Creating personalized Web experiences with personas
NOTE: The Personas feature is part of Ektron's marketing suite.
A persona is a category of user that fits a targeted demographic, attitude, or behavior. When a person visits your website, Ektron tracks the activity and matches the behavior pattern to a defined persona. You can present relevant content, information, or products that match your visitor's unique interests (based on the persona criteria), thereby driving more marketing qualified leads (MQLMarketing Qualified Lead; someone who is more likely to become a customer versus others who are "browsing but not buying." MQLs can be identified through analysis of activity data.s) to your sales team that may result in a conversionA goal that a user has completed, which occurs when a visitor takes action as a result of subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators. See also CTA..
A persona should reflect your site visitors' attributes, goals, and behaviors. You should conduct user interviews and field observations to gather information about how visitors interact with your site. Analyze what distinguishes some users from others by asking questions such as the following:
For example, a persona could be Ted the Technical Decision Maker. You know Ted’s title, and a few pieces of data to identify him, such as his industry, business challenges, and so on. From this information, you can design a persona to target the current stage in a site visitor's decision-making process. For each persona you create, define a personalized set of site features and content to guide the person through the sales process and, ultimately, have the person perform the desired outcome.
A persona is assigned to a site visitor, and tracked, as follows:
A persona uses the VisitorContext
data class in the Ektron.PersonaManagement.Common.dll
to represent a site visitor's context and passes collected site visitor information, including any third-party IDs, to Persona Management. The VisitorContext
data class has the following properties.
Cookies
—The current user's cookiesData related to a user and Web browsing activity, such as login information, shopping cart data, and other data.. By default, persona providers can use a site visitor's cookies.
Headers
—All HTTP headers associated with the current Web request. As of now, no persona providers use them.
URL
—The current URL being browsed. As of now, no persona providers use this.
UrlReferrer
—The current user's IP address. As of now, no persona providers use this. Properties
—Can be used for any additional visitor information.
A persona consists of a title, description, attributes, and rules. A persona bridges the gap between what your internal systems know about site visitors, and what the site knows about them. By building rules that connect persona names and descriptions to attributes that define those personas, you can target content and learn more about the visitors who are using your site.
If you're using Windows 8 or 2012, press the Windows key () /Q then enter Persona Management.
NOTE: Your system administrator provides sign-on instructions.
Attributes are data fields that define the qualities of a persona, using information stored in your CRMCustomer Relationship Management (such as Salesforce), marketing automation system (such as Marketo), or any other DXHDigital Experience Hub connection. Examples of persona attributes include the following:
If you determine that a site visitor with those qualities fits the profile of an important buyer of your products or services, create a persona rule using those criteria. Alternatively, you may use a persona in other marketing channels and want to track those users as site visitors.
You can choose from among the following attributes:
You can combine the connection criteria with the search field. For example, you can find Marketo attributes that include b.
NOTE: By default the Connection drop-down lists all connectors, even those that are not enabled in DXH. To suppress unused connectors, your administrator should open C:\inetpub\PersonaManagement\ektron.persona.app.config
and comment them out.
If you see no attributes for a connection, and you previously saw them, ask your administrator to research possible problems with the connection. For example, is its license still valid?
Even if a connection is missing, you can still remove rules that use its attributes.
Rules are logical statements that include a connection, attribute, operator, and value. For example:
(Connection)(Attribute) (operator) (value) Marketo Employees greater than 5000
is
, is not
, contains
, starts with
, ends with
. The enterprise application determines an attribute's content type. After you create a personas, an Ektron site administrator can use it with the Targeted Content widget, to develop personalized site experiences that move individuals through the marketing funnel. The Targeted Content widgetA mini-application that you place on a Web page using PageBuilder; a widget provides either specific functionality (calculators, search, social bars, and so on) or areas into which you can add content (content blocks, list summaries, collections, and so on). uses personas and other criteria to customize the experience for that person. For example, if the persona is CTOChief Technology Officer; a company executive that is focused on technological uses for the company or organization. in the data storage industry, you may offer a white paper to download called, Widespread adoption of flash in the enterprise data center. On the other hand, if the persona is CTO in the Web Analytics industry, you may offer a white paper to download called, Latest research in Web analysis, conversion optimization, funnel analysis and decision support systems.
