The Risks of Website Personalization in Highly Regulated Industries

As customers demand more from their website experiences, marketers are striving to build relevant, personal messaging based on online behavior and implied intent.

In a 2016 survey conducted by Forrester on Digital Experience Delivery, 75% of respondents said they intend to personalize more of their web content, with web CMS tools as their top technology choice to accomplish this.

However, for some companies that's a pursuit wrought with steep penalties if it's not done to the letter of the law. Companies operating in highly regulated industries can be stymied by laws that require every web experience and interaction with a customer be preserved and archived.

While it might be relatively straightforward to archive a digital experience that's consistent across all users and channels, capturing one-off experiences where content is slightly (or completely) different due to behavioral profiling, requires far more sophisticated solutions.

Unfortunately, most web content management systems aren't up to the task of providing anywhere near the compliance controls needed to adequately version control, archive or back up content components. This shortcoming prevents the marketing teams of some highly regulated companies from delivering experiences that keep up with customer expectations.

Yet many CMS providers claim they have sufficient archiving models, either in order to win the business, or because they don't really understand how to capture a representation of a customer's digital experience that will hold up in a court dispute.

Because a great deal of Crownpeak customers are in regulated industries, we've continued to invest in technology that offers the protections companies need to drive marketing initiatives in the digital age.

Among our platform's capabilities are audit trails that capture changes to web pages and content assets, as well as additional safeguards for financial services companies that must meet specific requirements from regulators, such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission.