The what, why, and how of decisioning

Transforming data into exceptional personalized experiences is Sitecore CDP’s superpower. But this impressive feat wouldn’t be possible without the CDP’s trusty sidekick, the decisioning engine – some might say it’s the brains of the operation.

Decisioning or decision management is a technique that blends big data together with business rules and predictive analytics (or analytical models) to make smart decisions about what to talk to customers about, and where, at any one time.

In this age of experience, when customer expectations are higher than ever, having the right decisioning technology in place is crucial to delivering the types of personalized experiences that make customers feel truly seen, heard, and understood.

Once upon a time, personalization meant brands simply dropping a “Hi (recipient’s name)” at the beginning of an email. These days, customers expect personalized brand interactions to be not only intuitive, but consistent across every touchpoint. And there is little tolerance for those who miss the mark. A 2019 study by Gartner on marketing personalization revealed that brands stand to lose 38% of their customers due to poor personalization.

In contrast, there is much to be gained when brands get their personalization strategies on point and deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time. According to research carried out by McKinsey, targeted communications that are relevant and useful create lasting customer loyalty and drive revenue growth of 10% to 30%.

The ability to determine your customers’ next best action is key to creating customer experiences that are relevant, contextual, and personalized. To meet today’s customer expectations, brand interactions need to flex in the moment and move seamlessly from channel to channel – and this is where decisioning plays an instrumental role.

The role of decisioning in personalization

While the CDP provides the raw ingredients for personalization through data collection, profile unification, and segmentation, decisioning is the secret sauce. Taking the unified customer profiles created by the CDP, the decisioning engine uses a combination of machine learning and AI models to determine various propensities for each customer profile, and based on these findings, figures out the next best action for this customer on the customer’s most relevant channel.

AI-driven decisioning and omnichannel personalization

For businesses with both a physical and online presence – for example retail, grocery, and hospitality, omnichannel personalization is no longer just a nice to have, it’s now a key differentiator.

According to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report, 80% of customers place the same emphasis on flawless engagement as they do on product quality, which means the pressure is on brands to deliver useful, relevant, and consistent customer experiences on every front.

So how can brands meet (and exceed) customers’ omnichannel expectations? Enter the decisioning engine. By actioning real-time decisions based on a range of data such as contextual, location, weather conditions, time of day, popular items in a specific location, or similar basket items (customers who purchased this product also purchased xyz), the decisioning engine provides the digital equivalent of a gentle nudge in the right direction.

AI-driven decisioning allows brands to experiment with multiple strategies and select the winning combination in real time. Adopting this style of decisioning provides brands with detailed insights so they can easily adapt to customers’ changing realities in real time – and deliver precisely the type of in-the-moment, hyper-personalized experiences that today’s consumers demand.

Simple drag-and-drop interfaces make decisioning engines a cinch to use in practice, but the actual process of decisioning is not something that can be switched on instantly. Instead, careful preparation and ongoing analysis is necessary, and this needs to be carried out using a collaborative approach involving multiple stakeholders from across the business.

The first step of the process requires identifying use cases to prove value and alignment with the business’s overall objectives. Dedicated teams will also need to be assigned to test strategies, monitor results, and measure outcomes. This step is key. By A/B testing variants on an ongoing basis, brands can expect to achieve and deliver the best possible results for their personalization campaigns.

Sitecore decisioning

Sitecore’s decisioning engine is an advanced, user-friendly tool that gives organizations the ability to create decision strategies using a flexible drag-and-drop canvas.

By leveraging behavioral data, historical data, transactional data, and the organization’s operational data (risk, pricing, inventory) in real time and combining rules, AI, and programmable logic, Sitecore decisioning can help brands achieve advanced decisioning and hyper-personalization at scale. Meanwhile A/B silent testing ensures models can be easily optimized to align with business goals.

Best of all, editing the rules in the decisioning interface is as simple as editing a spreadsheet, meaning little or no technical knowledge is required to plan and deliver impactful, revenue-generating customer experiences.

Putting the customer first

Sitecore’s decisioning engine doesn’t just apply a set of sequential rules, or a one-off machine-learning model. To determine next best actions, Sitecore’s decisioning puts the customer first by looking at customer data, building a picture of the customer, working out the next best action, and determining how best to deliver or enhance this action based on the channel that the customer interacted with. Using Sitecore’s decisioning capabilities, businesses can activate complex decisions in a way that’s both understandable by the business and can be easily managed by the business.

Moreover, when Sitecore decisioning is integrated with an organization’s existing APIs, data can be enhanced with analytics to unlock further insights about customer behavior. Shaped by these rich layers of data, next best actions and experiences become smarter, more agile, and much more intuitive.

Looking to transform your personalization strategy? Get in touch to find out how Sitecore’s CDP and advanced decisioning engine can help your organization build lasting customer connections.