Contentful has launched a host of new features and partnerships that the company says deliver a modern, flexible solution for creating digital experiences at scale.
Contentful’s new AI and personalisation capabilities build on the company’s composable CMS. It includes a core platform purpose-built for scale, reliability, and flexibility tailored to technical users. Contentful Studio, a low-code digital experience-building product for marketing teams, has an ecosystem of more than 100 integrations and plug-ins. Contentful says its platform is trusted by marketing and technical teams at some of the world’s biggest companies.
“Brands are frustrated by monolithic, bloated DXP solutions that aren’t fit for purpose,” said Contentful CEO Karthik Rau. “In this constantly-evolving technology landscape, a flexible new approach is needed and today marks the beginning of that change.” Contentful plans to increase its investment in research and development by more than 20% year-on-year. The company intends to accelerate innovation and set new standards for what customers can expect in a digital experience platform.
“The expectations for growth teams have changed with users expecting more relevant and engaging marketing experiences,” said Michael Luzmore, Product Manager, Docusign. “To be successful, we needed to scale personalized experiences to global audiences. Contentful’s flexible, extensible DXP allows us to build compelling digital experiences for varied personas and experiment with AI tools that expedite our processes.”
New Platform Features
Continuing its evolution from a composable CMS into the broader DXP category. Contentful unveiled a slate of new capabilities for marketers and developers.
AI Actions
Marketing teams today need to deliver high-performing content experiences while simplifying content management. AI Actions is Contentful’s framework for AI-powered content operations. It enables marketers to embed generative AI models into any stage of the content lifecycle from creation, adaptation to publishing. AI Actions supports teams to produce content faster, contextualized to their unique business and brand guidelines. The solution automates workflows accelerate review and approval processes, ensuring efficiency and consistency at scale.
Embedded within Contentful’s platform, AI Actions remove the friction of repetitive marketing tasks, like translations and localisation for global audiences. This is achieved by one-click SEO, and alt-text generation. Moreover, Contentful offers an AI Actions marketplace featuring a variety of templates to help teams get started quickly. This includes an inaugural contribution from Contentful Gold Partner AKQA.
Content Governance
Contentful also introduced Granular Roles and Permissions within its Taxonomy capabilities. This ensures businesses can maintain tight control over content creation and usage and helps them align with enterprise requirements for robust security and compliance. This includes SOC 2 Type 1 certification. This level of control allows brands to deliver consistent and reliable digital experiences.
New Contentful personalisation features
Contentful Personalisation will live directly within the Contentful web app. Customers can find and manage all their audiences, experiments, and personalised experiences in one unified workspace. Unlike legacy DXPs that force marketers to juggle multiple tabs and tools. By centralising everything in a single command centre, Contentful streamlines personalisation. The company says this makes it faster and more efficient for the marketing team to optimise customer experiences. Additional product features launching with
Contentful Personalisation are:
- AI Suggestions features Experience Suggestions, Audience Suggestions, and Variant Generation to take the guesswork out of personalisation and experimentation. At the same time ensuring consistency and efficiency.
- AI Variant Generation instantly crafts personalised, on-brand content variants that perfectly align with target audience strategy and brand guidelines.
- Customer Data Connectors with leading platforms like Shopify, Klaviyo, and SAP Emarsys. This enables Contentful Personalisation to easily activate customer data for personalised experiences and deeper engagement.
New strategic partnerships
Contentful readily integrates with leading platforms to extend its capabilities and meet the demands of any customer use case. Contentful and Shopify have also announced a new strategic partnership designed to connect and synchronise content and commerce systems. This is expected to enable brands to deliver compelling, data-driven shopping experiences at scale.
Contentful is also launching an app in the Shopify Liquid Storefront that allows marketers to enhance content creation. Moreover, streamline localisation, and leverage AI-driven personalisation within the Shopify ecosystem. With the Contentful app, customers can achieve improved product and content synchronization with greater storefront design flexibility. The partnership allows brands to integrate content and commerce, resulting in faster time to market and a better customer experience.
“This collaboration underscores the benefit of Contentful’s agile DXP approach,” said Dale Traxler, Director of Technology Partnerships, at Shopify. “Our joint customers can connect, manage, and optimise all consumer journey touchpoints from both the Contentful and Shopify environments. It also simplifies workflows and accelerating conversion.”
What’s next
AI is changing how content is created, and marketers are being tasked with accelerating highly personalised experiences that drive big impact and even bigger return on investment. “We are looking at a future where brands must deliver more compelling experiences across all channels,” said Rau. “By adopting the right technology now, brands can confidently prepare for a highly personalized, autonomous, and data-driven future. We are on a mission to help our customers succeed in this new reality.”
Enterprise Times: What this means for businesses
Contentful’s announcement sets the stage for continued market disruption in the content management DXP space. Analysts have estimated the market will exceed $41B by 2032. The growth of the DXP space is clear evidence of customer need and marketplace demand. The DXP space is at the beginning of a major change. This evolution will bring more clarity to the capabilities required to support experiences in modern digital marketing.
Contentful’s entry into DXP will shake up the market by challenging preconceived ideas that have limited innovation. The dedication to an API-first orthodoxy, a proven and flexible CMS platform, an intentionally curated partner ecosystem, and investments in AI that will bring personalisation and contextual digital experiences into view is just the start.
The new AI and personalisation capabilities extend company’s core CMS offering. It is expected to deliver a more flexible, future-fit solution for brands. As a result, enabling them to create and manage more compelling digital experiences.
