The New Rules of Personalization With Contentful's Gabriel Dillon

Speaker A: Personalization has come a long way from just being able to put a consumer's first name in an email subject line. Today's brands are using data technology and a big dose of experimentation to create experiences that really connect and scale. In this episode of Tech Transformation sponsored by Contentful, I'm speaking with Gabe Dillon about what good personalization really looks like right now and what it takes to move from good to great. We're talking about how leading brands are measuring effectiveness, how they're rethinking their content operations, and the cultural shifts that make all of this possible across every channel. Stay tuned for that and more on this episode of Tech Transformation. Welcome to Tech Transformation with cgt. We're where we take a look at some of the trends and innovations that are impacting consumer goods and retail. I'm Lisa Johnson, Editorial Director of cgt, and today we're going to be diving into personalization, including how you can really measure it. So I'm excited to have Gabe Dillon go to Market lead of Personalization from Contentful joining us today. And we're going to unpack some of the signals of success and some of the things we can learn from other industries. We're also going to talk about some of the cultural shifts that are needed to should drive authentic and consistent and probably most importantly, scalable personalization across every channel. So, Gabe, welcome.

Speaker B: Thank you so much. Lisa. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker A: Ah, it's great to have you here. Um, before we get started, why don't you just tell us a little bit, Tell us a little bit about yourself. Um, tell us a little bit about Contentful and your role there.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Uh, so as you said, my name is Gabriel Dillon. Uh, I am a personalization expert on the Contentful team. I have the opportunity to talk to our prospects, our clients about personalization and testing, how to establish programs, how to measure the value of content and really hold content accountable for the customer experiences that we want to offer to our users. And it's a great position, uh, because right now, especially with AI changing the landscape and the funnel in which we think of customer acquisition, the ability to offer really great customer experiences is where the battles are being fought. And personalization, uh, being able to understand the value of your content and deliver those great experiences is the most powerful tool that our clients have and that creates really great experiences for our users.

Speaker A: You know, personalization is certainly something that's very top of mind for our audience. Um, there's a lot of competition out there to do it well. So I Want to set the stage by talking a little bit about what, what good looks like today. Personalization, um, can be a bit of a buzzword. It does, it doesn't have to be and it shouldn't be, but it can mean a lot of different things to different companies, to different people. So from your perspective in your work with your customers, what does good look like today?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great starting point to this conversation because I think that people get really caught up on the idea of offering personalization and they just say, hey, it's really cool, I want it. That's the new stuff, give it to me. But really what needs to be done to be able to successfully run a personalization program is understand what your customers need. There needs to be some sort of insight into what makes for a really good experience and then some insight into for whom that experience is actually good. So being able to take customer data and then combine it with something that's responsive, that's relevant and dynamic is how we end up delivering good customer experiences. And that's what good personalization is. To get past good and to be exceptional and class leading is when things get a little bit more complicated. The technology has changed a little bit. Like, personalization is not new as a theme, as a practice, but the technology has allowed us to start taking into account true real time signals. So here we have the ability to combine, uh, our understanding of the individual. Like, what have they purchased in the past? Uh, what are the things that they like? Do they click on something a lot? Are they a TikTok user versus a Instagram user? And then combine those signals with things that they're doing in that exact moment in real time. And that's how you go from good to great. That's how you go from. I'm offering an interesting experience that hopefully will help my customers to, oh, wow, we have a lot of power here and an opportunity to build something great for them.

Speaker A: Because it's not enough to just put someone's name, their first name in the subject line anymore. Right. And consider that good or even great personalization. So you mentioned signals. I want to dig into that a little bit more. There's a lot of pressure on brands to measure the impact of what they're investing in, um, especially with personalization. So when you're working with your customers, what are some of the metrics or the signals that you think really best demonstrate if their efforts are effective?

Speaker B: Yeah, if they're effective is a different kind of signal than I was talking about a moment ago. There's inputs and there's outputs. The inputs are how do we deliver this experience to them. And the outputs are the business goals that we want to drive by providing that experience. And you know, in cpg, like, we really want to create loyal customers. We want to help them convert, we want to be able to understand how to speak to them over a long period of time. And so I think if we measure this solely at like the campaign level, we're making a big mistake. We need big North Star metrics like, uh, long term, lifetime, uh, value, or, you know, the engagements on the experience that we've built for these users to be able to organize a full journey of personalized experiences. And that means not just a single entry in a, uh, conversion page, but a whole different set of touch points that help our users feel spoken to, identified, and really help them get their jobs to be done, accomplished.

