The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Brand Strategy B2B Marketing Ecommerce

Why businesses in Asia Pacific need to harness the power of DX to stay ahead of the curve

By Karen Tee, Journalist

August 25, 2022 | 7 min read

There is no doubt we live in a world that has been dramatically transformed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Nowhere can this impact be felt more profoundly than in the digital world, where many organizations are racing to keep up. But while the challenges may seem daunting, the potential for growth is exponential.

Optimizely

Optimizely's DX platform software helps companies deepen their connection with customers

“Digital remains the biggest driver of change and opportunity for companies,” says Alex Atzberger, chief executive of Optimizely, which provides digital experience (DX) platform software as a service. “What the global pandemic really did was to accelerate companies’ need to provide consumers with the ability to buy online with services like curbside pickup, social commerce and mobile commerce all exploding during the pandemic.

This is particularly relevant in Asia Pacific and South East Asia – a “highly sophisticated and differentiated region” – where companies are continually seeking to “de-risk” their digital infrastructure while scaling up digital accessibility, adds Optimizely’s Paul North, senior vice-president, Asia Pacific and Japan.

To cater to this surging demand, Optimizely is growing its presence in the region and enhancing its suite of capabilities to empower companies to deepen their connection with their customers. Its digital platform provides seamless content management and commerce activities for companies’ digital journeys as well as A/B testing and multivariate testing tools for companies to bring a scientific approach to how they market digitally to consumers.

It also recently acquired Welcome, a platform which allows marketing teams to work together on a single platform to better ideate, collaborate and manage their activities together.

“Ultimately, consumers will keep on changing their behavior and for companies to be agile enough to give them the digital experience they want, they need technology that allows them to do this,” says Atzberger.

The Drum speaks to Optimizely’s Atzberger and North about how enhancing their DX will allow organizations to stay in tune with their customers.

Omnichannel experiences are here to stay

It is essential that brands remember to pay attention to not only their online channels such as their websites or mobile apps but also their brick-and-mortar locations to provide a consistent experiential environment, says Atzberger.

“Rather than differentiating between your online and brick-and-mortar business, it really should become one experience because it is one customer across all your channels,” he says. “So if a customer goes to the store versus online versus the app, it should feel seamless.”

Understand your customer with the ABCs of data

This smooth, effortless omnichannel experience can be created when brands understand their customers’ needs and wants. However, with an impending end to the use of third-party cookies, some brands may find themselves in a fix when it comes to receiving insightful data. But fret not, “cookiepocalypse” is not the end of the (digital) world.

Atzberger emphasizes that there is still plenty of first-party data that a business can collect to gain a competitive edge. He calls this the “ABCs of data” - A for assets, B for behaviors and C for customer.

“As a company, you need to have a strategy about how you actually build your own customer profile based on their behaviors and what assets they check out,” he says.

Suggested newsletters for you

Daily Briefing

Daily

Catch up on the most important stories of the day, curated by our editorial team.

Ads of the Week

Wednesday

See the best ads of the last week - all in one place.

The Drum Insider

Once a month

Learn how to pitch to our editors and get published on The Drum.

Using Optimizely’s technology to stitch together interest profiles based on the content that customers engage with online, companies can then iterate to create personalized customer journeys for their consumers.

The importance of focusing the digital experience

That said, even with the omnichannel experience, do remember that the digital touchpoint often makes the first impression, says Atzberger.

“When someone tells me about a new company, the first thing I do is to go to the website and check it out,” he points out. “You really only get one chance to make a first impression.”

This digital experience becomes even more important in Asia Pacific, where the trend of superapps that provide multiple services within a mobile interface is here to stay, observes North.

Noting that organizations across various industries including travel, transport and retail are all seeking to create their own superapp, North says this could lead to an interesting phenomenon where “the more these apps become the same, the harder it is for them to differentiate”.

In order to move ahead of the pack, companies will need to ensure that their DX is optimized to bring a satisfying experience for customers.

North concludes: “If you have an app that does everything, then you will have thousands of different nodes within the customer journey. So the more you can optimize the DX to create much more frequent connectivity within this complex nature of customer journeys, the more it will drive revenue and sort out the winners from the losers.”

To watch the full conversation with Alex Atzberger and Paul North of Optimizely with The Drum, visit here.

Brand Strategy B2B Marketing Ecommerce

Content created with:

Optimizely

Optimizely is the world's leading experimentation platform, enabling experimentation and personalization across websites, mobile apps and connected devices.

Find out more

More from Brand Strategy

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +