BUILD VS. BUYSelecting the Best Option for Your Personalization Solution

As with any new initiative, marketers looking to invest in personalization must decide whether to build or buy the technology that will drive it. For many marketers, particularly those with limited development resources, the decision to purchase is easily reached. For others, it requires more analysis.

Businesses tend to (rightly) view personalization as a potential competitive di�erentiator – one that they would like to keep closely guarded. As a result, some explore the possibility of building their own technology solution. If you are considering this approach, ask yourself the following questions:

The following sections delve into each of these important questions.

Will building personalization software distract from your core business?

Can you develop all you need for cross-channel personalization?

Do you have access to data science engineers?

Can you seamlessly integrate what you build into your existing tech stack?

Can you develop a solution that is easy to use?

Can you launch the solution in a timely fashion and keep up with future needs?

Are you prepared to dedicate resources to maintain the solution?

Can you keep up with personalization best practices, strategies and tactics?

INFO@EVERGAGE.COM | 1-888-310-0589 | EVERGAGE.COM© 2019 EVERGAGE, INC. INFO@EVERGAGE.COM | 1-888-310-0589 | EVERGAGE.COM© 2019 EVERGAGE, INC.

FOCUSWill building personalization software distract from your core business?

No matter how you plan to get started withpersonalization, you will need to spend some time thinking through your requirements and identifying the functionality needed to execute your personalization strategy. During this process, it should become clear that developing a solution to meet all of those needs will require substantial e�ort.

Even before you start thinking about developingyour own personalization solution, think about yourcore business. How will the investment in buildingyour own solution a�ect your core business? Willcritical IT projects be delayed? Will importantbusiness and technical resources be diverted from other critical projects? Consider the impact before deciding to build.

While your core business might be retail,technology, financial services, etc., Evergage’score business is personalization. We have beenbuilding, refining and evolving a best-in-classpersonalization platform since 2010. Our entireorganization is dedicated to evolving andsupporting this platform.

As a result, the Evergage platform is a powerfulsolution that is delivered at a fraction of the upfront and total long-term cost of what it would take to develop an in-house built solution. And with Evergage, you don’t need to pull engineering or IT resources from projects that are critical to the operation of your core business.

PLATFORM Can you develop all you need for cross-channel personalization?

There is more to personalization than simplycollecting data points and implementing rules. And even a robust data science team, if you have one or could hire one, would be challenged to produceand apply machine-learning models that deliverpersonalization based on a set of customer data.

For your solution to be e�ective, you need to build a complete picture of every person at theindividual level and act on that information to deliver relevant and complete personalized experiences – in real time and across channels.

Is your internal team able to deliver all of that in asingle solution? Many companies cannot dedicatethe time to develop a solution that can truly deliveron the required functionality – forcing the team tomake sacrifices on its overall vision.

For years, Evergage has been building andcontinuously enhancing the leading real-time,cross-channel personalization platform availableon the market. A platform such as this cannot bebuilt overnight. It requires the ability to:

Collect data and deliver experiences across channels including desktop web, mobile web,web applications, mobile apps, on-site search and email.

Capture deep behavioral data that goeswell beyond “clicks,” combine it with datafrom other sources, and use it to create aunique profile for each person (known oranonymous).

Roll data up to the account level for B2Bneeds.

Target personalized experiences andmaximally relevant 1:1 recommendationsbased on your own customized rules,machine-learning algorithms and businesscontext.

Trigger one-o� emails to individuals based on specific actions taken.

Provide robust A/B & multivariate testing.

Deliver sophisticated analytics andattribution measurement.

INFO@EVERGAGE.COM | 1-888-310-0589 | EVERGAGE.COM© 2019 EVERGAGE, INC.

A Complete Personalization Platform

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Named

Logged In

Account

Hover, Scroll,

Interactions

Clicks,

Time Spent

Current Session

& All-time

A�nities

Intent

Campaign Source,

Referring Source

In-Store,

In-Branch

Product Recs,

Content Recs

Place

Anywhere

Website,

Mobile WebA/B Tests,

Multivariate Tests

Click Attribution,

View Attribution

Multiple Goals

Lift Over

Control

Bayesian

Significance

Single Page

App

Mobile App

Open-Time

Email

APIs, Triggers,

Webhooks

Inline

Content

In-Page

Changes

Layered

Content

Item

Templates

Category,

Keyword,

or Brand Recs

Navigation

Changes

SmartSearch,

SmartSort

Smart Bundle

CRM Attriutes,

DMP Audiences

Geo, Weather,

Industry, Company

Survey Responses

Test Group

Simple Rules,

Complex Rules

Dynamic Content

Basic

Recommendations

Predictive 1:1

Recommendations

,

Metadata

(Categories,

Brand, Price, etc.)