Speaker A: And content's a big part of this, right? I mean, so what are some of the ways, how can brands think about creating content, personalized content, without overloading their customers, without overloading their own operations?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the operational efficiency is the hard part. Uh, what we're experiencing is a bit of an explosion of content. It's gotten a lot cheaper to make and the demands of the experiences that we create are much higher, especially when you take into account personalization. If you're a big CPG brand that's perhaps working in a handful of different markets, uh, creating uh, experiences for a handful of different brands, suddenly you realize that to just make a single change, you have to update a gazillion different pieces of copy, create all of that, uh, go through approval processes and all that sort of stuff. Uh, contentful. Of course, uh, we do have a strong opinion here as a content platform and a digital experience platform has some tools to be able to optimize and automate these sorts of changes. Um, and we lean heavily on artificial intelligence to be able to provide contextual copywriting, uh, based off of the objectives of a personalization. The business metrics that we were just talking about, and through the sort of understanding of what a brand's tone and voice actually looks like. So I think that, you know, when we think of the content explosion and the ability to deliver these experiences at scale, like you end up leaning quite heavily on the tools. Uh, you also need to have a really sharp team that can think about what objectives they're trying to accomplish.

Speaker A: Sure. And the tools and the technologies are very important because they can help you stay agile. Right. And be able to respond and react to Changes. Um, but as you mentioned, you need the team, and that requires a lot of organizational shifts, it requires a lot of cultural shifts, um, to adapt along with this. So what are some of the biggest changes that you think that need to happen before a company can actually do some of these things at scale?

Speaker B: Yeah, just to agree. These things are technology, but the technology succeeds or fails on the basis of its people and processes. Uh, when we say personalization, we use that word because that's the ultimate goal that we're trying to achieve. But if not for the data that helps us make decisions, personalization will fail. So the data comes actually from experimentation. We need to know, is our content any good in the first place? For whom is it good? How do we identify those people and then how do we deliver those experiences to them at scale? And that's a process of testing. We need cultures of experimentation. Everybody needs to understand that throwing content into the wind and hoping that it performs well is not going to deliver the kinds of experiences that we need in 2025, 2026 or 2027. So I think, especially when you think of, um, program design for experimentation and personalization, you also need somebody, uh, who's going to be accountable. You need somebody who can walk, uh, cross functionally, walk across the hallway to go from, you know, growth marketing to user experience to engineering, and say, hey, we're all on the same team. We're trying to build this great experience. Let's run these tests, let's identify these people, and let's build something that makes them happy.

Speaker A: When it comes to consistency, uh, brands would like, they want to ensure that everything is consistent across all channels. Right. But this is extremely difficult for them to do, especially as channels are becoming more fragmented. So what are some of the ways, some of the advice you have for brands that can, so that they can enhance their consistency, whether that's in store, whether that's social, whether that's through email.

Speaker B: Yeah. Contentful was one of the first, what we call headless content platforms. Headless means that our notion of content is uncoupled from where it actually gets displayed. And being able to have a digital experience platform that works across channels is super important because then you end up with a single source of truth for what content actually is. And you can design content workflows, approvals, branch own invoice, you can use artificial intelligence to be able to create those experiences all in one place. And in the context of personalization and experimentation, we have to include our understanding of the users. We have all that content. Now let's add in all of that customer data to be able to create experiences that are consistent and help our users go from, you know, an advertisement that they see on the web to an experience on a website into the app and eventually drive them into a store to be able to have a really great experience and thinking about that journey throughout the whole place. It needs a centralized sort of, uh, system to think of content and think about delivering experiences.

Speaker A: None of this is easy, right? We've been talking about the cultural changes, um, the new technologies. It's a cliche, but it's why we call it a journey, right? So long journeys, you make mistakes, you have missteps, uh, in your work. What are some of the most common mistakes or maybe just misconceptions that people have when they're coming into this and they want to first start enhancing or really getting their arms around personalizing experiences.

Speaker B: Oh, my God. Like, I think that maybe this is a little bit too much transparency. But here I'm, I represent a technology vendor, and so we go through these technology evaluations all the time. And one of the most important parts of a technology evaluation is understanding what the technology can actually accomplish. So we have folks coming to us saying, hey, can you do this crazy complicated scenario? And we say, yes, we can. Let me show you how. And I think that we're missing the forest for the trees. What we want to do is we want to kick off cycles of insight. We want to start our clients learning about their customers as quickly as possible. And honestly, usually that's easier than folks expect. We think about all of these crazy scenarios that I was just talking about a moment ago, like, how do you get to great where you smash, you know, customer insights into real time responsiveness? Yeah, that's cool. But what if we just addressed returning visitors differently than new visitors? Like something so simple, something easy to implement and something highly impactful is so much better than trying to do something really complicated, something that takes a long time to implement and quite honestly might not have as good a chance of success. So being able to say, hey, slow down. Our job here is to make the experiences better for our users. Let's learn about what they do, let's increase our ability to do that. Let's create that culture of experimentation and that program design that will help us do this cross functionally, let's slow down and just do the basics here. And actually we're going to get better results that way.

