Dotdigital blog

What’s new in Dotdigital: Improved UX and AI powered insights

Discover the new features available in our May release.

Customers everywhere are growing tired of bad customer experiences and uninspiring marketing that appeals to the masses, not the individual. As a result, marketing is forced to change. The role of the marketer must evolve, and the tech must follow. Here at Dotdigital, our tech is leading the change.

Predictive insights, AI-powered campaign support, and unified customer data all give you next-level tools to deliver successful marketing that stands out and lands with impact.

Let’s explore the new features now available from our May release.

Get early access to the new Dotdigital

Welcome to the new Dotdigital. We’ve upgraded our platform architecture and UI to ensure Dotdigital is everything you need now, and in the future. Taking on board customer feedback, the new version of our platform reflects changes in the marketing landscape, and in the ways you want to work. A customer experience and data platform built by marketers, for marketers.

A better user experience

We’ve updated various areas of the Dotdigital user interface to perfectly align with the working methods of the future marketer. We’ve incorporated your comments and suggestions to make it easier than ever for you to utilize all elements of the platform to the fullest, and save time thanks to our new, streamlined navigation.

Changes include:

All channels now under one campaigns section.
New and improved audience section to manage contacts, segments, personas, and more.
Easy to discover analytics and reporting with the new analytics section.
A new connect area for all your data requirements.

Plus, we’ve also made improvements to our campaign management tools to make the day-to-day management of your campaigns run smoother.

Updated campaign features:

Simpler campaign replies. Campaign replies are now easier to manage in the Dotdigital platform.
Improved sign-off process. You can now select multiple team members to have sign-off powers within the platform, reducing backlog and improving usability for large teams.
Better campaign tags management. Campaign tags can be used to filter and customize performance reports in Dotdigital. A new dedicated area makes it much easier to see and manage all existing and new tags.
Easier organization. You can now filter your campaign reports by date and even see how transactional campaigns performed during a specific time.
Effortless product search. We’ve also made some improvements to make it quicker and simpler to find the products you want to include in campaigns.

Get a stronger, unified picture of your customers

Image showing an email contact field with example email address joined with dots to an SMS contact field and example number also linking to an image of a person, labeled unified contact

Our new unified contact data technology allows you to link all customer data back to one single customer record. You now have more ways to identify contacts, and we’ll continue to expand the sources available to you, including our improved API and our ever-growing list of integrations.

Unified contact data allows you to get the full picture, and gives Dotdigital’s analytics tools more data to analyze when creating recommendations for you. Unified contact data is a big part of what powers a CXDP to enable you to elevate your customer experience.

Why unified contact data is important

All your data in one place. All of your contact data will be kept together as a single source of truth.
A clearer, 360 degree view. Unified contact data strengthens the insights you have on a customer, no matter where that data originates.
Improved campaigns. Seamlessly create data-led campaigns in Dotdigital, providing highly relevant and personalized experiences for your customers.
Save time. Benefit from all of your customer data from different software applications and multiple variations of customer accounts automatically syncing to Dotdigital.
A future-proof platform. Unified contact data ensures Dotdigital grows with you as your business and tech stack grows.

How unified contact data works

Unified contact data allows you to unify your customer data from various marketing channels and different software that makes up your customer journey, under one roof. This gives you the full picture of your customers’ journey and experience so you can react with relevant and timely communications across multiple channels.

Unified contact data is now in a Public preview, so you can self-enroll straight away to unify your contact data if you wish to. All of our customers who took part in the limited early-preview love it, so we’re confident you’re going to as well.

An improved API

Our improved API helps you better unify your data by making it easier to connect your systems. Greater efficiency and speed means you can enjoy high speed access to data and easily put in and get out the data you need. There’s also more guidance to help you build your integration and troubleshoot any issues issues, faster than ever before. Our improved API is ready to integrate with your marketing stack now, and in the future too. Flexible infrastructure means that our platform is built to grow with you, and support you in that growth too.

Some highlights include:

RESTful API with JSON payloads.
Higher than ever call rates.
High performance real-time data access, with bespoke content selection criteria.
High throughput bulk data import mechanisms.
Support for service versioning to ensure you automatically access the best version of the service without backward comparability issues.
Unified security across all our APIs.

How to get started

You can start using the new Dotdigital today! Just head to this article in our help center for more information.

The power of generative AI at your fingertips

Image showing the icon of WinstonAI, a cartoon dog, and a speech bubble offering feedback with three example alternative suggestions below

At Dotdigital, we’ve long utilized AI technology to offer you sophisticated insights, find engagement and revenue opportunities, and provide concrete actions for you to implement. Our latest release continues to build on this by giving you helpful tips and tricks on how to improve your campaign you when you’re putting together email content, or writing your next subject line.

Powered by WinstonAI

WinstonAI encompasses all sorts of known and new smart technology in the platform. Today we’re focusing on his generative AI capabilities. To do this, WinstonAI draws on Microsoft Azure’s generative AI technology (GPT-3.5) to offer suggestions and inspiration on how to take your campaign content to the next level. Working also with Microsoft provides us with the security and enterprise promise of Azure, so you can be sure that you are adopting AI responsibly.

What is generative AI?

