If Content is King, then Context is Queen. Personalization is all about matching the right content or messaging to the right person, and doing that means you need to know something about who that person is. In fact, the more you know, the more likely you are to be successful.

That's not to say that all context is created equal though. Depending on your organization and your audience, different pieces of information may be critical or close to meaningless. As a simple example, a retailer may be heavily effected by a customer's local weather. Cold and rainy, you may need a rain coat. Warm and Sunny? Time for the beach!

Today's episode is all about cataloging the kinds of things that we can know about the consumers of our digital experiences. The list is quite broad and it will range from the fairly straight forward and obvious, into perhaps surprising and sometimes creepy.

Episode 8 - Context, Context, Context

"What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." -- Juliet

Does it matter what we call "Personalization"? I think it does, and the industry is struggling. Today I heard a new proposal, "Personification", which would be used to address some level of privacy concerns. What we need is a Taxonomy for Personalization, and it turns out I'm not the first person to think that. So that's what this episode is all about.

Episode 9: What's in a name?

Building Customer Experience has many challenges. Content Strategy, measurement of business goals and personalizations. I sit down in this episode with Melanie Poitras, a friend and colleague who works with Acquia's customers to help define and plan their customer experience strategy, often leading up to implementing Personalization.

Episode 10: Customer Experience Fundamentals with Melanie Poitras

Will your website's personalization algorithms be taking over the world? Not any time soon according to Katherine Bailey, our guest on this week's show. We cover the underpinnings of machine learning and how it applies to personalization, and talk about a few recent blunders in the field.

Episode 11: Machine Learning - Magic, Mayhem or just Math?

Personalization is about building great experiences, and there is no better way to understand what experiences matter than by talking with real people. User Experience Research is a field that allows us to understand our users in a systematic and meaningful way, inspiring us to make better experiences.

Episode 12 - User Experience Research with Melissa Leach

Hello and welcome to the Personalization Podcast, the show about understanding, planning, creating and analyzing personalized experiences.

Personalization sits at the intersection of technology and the humanities, encompassing subjects as diverse as data science and machine learning, several branches of psychology, organizational structure and management, big data challenges, and various other technical and non-technical subjects, and we cover it all here.