Sitecore Personalize vs. XM Cloud Embedded Personalization

Personalization remains a critical aspect of creating engaging digital experiences. For Sitecore customers who want to accomplish personalization tasks, particularly those just starting with XM Cloud, it can be confusing when trying to decide between XM Cloud Embedded Personalization and Sitecore Personalize.

In this post I’ll highlight the similarities and differences between these tools as well as how to make them work on an XM Cloud instance. 

Defining Sitecore’s Personalization Tools

XM Cloud Embedded Personalization refers to a set of out-of-the-box capabilities that enable marketers to personalize content in Sitecore Pages and create variants based on conditions defining real time audiences.

Sitecore Personalize is a personalization tool that provides marketers with advanced capabilities, including customized personalization rules, custom conditions, web experiences, experiments, audience segmentation, decisioning, and API access.

While each of these tools provide notable personalization capabilities it’s worth noting that XM Cloud Embedded Personalization represents only a fraction of all the functionality Sitecore Personalize offers.

Comparing Personalization Tools

Flexibility

XM Cloud offers out-of-the-box functionality so that marketers can personalize content. However, it’s limited to the page level and not at the component level. In order to personalize an image across five pages based on the user's location, for example, you must set the personalized image (by creating a variant) on each of those five pages.

Using Sitecore Personalize it’s possible to create a web experience or experiment and seamlessly integrate it into a component within XM Cloud, providing improved flexibility. For example,  it’s possible to define a decision model or set conditions on those same five pages. This model can leverage a user’s geolocation to dynamically display the personalized image. As a result,  there is no need to individually set the image on each page. Instead, you can streamline the process by simply invoking the web experience on the XM Cloud component.

Analytics

Each tool offers analytics capabilities to add more context for marketers for different use cases.

XM Cloud Embedded Personalization offers real time and real time pages analytics. Meanwhile, for Personalize, analytics is available for each experiment or experiences created.

Licensing

XM Cloud Embedded Personalization comes as part of the XM Cloud instance, while Sitecore Personalize requires a separate license.

Data and Time Duration Limits

XM Cloud Embedded Personalization provides 30 days of view events. On the other hand, Sitecore Personalize has no data limit or time duration for guests with customer guest type and 180 days for guests with visitor guest type.

Achieving Personalization in XM Cloud

For XM Cloud Embedded Personalization we must first set a Site Identifier, otherwise we can’t start with personalization in Pages. 

1. In the left ribbon go to the Personalize option, which activates personalization on the current page. In the image example image no site identifier has been assigned yet.

Add a Site Identifier by following these steps:

1. In the Personalize option click on Go to Settings.

   

2. Here, there is no site identifier assigned to our site. So, click on the 3 dots and then Create and assign a site identifier.

   

3. Name the identifier and fill the other fields, then click Save.

   

4. Now the site has an identifier assigned.

   

5. Once there is an assigned site identifier, we can leverage the Embedded Personalization functionality. This enables us to create variants and subsequently personalize the page components. Note: A yellow symbol will appear in the upper right corner to indicate that the content has not yet been personalized.

   

6. Different content can be assigned to a component. When the content is personalized, a green symbol appears.

   

Sitecore provides walkthroughs to integrate Sitecore Personalize with an XM Cloud instance.