Championing Editor Experience to Improve Marketing Performance

A Guide for Digital Leaders Seeking to Empower Their Teams 

What is Editor Experience? 

Your site editors are the backbone of your digital marketing operations. They create, manage, promote, and curate your organisation’s web presence. It’s a cross-functional discipline with contribution from marketers, designers, proof-readers, writers, and approvers - all playing a part in shaping user experience. The experience these professionals have while managing digital content defines Editor Experience (EX). 

When building a content platform, the most important action we can take is to empower the people who deliver experiences to your customers. A seamless EX leads to better content, enhanced productivity, and a superior end-user experience. 

The industry of delivering content is sometimes referred to as the content supply chain. However, the machinery that underpins the supply chain delivers your Editor Experience. 

EX is nuanced. Content platforms, particularly Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) like Optimizely, integrate numerous tools, data sources, and workflows to help you manage the supply of content. Optimising EX requires a strategic, well-structured approach to ensure marketing efficiency and effectiveness. 

Why Should You Prioritise Editor Experience? 

The MarTech ecosystem has rapidly evolved, with hundreds of tools designed to support marketing functions. While innovation has enhanced specific aspects of marketing, it's also led to workflow fragmentation and tool fatigue among content editors. It’s not unusual for marketers to juggle between 10 and 20 different tools to manage a single piece of content from ideation to publication. 

For CMOs and digital leaders, there is a challenge: as these tools empower their teams, they potentially hinder productivity. Poor EX results in inefficiencies, increased costs, and ultimately impacts marketing agility - a critical component of success in a content-driven world. 

Key challenges of a poor Editor Experience: 

• Fragmented content workflows: editors must navigate multiple platforms for content creation, approval, optimisation, and publication. 
• Time-consuming manual tasks: repetitive tasks such as tagging, compliance checks, personalisation, and multichannel optimisation slow down execution. 
• High total cost of content production: writing, reviewing, enriching, tagging, and publishing add up to significant costs.
• Increased risk of content bottlenecks: delays in publishing due to inefficient workflows impact marketing timelines, creating opportunity costs.

By addressing these challenges, organisations can unlock higher efficiency, improved marketing ROI, and stronger digital experiences. 

When is the Right Time to Address Editor Experience Issues? 

Enterprise content management technology is a major investment - not just in terms of platform costs but also in implementation, training, and workflow transformation.

When should an organisation re-evaluate its EX? 

Common triggers for change include:

- Platform end-of-life: legacy systems reaching their support limit.

- Security and compliance updates: keeping pace with best practices in data privacy. 

- Accumulation of technical debt: multiple integrations and outdated workflows leading to inefficiencies.

- Business changes: mergers, acquisitions, or restructuring that demand content re-alignment.

- Customer journey misalignment: changes in brand positioning or audience behaviour that necessitate new content strategies.

- Regulatory compliance requirements: industry regulations impacting content governance. 

If multiple challenges emerge simultaneously, do not miss the opportunity to reassess the content management framework with a focus on Editor Experience. 

How to Optimise Editor Experience for Business Success  

Optimising EX requires a structured approach that aligns people, processes, and technology. 

1. Define content types & identify what works 
Understanding what content drives engagement is essential. Organisations should audit their existing content strategy and determine where improvements can be made, such as: 

• Thought leadership articles & blogs 
• Whitepapers & research reports 
• Videos & multimedia assets 
• Product descriptions & technical documentation

2. Clarify roles & responsibilities 
Ensuring a well-defined editorial workflow enhances productivity. Key roles include: 

• Content Strategists – align content with business objectives 
• Content Creators – develop engaging, high-quality content 
• Editors & Reviewers – maintain consistency and compliance 
• Analytics Teams – track performance and provide insights 

For larger teams, integrating a Content Marketing Platform (CMP) within the DXP can further streamline workflows. A CMP can draw processes such as project requests, project management, collaboration, approvals and multichannel publishing into a single streamlined platform. 

3. Map & optimise content workflows 
A process-driven approach enables smoother execution. Organisations should: 

• Document existing workflows – capture each stage from ideation to publication 
• Identify bottlenecks – assess delays and inefficiencies 
• Implement automation & AI – reduce manual work and speed up approval

DXPs like Optimizely provide built-in workflow automation, making it easier to manage complex content operations.

4. Improve editor UX & technology adoption 
The usability of a DXP directly affects EX. Best practices for an optimal editor UX include: 

• Intuitive interfaces: minimise training requirements with user-friendly dashboards 
• Seamless integrations: connect content, assets, and analytics within a single ecosystem 
• AI-assisted workflows: leverage AI for content tagging, personalisation, and optimisation 

5. Leverage AI for Content & Automation 
Optimizely has for a while now ingrained AI tools to empower the stages of the supply chain. 

AI-powered tools in Optimizely enhance EX by: 

• Generating insights on trending content topics
• Optimising search keywords & SEO performance
• Automating compliance & brand governance
• Enhancing personalisation to drive engagement
• Automated creation of content (visual and written)
• Applying personalisation criteria and running optimisation experiments 

With the right implementation, AI does not replace human creativity but supports teams by eliminating repetitive tasks. 

Optimizely launch Opal AI

Optimizely have this week released Opal, an AI content specialist   -  capable of creating content using hundreds of tools. 

By integrating CMP technology and Opal AI tooling, Optimizely has removed much of the friction within the supply chain - creating a platform where the AI holds a single, focused conversation with the content creator. 

As we’ve all been utilising a variety of AI tools to incrementally enhance stages of the process, the key advantage of Opal is it is a devoted AI assistant, trained on the content supply chain, working alongside your creators to increase focus, productivity and throughput. 

Sitting within a single platform, Opal can work across the entire content lifecycle in a single focused view - aligned with content creation in CMP and DAM, streamlining publishing and personalisation through the CMS to optimisation and experimentation. 

Opal provides a powerful tooling suite to empower your entire supply chain with AI agents providing assistance to your editors - building their efficiency and improving their performance.