The challenges faced by content creators and marketers continually increase year-on -year. As more competition enters the scene, customers become more clued-up, and improving technologies continue their march.
Creating and planning content takes time. Keeping up means knowing your industry and your customers better than they know themselves. The customer experience must be top of mind. That's why it’s important to provide the best experience possible. A great UX, effective messaging and personalised content are the building blocks to keeping your online customers happy.
But nothing remains static. What if there's a different approach? What if your team can adapt and cope with the greater demands of the customer and relevant content creation?
Introducing atomic content design.
Atomic content design
They say the Devil's in the detail. That's exactly what atomic content is. It's about detail. Driving the creation and personalisation of small content elements, or atoms, that make the whole experience. Elements like text and images that when dynamically put together create videos, emails, web pages and other marketing assets.
But wait. Isn't that what's happening today?
Atomic content isn't about the repurposing of existing content, like converting an article into an infographic. It goes deeper than that. As a marketing leader you should be embracing atomic content to deliver exceptional experiences while strengthening relationships. As stated by Chris Ross, Research Director at Gartner for Marketers: “Marketing leaders who master and implement atomic content concepts can improve customer experience and strengthen customer relationships.”
In the atomic content world content dynamically changes in real time. It combines various content atoms to create relevant marketing assets that meet the customer needs based on their location in the customer journey.
Let's take John as an example. He's interested in luxury watches. He started following a luxury watch retailer and subscribed to its mailing list.
A few weeks later John receives an email offering him 25% off. The email contained a bunch of appealing watches he had showed an interest in when he was browsing the website a few weeks prior. The email consisted of a combination of atoms (headlines, offers, CTAs etc.) that when combined delivered a positive experience.
Sounds great doesn’t it? But what’s going on behind the scenes? Well, the email contained several content blocks or areas that were populated with atomic content based on rules and logic that the marketing team determined.
It's this level of finite personalisation that makes atomic content so important. But 'atoms' don't just appear out of thin air. They need to be planned, produced and curated.
Getting organised with atomic content
Before you take the path down atomic content it's important to note that it requires a lot of elements for it to be effective.
- Data: There it is again. The lynchpin of the digital experience. You need to delve deep into your data and your existing systems. Valuable insights and reliable tech are the ammunition to driving dynamic experiences. Look at visitor types, behavioural history (transactions, browsing etc.), potential value, customer churn, click through rates, technology integrations etc. The more information you have, the more content atoms you can consider.
- Personas: If you don't have personas then you should seriously consider them. If you do have personas you should be prioritising them based on customer value, strategic priority and anything else that aligns with your business goals. When done, think about the most relevant content atoms you need to produce to drive those conversions.
- Design: Get your UX/design team involved from the outset. It will look at all your conversion points and customer journeys and produce engaging UI elements as part of the web design
- Your tech stack: This was touched on earlier. Are you getting the best out of your existing technology stack? Take a closer look at what you already have. Squeeze as much out of your tech as possible without introducing additional layers and complexity. Embrace your technologies. Email marketing, automation/hyperautomation and powerful Digital Experience Platforms like Sitecore have out-of-the-box features that support atomic content.
Working with Codehouse
With over 15 years experience in digital, we're perfectly placed to advise you on the benefits of atomic design so you can deliver exceptional experiences to your audience. We are here to help you define requirements and choose the enabling technologies such as CMS, CRM and CDPs.
Our digital experience team is ready to guide you down the atomic content path so whenever you’re ready get in touch.
