Sitecore 10 was launched over the summer, and like for any new Sitecore release, we’ve carried out a deep dive into the new features and functionalities to work out what they mean for our clients. In our last article, we looked at the new elements in Sitecore 10 which could be of interest to developers; this time around, we’re going to look at what Sitecore 10 means for digital marketing teams.
In this release, there’s a package of enhancements that we think marketers will love. The emphasis here is on improvements across the board rather than major new functionality; some of these changes might seem modest on the surface, but they can actually make a considerable difference to content management processes.
Let’s have a look at what Sitecore 10 has to offer for digital marketers.
Further integration with Sitecore Content Hub and the main Experience Platform
Sitecore Content Hub was an exciting addition to the Sitecore family that brings Digital Asset Management into the heart of the platform, as well as some strong content tools including a content calendars, a marketing resourcing tool and more. Content Hub has gone through its own set of improvements recently with the release of 3.4.
The introduction of Content Hub was the result of the 2018 acquisition of Stylelabs, and since then, Sitecore has been introducing tighter integration with the main platform. The Sitecore 10 release further advances that integration, particularly for content editors, along with the ability to align taxonomy items across the main XP and Content Hub. Tighter integration makes Content Hub a more attractive long-term investment.
In the future, we also wonder if we will see more influence from Content Hub, particularly on the UI of the main platform. As I commented in a recent article on CMSWire, “with Tom de Ridder — formerly from Stylelabs, which created Content Hub — as Sitecore’s CTO, are we going to see more of the very slick Content Hub UI in the core Sitecore product?”
Improvements to the Horizon editor
The introduction of the “Horizon” editing experience was the “big ticket” item from the Sitecore 9.3 release – an advance on the Experience Editor which brought some digital marketing features such as personalization and analytics within easier reach. Sitecore 10 adds a little more to Horizon, including multi-language capabilities, the ability to select assets from the Sitecore Hub and the capacity for editors to switch between sites. We can expect Horizon to continue to evolve in this way across each release.
Personalization improvements
Personalization is a core strength of Sitecore, and the 10 release includes various performance improvements and other small enhancements.
Some teams still only use Sitecore for the CMS, subscribing to the Sitecore Experience Manager (XM) offering. With Sitecore always keen to open up the more advanced capabilities of the platform, support for personalization has now been added to Sitecore XM.
Segmentation and analytics
The successful segmentation around analytics is a must-have for those teams using Sitecore for more sophisticated digital marketing, but it’s not always been quite as straightforward as it should have been. Now, Sitecore has righted that wrong – Sitecore 10 makes segmentation available straight out-of-the-box without the fiddly customization previously required. We think this removal of another potential barrier to opening up the full marketing and intelligence power of the platform is a great step.
Improvements to Sitecore Forms
Sitecore Forms attracted some love and attention in Sitecore 9.3, and the feature is revisited in Sitecore 10 with better support for data privacy, driving compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA and more. In Sitecore 10, teams can now ascertain which fields have Personal Identifiable Information (PII), with Sitecore able to anonymise this data from administrator roles. There are also tools to help identify whether user consent has been given, and for which fields. These developments should help more organizations adopt Sitecore Forms with the confidence that they can meet their compliance requirements.
Pasting from Word into the editing experiences
Okay, this might not sound like a big deal, but actually, Sitecore 10’s new ability to post directly from Word into the editing experiences on Sitecore without triggering loads of unwanted formatting or additional HTML is very useful. If you have a wider group of content editors outside your marketing team, pasting from Word is often part of the content management process, as that’s where most writing still happens. This little improvement has the power to save a lot of headaches!
Real-time integration with Salesforce marketing cloud
With so many marketers and sales teams working out of Salesforce, any strong integration between the Salesforce marketing cloud and the Sitecore XP will be welcomed. Sitecore 10 allows data and site visitor information to be synced in real-time, helping to drive a single, connected digital marketing ecosystem powered by both Salesforce and Sitecore.
And there’s more!
Every release of Sitecore features improvements across the board, as well as improvements including advances in marketing automation, new capabilities in Sitecore Experience Commerce 10, and additional email templates.
Upgrading? Considering Sitecore 10? Get in touch!
Sitecore 10 has multiple enhancements that will benefit digital marketing teams in helping to deliver great content and customer experiences, but also in supporting wider marketing activity. If you’d like to find out more about Sitecore 10, discuss upgrading or what the new release means for your business, then get in touch!
