and years.

5. Connected Customer Experience

Being able to map customer journeys and deliver consistent customer experience for every touchpoint and every device, both online and in-store is what a 'NoCode' solution is all about. A 'NoCode' solution can create a deeper engagement, drive conversion, improve brand loyalty and also adds to your bottom line.

NoCode Is The Marketer’s Way Forward

Embracing a ‘NoCode’ solution enables marketers to become more agile and to deliver a personalized customer experience in just a few clicks, rather than waiting for the IT department to string together the necessary code.

dotCMS’s 'NoCode' approach eliminates the need for technical knowledge, helping marketers to hone their customer experiences faster. Not to mention, a more independent marketing team also frees up time and resources of the IT department, which can go back to concentrating on developing next-generation applications and experiences.