Content,

Keywords

Tools,

Resources

Promotions

Goals

CONTEXT & BEHAVIORAL DATAIDENTITY

REAL-TIME RESPONSE

PERSONALIZED EXPERIENCES

TESTING & ATTRIBUTION

MACHINE LEARNINGDo you have access to data science engineers?

Machine learning is critical when it comes to personalizing at the one-to-one level, at scale. It’s also critical for analyzing performance and spotting patterns among immense amounts of data. Machines can combine many di�erent sources of data, draw insights about what that data says about an individual, and select the most relevant experience to deliver. While a good personalization platform will make it easy for a marketer to leverage and even customize machine-learning algorithms, the development of the underlying algorithms requires sophisticated data science engineers.

Is your internal team able to build machine-learning algorithms that will allow you to deliver one-to-one personalization? And even if they are able to do so, can they deliver it in conjunction with all the other aspects of a robust personalization platform?

Can they also apply machine learning to automatically analyze and interpret thousands of disparate data points in order to identify priority action items for marketing users such as which personalization campaigns to run, adjust or retire?

Evergage has been researching and developing our machine-learning capabilities for many years. Our algorithms were designed to ingest, understand and process deep behavioral analytics data. Marketers can create their own “recipes” based on one or more pre-built algorithms (“ingredients”) and customize them with filters and boosters to meet their own business needs. To ensure desired results, users can preview what machine learning-driven experiences will display for a particular individual as well as A/B test recipes against each other.

Marketers can even use the platform to quickly identify opportunities and issues that are performing above or below recognized patterns and surface items that are having the most significant impact on business goals.

Even if you have a data science team that can deliver machine-learning algorithms and conduct in-depth analyses, they may not be able to provide all of this in a flexible, user-friendly manner. Instead, you can use the Evergage platform – in addition to your data science’s own models – to maximize the benefits to your organization.

INFO@EVERGAGE.COM | 1-888-310-0589 | EVERGAGE.COM© 2019 EVERGAGE, INC.

INTEGRATIONCan you seamlessly integrate what you build into your existing tech stack?

Your customer data likely lives in multiple placesacross your organization. You will need to be ableto bring all of it together to build a single picture ofeach person that engages with your company orbrand across channels. Then you will need to passany of that data seamlessly between yourpersonalization solution and other existingtechnologies to trigger events or actions whennecessary.

Can your internal team not only build apersonalization solution that meets your needs, but also include the necessary connections to the rest of your tech stack? No martech solution can be an island, including your in-house built personalizationsolution.

Evergage is not only a personalization platform. It is also a customer data platform (CDP) thatwas built – from the start – to integrate with othersystems. We o�er many out-of-the-box integrationswith leading marketing automation/email marketing systems, CRM solutions, CMS and e-commerce platforms, analytics tools, and advertising networks.

In addition to out-of-the-box integrations,Evergage’s APIs enable clients to pass or pullinformation to and from virtually any data source.Evergage even provides the ability to triggeractions in real time within Evergage or to externalsystems.

Without the ability to pass, pull and push databetween your personalization solution and the rest of your tech stack, you will always have anincomplete view of your prospects and customers.

• Dynamically Pulled from Site• Real-Time• Multiple Levels of Metadata• Optional API Feed

• Configure-Driven• Intuitive• Quick• No Coding Required

DATAHUB PRODUCTS & CONTENT INSTRUMENTATION

USABILITY Can you develop a solution that is easy to use?

It could take months to move a singlepersonalization campaign from idea to reality ifusability is not given maximum attention whenbuilding your personalization solution.

With an in-house built solution, business users maynot be able to use the system themselves, slowingadoption and iteration. IT tickets will likely need tobe filed for basic tasks such as setting upcampaigns; capturing new behaviors or actions;creating new segments; developing newalgorithms; testing new rules, experiences oralgorithms; and troubleshooting any issues.

These delays will certainly minimize the benefits ofpersonalization for your organization. Can yourinternal team ensure that the solution will be easyto use for your business users?

Alternatively, because Evergage has hundreds ofcustomers, we have worked tirelessly to ensurethat Evergage is easy to operate for businessusers and doesn’t require IT sta� and developersto use.

