Sitecore released a new product category this week called Customer Experience Management, the goal of which is "to manage the full customer experience and to create relevant and valuable customer conversations that engage, entertain and inform," according to a company statement.

The new platform has three major pieces including Engagement Analytics, Engagement Automation and the Personalization and Experience Editor.  

Analyst Scott Liewehr from The Gilbane Group says these pieces come together to provide marketers with "nearly literally 'engagement in a box.'" He says that doesn't mean other vendors aren't offering similar packages, only that others are using third-party partners instead of native applications as Sitecore has chosen to do.

He says the new Sitecore "should allow the marketer or experience managers to easily configure the rules and personalized web experiences for each of its target audiences or personas, all within the context of the page itself. This should take much of the guesswork out of the personalization process." The screen shot below shows the Personalization Editor in action:

Of the three pieces, Liewehr is most intrigued with Engagement Analytics, which he says change the dynamics of how to measure website success. "[It] really shifts analytics from quantitative click-counting, much of which is meaningless, to qualitative measurement of the effectiveness of a campaign, etc." The screen shot below illustrates the new analytics in action:

This product is part of what's been called web experience management (WEM), a category whose validity is still open to argument. Just last summer, Janus Boye called the term "meaningless vendor jargon." Strong words, those, but not everyone agrees. Liewehr thinks its a valid term as far as it goes.

"I'm in lock-step as far as WEM being a valid category, but I differ with many vendors in the way they're using it interchangeably with [web content management (WCM)]." In Liewehr's view WCM is a component of WEM and vendors have taken steps to position themselves in what he calls the "engagement hub."

Regardless of what you want to call it, Sitecore's customer engagement products will be released in June.

For more information:
- see the Sitecore press release

Related Articles:
Sitecore and Lionbridge team up on web localization 
New Sitecore release to leverage the cloud  
Sitecore teams with Telligent