4 examples of integrations for composable solutions with Optimizely

Listening to our customers across different industries and geographies, it becomes clear that most marketers need to wear many hats to succeed in their roles. During a given workday, they may be acting as brand builders, creative storytellers, researchers or analysts, all while navigating a complex global landscape.  

Suffice it to say, to be an excellent marketer, you must be incredibly adaptable. Ironically, however, many marketers are held back by the tools they've selected to help them adjust to ever-changing market conditions. In Gartner's most recent survey of marketing technology leaders, they say, "Marketing leaders report they still utilize only 58% of their martech stack's full breadth of capabilities — a level that has remained flat since 2019." 

It's not hard to imagine the frustration a marketer would feel after navigating the vast martech ecosystem with  8,000 martech vendors, handpicking each tool, only to be left with an incomplete or inflexible set of solutions. Whether stitching together a host of point solutions or implementing one of the all-in-one platforms that purport to be everything for everyone, it's not uncommon for marketers to be held back by the limitations of their martech stack and pigeonholed into making decisions based on incomplete data and faulty assumptions. 

Packaged business capabilities with Optimizely's DXP 

It doesn't have to be this way, and marketers shouldn't need to choose between tools that work and the capabilities they need. That's why at Optimizely, we're giving marketers control over the technology stack with our market-leading Digital Experience Platform (DXP) that offers marketers composable solutions. In the survey mentioned before, Gartner recommends that, "Marketing technology leaders must focus on improving agility, collaboration and integration to increase martech stack utilization and effectiveness." 

In a previous post, my colleague, Greg Cypes, wrote an excellent guide for marketers looking to innovate within their marketing technology stack. Specifically, how low-code/no-code integrations provide marketers with a better handle on the data and wrangle technologies into alignment with the intended strategy. To expand upon this further, Garter introduces packaged business capabilities (PBCs). 

"[PBCs are] software components representing a well-defined business capability, functionally recognizable as such by a business user. Technically, a PBC is a bounded collection of a data schema and a set of services, APIs, and event channels. The well-implemented PBCs are functionally complete to ensure autonomy (no critical external dependencies, no need for direct external access to its data). PBCs are meant to be used as building blocks for application product suites and custom-assembled application experiences."  

The emphasis here should be on "packaged." It's true, the answer to the question "Can it integrate?" is almost always a 'yes.' However, for most vendors, there should be an asterisk that says, "With days of custom code." At Optimizely, we mean integrations you can install with a single click providing flexibility and power out of the box.  

As a follow up to my colleague's post, this article will demonstrate a few examples of packaged business capabilities available as integrations with Optimizely. When exploring composability, it's important to point out two ways to evaluate integrations.  

Two methods of evaluating the composability of digital experience platforms: 

1. Extensibility - the extent and depth to which a DXP offers a framework for extensions, plugins, modules, components and application integrations. 
   
   
2. Interoperability - The ease and breadth with which a DXP can loosely and effectively couple with adjacent technologies, services and information sources 

Essentially, a modern DXP has integrations among different capabilities within and integrations into the broader ecosystem of digital experience vendors. The ease and extent to which you can accomplish integration is covered in the previous post, so let's get into what that looks like with a few examples. 

Examples of extensibility within Optimizely's DXP  

Probably the most familiar frustration with technology in the enterprise is the tyranny of the monolithic technology suite. The bulky all-in-one solution is often hard to customize and prevents marketers from exercising creativity within the digital experience. 

At Optimizely, we support a loose coupling that affords marketers snap-in-place capabilities. Making stackable technology possible is Optimizely's data core service - a harmonized data model across the DXP available with any of Optimizely's products. This means you can pick and choose the right tools for your stack and guarantee they work together out of the box. It also means consistency in how we integrate with the rest of the martech software ecosystem. 

Test at every touchpoint across the customer journey with Full Stack Experimentation + Content Cloud  

Modern brands create content for more surfaces beyond their websites. With our Content Cloud's headless capabilities, we make it possible to deliver a cohesive content experience across mobile apps, a multi-site ecosystem, and connected devices such as kiosks or appliances. In addition, for more control over the experience across devices, marketers and product teams can easily connect our Full Stack Experimentation product to go beyond simply delivering content and unlock the power to experiment with that content and roll out new features. And it all works together on a shared foundation of Optimizely data.  