Customers can turn an idea into a tested, livecampaign in hours or days versus weeks ormonths. This includes developing and iterating onsegments, rules, machine-learning algorithms, andpersonalized experiences on your web, mobile andemail channels. This level of usability transformspersonalization from an occasional, painful projectto a core aspect of a company’s ongoingmarketing e�orts.

As with any kind of digital marketing, rapid iterationis critical to optimizing results. Developing onecampaign every once in a while will not deliver thetype of unique one-to-one experiences that willdrive meaningful results.

SYSTEMS INTEGRATION

CATALOGINTEGRATION

SITEINTEGRATION

• CRM• ESP/MAP• DMP• Triggers• Webhooks

INFO@EVERGAGE.COM | 1-888-310-0589 | EVERGAGE.COM© 2019 EVERGAGE, INC.

Intuitive Workflow for Business Users

Before investing in an in-house built solution, you should assess how long your team will need to scope out all the requirements and then build and thoroughly QA a personalization solution.Determine if that timeline is short enough to meet your existing needs.

Then, once you have that timeline, assess whether your internal team can keep up with the pace of technology change – particularly considering the fact that your requirements are likely tocontinuously evolve as you execute your strategy.Does your internal team have the ability to keepup? Do they have the domain knowledge and skillsneeded? Will you always be operating behind therest of the industry?

With Evergage, you can be up and running with a comprehensive personalization platform in days or weeks, because it is already built with the needs of savvy marketers and customer experience professionals in mind. In fact, Evergage likely already has more features today than your internal team could even think of.

Evergage has been been building and improvingthe platform for years. We are always incorporatingnew features based on input and feedback fromclients and prospects across industries, industryexperts and analysts, and competitive solutionproviders.

Evergage developers and sta� think aboutpersonalization all day every day, staying on top ofemerging technology trends so you don’t need to.

SPEED & AGILITYCan you launch the solution in a timely fashion and keep up with future needs?

MerchandisingAnalytics

CustomerAnalytics

CreateAlgorithms

CreateSegments

CreateExperiences

RunTests

AnalyzeResults

INFO@EVERGAGE.COM | 1-888-310-0589 | EVERGAGE.COM© 2019 EVERGAGE, INC.

Any software solution needs to be maintained –it can’t just be built and forgotten. So even if yourcompany is willing to dedicate the resources tobuild the solution, do you have the resources tomaintain it? By resources, we mean the sta� towork on it as well as the budget to invest in systemupgrades, performance optimization, security andcompliance management, and platform monitoring.

Given that personalization is Evergage’s core business, much of our time and energy is dedicated to building, maintaining andcontinuously improving the Evergage platform. Our engineers also focus on ensuring the platform scales and meets the most rigorous security standards.

Support and maintenance is included at no extracharge for every Evergage customer, and the costof the platform itself is predictable since it islicensed on a subscription basis.

EXPERTISECan you keep up with personalization best practices, strategies and tactics?

If you build your own solution, you will only beresponding to your needs as you see them now.You won’t be planning for future needs that are generally shaped by the way consumersexperience personalization by other companies,including those in other industries.

You will need to take the time to source ideas, strategies and tactics on your own and likely from sources that don’t understand your business. Can you dedicate the time and resources to identify and sift through that much information to determine what approaches might work for your organization?

Evergage works with companies across industries.Each one challenges us to solve for their uniquegoals. As a result, we have developed the mostwell-rounded, real-time personalization platform,accompanied by documented playbooks, bestpractices content, case studies, training modules,knowledge base articles and more.

We continue to advance the platform based on invaluable feedback from our diverse set of customers and provide new ideas to ourcustomers based on our experience acrossindustries and use cases.

If you build your own personalization solution, you will have control over the features it includes, how it works, and what the user interface looks like. Some organizations opt to take this route, particularly when they believe it will give them a competitive advantage.

An in-house built personalization solution, however, is unlikely to provide such an advantage. It will take years to build, will be untested in the market, will always be behind the industry, and will not be usable by your business team without significant, continuous IT involvement.

You are far more likely to gain a competitive advantage, get to market faster, reduce risk and drive more benefits using Evergage, the proven, innovative, easy-to-use, easy-to-maintain enterprise personalization platform leader.

Our clients have been putting Evergage to the test for years – challenging us to continuously add new capabilities, improve usability and invest in the future – ensuring they operate the most e�ective personalization programs imaginable.

WHY BUY OVER BUILD?

MAINTENANCEAre you prepared to dedicate resources to maintain the solution?

INFO@EVERGAGE.COM | 1-888-310-0589 | EVERGAGE.COM© 2019 EVERGAGE, INC.