Speaker A: So just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to do that or it's even going to be the

Speaker B: right thing to do, or you might not be ready. If you can do something but you don't have the basis to do it, it might not succeed the way that you hope it will, or you might get tripped along the way.

Speaker A: So this audience is primarily consumer, ah, goods manufacturers and retailers. But we like to look, uh, outside other industries for inspiration. We know we're always looking at what our competitors are doing, um, but sometimes it's helpful to look further outside an industry to see what they are doing as well and what we can learn from them. So what are some lessons when it comes to personalization that you think could be helpful for brands to learn, um, from another industry?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a really good question. In the B2B world, the stakes are really high. And instead of thinking solely about conversion rates or traffic, the amount of money that's spent to be able to capture A really good B2B account, really good B2B lead, is really different than in B2C. We do things like account based marketing. Um, we try to identify users that come from our target accounts, ah, very, very early in the funnel. And even when they're anonymous, you know, on our websites, like how can we actually give them a relevant piece of information based off of some signals that we know about them? And I think there's lessons here for CPG and retail. I think, you know, when you imagine the types of users that are coming to your website or in your app or into your store and you already have Personas that you're trying to identify. And I, uh, think as we imagine that the technology is giving us new tools, how can we address those different use cases even earlier in the funnel? Just like a B2B company that's going to throw $10,000 at a single account, that's the sort of opportunity that some of the technology offers us.

Speaker A: That makes sense. Uh, for you, what are you most excited about? When you're looking at what's, you know, for the next phase of personalization, what's possible in the future, what do you think is going to be really exciting?

Speaker B: I mean, it has to be the artificial intelligence. Like, I get a little worried. I think we all should be a little worried. But at the same time, you know, the potential here to be able to be useful to our users is so valuable. What we see with a lot of our customers is that organic traffic is going down, but the value of the traffic that remains is still high. So if ChatGPT or another LLM is sending somebody to your website, like that person is a good visitor, and it's important to be able to address their needs right away, otherwise you'll lose them forever. We call it Geo Generative Engine Optimization and some aspects of Contentful. And the solution that we offer, make it really, really good for giving content to the LLMs and for being able to convert those users when they finally land on your property. And what's coming down the pike is this opportunity to say, actually, because you were searching for this within, uh, your chatbot of choice, we can actually get deliver the exact experience, but on an owned channel with our branding. Right. As soon as you arrive on our website. And, like, that is going to be so powerful. And I think there's a lot of fear that, oh, my gosh, people are going to transact within, uh, their chatbots. But if we can offer them a better, more cultured, more sophisticated, more refined experience on our own properties, people are still going to come to us because we offer the best experiences.

Speaker A: Right. No, it seems like it's a whole new opportunity that's presenting itself.

Speaker B: Yeah. And the signals are high enough, like, we know enough about our users that we can offer something valuable.

Speaker A: Okay, so I have one more question. Uh, going to ask you to draw from your own personal experiences. Now, this might come from work you've done with your customers or maybe something you've experienced on your own. Uh, but as someone who has a truly deep lens on personalization, what is the most authentic personalized retail experience that you've ever had?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it actually happened just a couple weeks ago, and we're talking about technology here. And that's my job. Like, my job is to make the technology really sexy. But, oh, my God, there's nothing that replaces human touch. I, um, bought a gadget that attaches onto some other thing from a retailer that I'd never worked with before. And they called me, they called me twice. And, yeah, my caller ID was like, this is this company. And I'm normally like, I'm like, I'm not answering that. But they called twice and I was like, oh, is something wrong with my order? I'll answer it. And it was just a guy, you know, he was somewhere in the United States and he said, hey, you know, I saw that you ordered this thing. Do you have any questions? And I was gobsmacked taking that time. I mean, that's an expensive phone call for a company these days.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Taking that time to be able to actually have a real human say, you got what you need all good, was awesome. The human touch, you can't replace it. Not at all.

Speaker A: No, definitely. And they are definitely those experiences are fewer and far between these days. So, ah, pretty impactful when they happen. Uh, so Gabe, I want to thank you so much for coming on and schooling our audience on what really great personalization can look like and how brands can take steps to get there. So just, uh, again, thanks for joining.

Speaker B: Lisa, thank you so much. It's a pleasure.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Tech Transformation. Be sure to subscribe to learn more innovative strategies and trends in the retail and consumer goods industries. And don't Forget to visit ConsumerGoods.com to sign up for our newsletters.