You can install Persona Management (PM) on the DXHDigital Experience Hub or Ektron server. Consult a certified Ektron partner when planning a Persona Management deployment. The following image shows setup tasks for communicating between Ektron, DXH, and Persona Management.
Prerequisite: Persona Management Requirements
- An HTML5 CSS3-compliant browserAll browsers are supported EXCEPT for the following versions *and older*: IE 8, Chrome 3 and older, Firefox 3 and older, Safari 3 and older, and Opera 10 and older..
- A server that meets the Ektron System Requirements.
- Ektron 9.00 or higher. See also: Installing Ektron.
- DXH 2.0 or higher.
- A connection established for every enterprise application whose attributes you will use on the Manage Personas screen.
NOTE: If you need to change this path, open C:\inetpub\PersonaManagement\web.config
and edit the value of the ContextBusEndPointUrl
element.
(local)
. For SQL Express enter (local)\SQLExpress
.NOTE: If you want to use NT authentication and set up a trusted connection, leave the user name and password blank.
Click Install to complete the installation.
/web.config
file.<!--
and -->
)from the following tag.<!--<add key="PersonaManagementEndPointUrl" value="http://localhost"/>-->
PersonaManagementEndPointUrl
, enter the path to the Persona Management application, which you can obtain by clicking the Windows Start button > All Programs > Ektron > Persona Management > Persona Management. Make sure the path has no trailing slash (/).If you're using Windows 8 or 2012, press the Windows key ()/Q then enter Persona Management.
<!--
and -->
) from the following tag.<!--<add name="PersonaManagementMatchesModule" type="Ektron.Cms.PersonaManagement.HttpModules.PersonaMatchesModule, Ektron.Cms.PersonaManagement" preCondition="integratedMode" />-->
web.config
.After installing Persona Management, you have 2 options to grant access to users who will manage personas.
The following data sources and objects populate the Persona Management attributes list.
Bool, Customer, DateTime, Float, Integer, Status, Lookup, Memo, Picklist, PrimaryKey, State,
String
To add or remove supported objects from the attributes list for a data source:
persona.app.config
in the directory where Persona Management was installed.<add dataSourceId="Salesforce" dataSource="Salesforce" type="Ektron.PersonaManagement.DXH.SalesForceAttributeProvider, Ektron.PersonaManagement.DXH.DataSources" whiteListObjectNames="Contact" blackListObjectNames=""/>
whiteListObjectNames
property. After any existing objects, insert a comma (,) then object names.blackListObjectNames
property. You may want to eliminate data sources from the Persona Management screen. For example, if your site does not use HubSpot, there is no need to see HubSpot attributes in the list.
persona.app.config
in the directory to which Persona Management is installed.<!-- <add dataSourceId="Salesforce" dataSource="Salesforce" type="Ektron.PersonaManagement.DXH.SalesForceAttributeProvider, Ektron.PersonaManagement.DXH.DataSources" whiteListObjectNames="Contact" blackListObjectNames=""/> -->
Google Analytics lets you track persona activity on your site. You can discover the following information about users who match a persona:
You can use analytic information to refine a persona's Web experience, and with other Ektron features like Multivariate Testing, ultimately increase their conversionA goal that a user has completed, which occurs when a visitor takes action as a result of subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators. See also CTA. rate.
When you tracks analytic activity with persona data, these events typically occur.
NOTE: If a site visitor matches more than one persona, only the first one (as ordered on the Persona Management screen) is applied to that user's activity.
The following image shows communications between Ektron, DXH, and Persona Management.
To set up analytic tracking for personas:
web.config
.<appsettings>
. <add key="Persona_GoogleAccountId" value="UA-*****-**" />
value
parameter with your Google AccountId.<add name="PersonaManagementMatchesModule" type="Ektron.Cms.PersonaManagement.HttpModules.PersonaMatchesModule, Ektron.Cms.PersonaManagement" preCondition="integratedMode"/>
Ektron.PersonaManagement.Analytics.js
in the master page(s) or any page on which you want to track persona, using this code.<script src="Workarea/FrameworkUI/js/Ektron/Ektron.PersonaManagement.Analytics.js"> </script>