Kentico 11. What you need to know.

Kentico has devised a new product strategy by looking at the growing customer and user experience expectations, as well as focusing on the need for multiple channel touchpoints and device compatibility requirements.

Version 11 can be summarised into four main feature sets:

• Advanced Email Marketing, providing easy drag and drop functionality and enhanced insights making campaign execution better than ever.
• New and enhanced e-commerce features for advanced discounts scenarios, gift cards, coupons, delayed payments and more.
• GDPR and Data Protection, providing users with the data security they expect.
• Connectors for bi-directional synchronisation with platforms like Salesforce, Marketo and within your e-Shop via Ucommerce.

Advanced Email Marketing

Although email marketing is not a new feature within Kentico, the new and advanced features start to match some of the functionality you see in pure play email providers such as Campaign Monitor and MailChimp. These include optimised user flows, enhanced user experience and drag and drop email builder allowing for easy construction of your next email campaign. Upgraded widgets are available for content construction, including new product and article widgets, with enhanced preview features optimised for mobile.

Along with email personalisation, the reporting functions have been enhanced with analytics on performance, feeds and campaigns (demographics, unsubscribe demographics, details of every single contact in the database, highlighting of activities, a historical overview on personas and so on).

Enhanced e-commerce

The Kentico v11 strategy for e-commerce was to 'make e-commerce great again' (MEGA). To fulfil this goal the new version has been built on a modular framework allowing for easier customisation without the use of code. The new framework has let in some cases for a 75% reduction in code, although be mindful that if your existing Kentico instance has heavy customisation, then this could require some work.

There are new features available with categorisation for sections (and subsections), brands and collections being added which can be used in correlation with discounts, menus and search. The rebuilt payment gateway framework now has built-in support for PayPal and Authorize.net gateways.

Other notable features include multiple coupons per order, gift cards that can be used across numerous orders and a faceted search which is integrated with the Azure search.

uCommerce integration will allow for multiple sales channels, PIM (Product Information Management) which in turn allows for multiple version of the same product to be served, e.g. A winter catalogue vs a summer catalogue can have different shipment methods, payment and refunding rules.

GDPR and Data Protection

Kentico 11 now allows site managers to create a detailed inventory of the data produced and stored within Kentico. Consent can be designed to support the legal requirement to allow for the processing and storing of personal data of site visitors.

Consents can be multilingual, multi-layered; short, long, available on a privacy page, and archived. They can be used across the whole solution for contacts and activities tracking, analytics, contact segmentation and email marketing recipients, online forms and personalisation.

Kentico 11 supports the rights of the data subject to be forgotten, allows access to their data and for data portability. The new data protection framework will be especially crucial for companies who trade or advertise in Europe where this will be a legal requirement.

Connectors

Kentico 11 connectors allow you to leverage powerful platforms such as Dynamics 365 and Salesforce allowing for lead capturing via the Kentico online forms supporting bi-directional synchronisation of contacts and users.

There is also support for Marketo and Zoho CRM meaning easier lead capturing via Kentico online forms, visitors activity tracking and personalising visitors experience based on their market data.