New for Personalization in Ibexa DXP: Segments and the Segmentation API

With the release of Ibexa DXP v3.2 we announced a lot of significant changes to the product packaging and pricing. But our engineering team did not rest on its laurels either. We introduced significant new features in this version, such as the DAM Connector Framework and the Aggregation API. Another feature that arrived in 3.2 are Segments and the Segmentation API for delivering tailored experiences.

Segments are new type of metadata for our Digital Experience Platform (DXP). They enable personalized user journeys for your customers. Using segments your visitors can be assigned to a group, with this information they can be served more relevant content or possibly have access to different capabilities in your digital service channel.

This feature is a completely new functionality in version 3.2. In this iteration we introduce the plumbing that will allow building more sophisticated functionalities in the future. The first step is to allow administrators to manage segments and segment groups using a CRUD (short for create, read, update and delete) interface.

This interface allows marketers, editors and developers to set up arbitrary groups based on your business case such as reseller registration status for a manufacturer:

In the above we are using business terms, but you can use concepts that are most relevant for your industry. If you run a chain of veterinary clinics, it might make sense to tailor the online experience based on if they're a cat or a dog owner (or both).

For time dependent services you might want to experiment based on an indication if someone's a morning person or a night owl. The possibilities are endless, and it is likely more difficult to filter out the ones to go for from this pool of possibilities.

We're kicking it off with the Targeting Block

To help you get started with experimenting from the get-go v3.2 ships with an explicit personalization method out of the box: The targeting block for the Page Builder. This a great example of personalization that is both easy to understand and implement.

Instead of blasting your eyes and ears with words like Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms and other mysticism, the Ibexa DXP Targeting Block gives you the a straightforward way to decide who to target and with what. Editors can create the needed segments, and explicitly define what should be shown to which group of users using an intuitive user interface. No developers or data specialists required.

Learn how easy it is to implement explicit personalization with Ibexa DXP from the video clip where Sylvain Guittard, Director of Product Management at Ibexa, demonstrates how to target specific content to user segments with Page Builder:

The Targeting Block is a very simple (if effective) piece of functionality within our Digital Experience Platform. Developers can use the Segmentation API to create more sophisticated scenarios. You could, for example, achieve more granular targeting for your veterinary franchise by combining pet ownership and physical location data.

Our goal is to make personalization easy to manage

Interoperability with other systems is very important for DXPs as they integrate many systems into a coherent user experience. You can think of the DXP as a conductor for an orchestra of software that plays a symphony of services. Behind the scenes this should also be as simple as possible for the promoters of the proverbial concert. The Segmentation API can help here by reducing duplicate work of marketers by automatically pulling in segmentation data from a CRM or other MarTech backend. 

We are also exploring ideas of generally applicable use cases we could implement as examples in our demo distribution. This could increase our partners' development cadence. Some ideas our engineering and PM teams have explored:

• An asset/relation field type where you can set a value per segment
• A "personalized container" whose sub-items are associated with a segment
• A custom tag that defines a richtext block for a given segment
• Elevating search results based on content metadata and user segment

In addition to the explicit personalization enabled by the Segmentation API we also have an implicit personalization technology in Ibexa Personalization. One of the pillars of Ibexa DXP is the personalization engine which offers powerful implicit personalization functionality based on user behaviour data. We are evaluating how we could integrate the Segments closer with it, but there are no concrete plans yet.

All in all, we are in the early days of the Segments feature in Ibexa DXP, but we are certain it will be a valuable feature for our customers to better serve their customers going forward. Feedback and feature ideas can be submitted via our public roadmap.

Read more about Ibexa Personalization: Personalize with user choices and behavioral targeting and also the features and pricing of Ibexa’s DXP products and additional services. Visit our Ibexa Personalization page for more information on the feature and also take a look at our capabilities page: What is personalization and why does it matter? as it will give you a greater understanding into why modern B2B customers demand a personalized online experience and how you can respond.