How to Personalize Experiences in Sitecore XM Cloud

As a seasoned Sitecore strategist, when I think about personalization, I see the classic Experience Platform (XP) rule set editor in my head. If I had to, I think I could configure XP rules-based scenarios in my sleep.

With Sitecore’s expanded portfolio, there are now more ways than ever to personalize experiences for your audiences. So, there’s no excuse for marketers to leave a digital experience untailored. That said, with more Sitecore products that provide personalization, you might need some re-training to learn all the new things that are possible with Sitecore personalization.

Since more and more customers are moving to Sitecore Experience Manager (XM) Cloud to take advantage of its cloud-native benefits such as an enhanced page-building experience, superior speed and performance, and lower infrastructure costs, I thought it would be good to compare personalization in XM Cloud to personalization in Sitecore XP.

First, I want to share some context about XM Cloud:

• In Sitecore XM Cloud, marketers can now implement and configure personalization in Pages, the new editing experience in XM Cloud. It’s akin to Experience Editor in XP where you have a WYSIWYG editor you can use to build and edit pages for your website visitors to engage with.

Next, I’ll explain from a high level how personalization is built out on XP and XM Cloud.

• Experienced users know that personalization in Sitecore XP is configured on the component level. You navigate to a component on a page that has a data source and configure personalization on that component using the trusted rule-set editor, and mapping rules to what content will be shown if certain rule criteria are met.
• In Sitecore XM Cloud, personalization takes a more page-based approach. Instead of navigating to a single component, you create a page variant, essentially duplicating a page and creating a personalized version of it. Once that’s done, you define the audiences and their characteristics that trigger a personalized page version instead of the default one.

So how do you define audiences in Sitecore XM Cloud to trigger personalized experiences?

• As I mentioned, in Sitecore XP, you configure different rules in the rule-set editor, layering various criteria together to trigger personalization.
• In Sitecore XM Cloud, since you use Pages to personalize, Pages includes an audience builder with out-of-the-box (OOTB) conditions that define who will see what experience and content, and what criteria they must meet to trigger a personalized page. Like XP, XM Cloud’s OOTB conditions include things like location, page views, device type, and user interactions (think campaign or referring channel), just to name a few. Similar to Sitecore XP, these audience conditions can be combined with and/or rules to build more sophisticated personalization criteria.

Now no matter what Sitecore tool you use for personalization, before you get started, you need a strong personalization strategy and a measurement plan. Whether you’re leveraging Sitecore XM Cloud, Sitecore XP, or even Sitecore Personalize, having a sound strategy and way to measure your personalization’s impact are the keys to creating successful and scalable personalization that can grow with your organization.

Need assistance developing your Sitecore personalization strategy? We’d love to help! Get in touch with us at Velir and we can help define your path toward personalization!