Generative AI is a form of machine learning that can produce various types of content, including text, imagery, and even audio, by analyzing huge amounts of previous data. Recent breakthroughs in the technology mean that the power of generative AI is now accessible to marketers in their day-to-day work, and we’ve incorporated this into the Dotdigital platform.

Why generative AI in marketing is important

Get inspiration. WinstonAI appears when you create an email campaign and provides relevant and personalized inspiration based on analyzing pools of data.
Stay focused and save time. You will receive AI-powered suggestions just when you need them most. WinstonAI is easily made part of your existing processes.
Better content, more engagements. WinstonAI gives tips on how to improve the tone of your email, points out where your audience might need additional detail, and highlights opportunities that will make your campaign even more successful.
Subject line support. WinstonAI will provide three subject line alternatives to the one you’re working on. These recommendations are based on data from your 25 most recent email sends, to ensure the advice is tailored to your brand and campaign style.

Predictive analytics

Image of a customer record with information including 'predicted next order date, churn probability, predicted CLV, and predicted total orders'

Know your customers’ next move before they do with predictive analytics. AI analyzes your customer data to create intelligence-driven predictions, so you don’t need to rely on guesswork.

Predictive analytics let you know what engagement and revenue opportunities are on the horizon and allows you to be proactive in converting that customer. This makes it easy to act at just the right moment to increase sales and put effective, long-term retention strategies in place.

Why predictive analytics are important

Stronger campaigns. Improve customer targeting with intelligent insights powered by data.
Improve CX. Provide an enhanced customer experience with expert personalization and just-in-time targeting.
Save time. Let the tech do the heavy lifting for you, so you can focus on other campaign elements.
Be one step ahead. Get exclusive intel to create proactive targeting strategies that will keep you ahead of the game.
Insights you can trust. Have more confidence in your campaigns, inspired by concrete data analysis.

How predictive analytics works

Our predictive analytics focus on:

Churn probability: (e.g. This customer is 40% likely to churn).
Predicted next purchase date: (e.g. This customer’s next purchase date is predicted to be June 3).
Predicted customer lifetime value: (e.g. This customer’s predicted CLV is $360).
Predicted total future orders: (e.g. This customer is predicted to have three future orders in total).

The data will be available in:

Single customer view as dynamic metrics.
You can also create segments that use predictive metrics to decipher which customers to include.

How you can use predictive analytics

Prevent shopper churn. Easily identify which customers are at risk of leaving your brand. Be proactive and target these customers with a powerful win-back campaign.
Hit targets faster. Segment contacts based on predicted next purchase date and create campaigns with urgent messaging to encourage sales, such as time sensitive discount codes and free shipping for a limited time only.
Encourage loyalty. Target customers that are likely to shop elsewhere by creating a segment based on whether they have missed their predicted purchase date. Make these customers feel valued and revive their interest before they go to another brand.
Drive profitability. Identify and reward your future high-value customers with predicted customer lifetime value. Nurturing these customers early on can help ensure long-term success.

To get started with predictive analytics, sign up to our exclusive early access preview here.

What else is coming in this release?

New campaign heat maps

An image of a heatmap, it has an example email with some sections such as the main CTA button in red, and other areas are green to yellow, to red to show traffic clicks.

New campaign heat maps provide a clear, visual map of where contacts are engaging with your emails. Heat maps use a traffic light system to visually highlight where the most clicks take place, with red meaning most clicked, and green meaning least clicked.

This allows you to re-structure your emails to ensure key content is in the most prominent positions.

New Shopify and WooCommerce metafields

We now sync metafields (also called custom fields) as part of our out-of-the-box integrations for Shopify and WooCommerce. Merchants will be able to utilize the extra data they store against their customers and orders to create even more personalized experiences.

Metafields will be synchronized automatically and can be used to to create segments, power hyper-personalized dynamic content, and be deciding factors in automations and more.

New Gorgias integration

Image showing a customer with a speech bubble saying 'hey, I need help with my order' the image also has overlayed text saying 'open ticket' and 'exclude from marketing'

Gorgias is a customer service platform built specifically built for ecommerce brands. It allows support reps to communicate with customers across multiple channels, including live chat, SMS, social media, email, phone and more.

This integration will allow you to

Get more insight into your customers, enabling you to personalize the messaging, content, channel and timing of your communications.
Exclude contacts based on ticket status.
Automatically enroll contacts into a program when their ticket is closed.

Back-in-stock notifications

Image showing back in stock notification including the product image, a kettle, and then the copy 'Your favorite item is back! And here is a 10% discount on us.'

As part of this release we launched back-in-stock notifications for all Big Commerce and Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) merchants using Dotdigital. Shopify merchants have been using and loving this feature for a few years. Our easy-to-use configurator means you can create on-brand notifications in no time at all and start generating more revenue in the background straight away.

Once a customer has signed up to back-in-stock notifications from your site, you can send them a triggered email as soon as the item is available to purchase. Back-in-stock email automations are a simple yet effective solution to recovering otherwise lost revenue. Not only do you save that initial sale, but also reduce the chances they will shop from a competitor (there and then, but also in the future).

Over to you

Now it’s over to you to get started with these new features, and of course reach out to your Customer Success Manager or head to our help center if you need any more information.

We’re also running a host of webinars to support this new release, sign up below.