At some point, every company finds itself compelled to focus even more on the needs of its customers. While it used to be possible to “simply sell a good product,” customers today expect more. The customer is increasingly becoming the center of attention for individual companies. “Customer-centricity” and “customer journey” are the new buzzwords here. I’d say: You have to put the customer at the center and take care of their needs.
The website is one way to connect with customers; Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms are other options, but how did the entire Internet actually begin in Germany about 35 years ago at the University of Karlsruhe? That’s right! An email was sent from the U.S. to Germany. Just like text messaging, email has been on its way out for about 20 years, yet it persists because it offers several advantages over other media: Communication can take place asynchronously, you can reach many people at once, and you can make offers tailored specifically to them. Last but not least, potential customers could also get in touch with the company if the bad habit of using “no-reply” addresses weren’t becoming more and more widespread. Just imagine: You receive a phone call, and the first thing you hear on the other end is, “I’m going to tell you something important, so please keep your mouth shut for now and don’t say a word.”
So what could be more natural than making an offer to your customers on your website while simultaneously reaching out to them via email? Actually, nothing—if it weren’t for a few technical hurdles and the GDPR, which everyone loves so much.
Of course, it would be much nicer if you could manage the content for both the website and email in one place, provide customers with only the most important information in the email, and let them find everything else on the website themselves. This is already possible in many ways. What was missing from Neos until now was the integration of Neos with Episerver.
punkt.de We’ve already connected several similar interfaces to NEOS in the past, so it was clear to us that we could create a solution here as well.
Technical Implementation Successful
Episerver’s REST API is reasonably well documented via Swagger (http://swagger.io), so we set to work reverse-engineering the interface. Since Neos is already the central system providing content in most projects anyway, we decided to establish Neos as the leading system here as well. This means that the content and user data required by Episerver (https://www.episerver.de) to send emails are available in Neos. The editor can then create content in Neos for both the website and the newsletter and transfer the relevant data to Episerver. This process is time-scheduled and fully automated. This makes it possible, for example, to create the content well in advance and then have it sent out fully automatically at a specific time.
Our integration also handles the removal of users who no longer wish to receive the newsletter. The actual sending of the newsletter is then handled by Episerver.
When creating an email newsletter, it is important to ensure that the newsletter displays correctly in all email clients. Technically, this is as complex as designing a website that is intended to be fully usable across all browsers and devices. Using “mjml” (https://mjml.io/), all common email clients can be supplied with the relevant data, and NEOS automatically prepares the data for email delivery.
Half the Effort, Double the Success
The advantage for system users is that they can maintain all content in a central location, and the layout of the emails is also managed within NEOS. As a result, the emails and the website appear to be a seamless whole, and users avoid the effort of having to maintain the layout in two separate places.