Revenue-generating segmentation with B2C Commerce Cloud + Data Platform 

Merchandisers are used to processing order data and engagement data with product pages, but we know this isn't the entire customer experience. By adding Optimizely Data Platform (ODP) to B2C Commerce Cloud, out of the box, marketers can create custom event tracking and harmonize data from across third-party channels.  

With the increase in data acquisition, Data Platform uses data science models to crunch the numbers and provide recommendations about engaging with customers. Data is resolved into individual customer and account records, so personalization efforts, ad spend, and campaigns are more accurate and efficient.  

Through machine learning, recommendations adapt to your business. Merchandisers can use these recommendations to create segments that include most likely to buy, win back, and churn prevention. In addition, marketers can use segments with B2C Commerce Cloud to personalize the shopping experience or upload as lookalike audiences in ad tech providers via ODP data activations. 

Examples of interoperability within Optimizely's DXP  

It's a given for most brands that their marketing stack will include software from multiple vendors, and those point-solutions and services do not always play well together. In addition, configuring and maintaining the stack can add lots of overhead and complexity if your DXP isn't well-suited to interoperating with other software.  

Optimizely is designed to facilitate the easy creation and deployment of new integrations with third-party software through an entirely visual interface. That means marketers can bring harmony to their data without the hassle of custom integrations or code. In addition, the UI provides support for template data workflows with inbuilt business logic controls and expanded cross-platform orchestration. 

You've seen a few examples of composability through the extensibility of the Optimizely DXP. However, for the entire customer context, let's look at how Optimizely's DXP integrates with the broader ecosystem of applications with interoperable integrations.  

Discover sustainable growth with VIP support from B2B Commerce Cloud + Zendesk 

Many automation platforms treat the customer lifecycle like a traditional funnel and deny that service and support can also be drivers for growth. Customer service platforms such as Zendesk are bi-directional integrations. With one click, integrate info from tickets that customers have submitted through Zendesk with B2B Commerce Cloud data. If a customer opens a ticket in the system, Optimizely may suppress them from marketing campaigns, prioritizing service over marketing. To help organizations do this at scale, on the outbound side, give customer service agents the ability to prioritize queues based on average order value (AOV) or lifetime value (LTV) calculated via Data Platform. 

Run cohesive omnichannel campaigns with Data Platform + Facebook + SMS + Poplar 

Marketers want reasons to reach out to customers, but sometimes it's hard to know what will convert. Enter Data Platform's search abandonment event tracking. With a few clicks of your mouse, you can easily integrate with your onsite search system to know when and what a customer has searched for, but ended up not converting. Then, easily segment and create content to reach out to the customer. 

Data Platform supports data activations in the channel of your choice. For example, quickly run ads targeted towards a segment on ad-tech services like Facebook with the flip of the switch. Then, send a follow-up text message or use the integration with Poplar to direct mail an offer code as a method to pull them back into the site and help them find similar products and get them to convert. 

The digital experience isn't limited to digital touchpoints. For example, many customers may browse online before coming to the store to buy or check inventory before going to business. As a result, you may not realize how digital influences in-store sales unless you are connecting systems. With Optimizely, marketers can link brick-and-mortar activity with digital data and use the same omnichannel activations to build and optimize a complete customer journey. 

Adaptability unlocks digital potential 

At Optimizely, we celebrate adaptive brands and business leaders who adopt a growth mindset where change is the only constant. We view adaptability as the defining characteristic of digital maturation, and we've made it our purpose to unlock this competitive advantage for our customers with our extensible, composable DXP. 

Agility and flexibility have become significant competitive advantages for marketers, and Optimizely provides software solutions that match. Over the past year, it's more evident than ever that marketers must adapt to change quickly and expect the unexpected. As a result, many brands are taking a critical look at their marketing stack to ensure their architecture is an advantage rather than holding them back.  

The modern alternative offered by composable solutions like Optimizely gives marketers the freedom they need to be creative and adaptable in a world where the only constant is change.