Meet Lindy Roux, the latest addition to Tendo’s content strategy/leadership team. A 20-year marketing veteran, Lindy has worked extensively for digital integrators, bringing the content and UX strategy behind various marketing tools to her clients. She’s infamous for her “lock-ins,” where she’ll put a technologist, a UX designer, and a content strategist in a room and keep them there until they all agree on how a particular tool will be built to best serve the user.

But technology alone won’t solve your problems. The best conversations and most effective marketing comes from weaving technology into your considerations of content and UX. Here are Lindy’s top five ways to get more out of martech:

1. Prioritize taxonomy

Taxonomy is more than just the way you organize content on your website. Ideally, it’s a holistic categorization that drives almost everything you do, including personalization, back-end asset management, recommendation engines, and dynamic content.

For example, Netflix has a team of people applying taxonomy. Those taxonomists—with the help of the AI team—are the reason why Netflix can get their recommendations down to a “dark thrillers with strong female leads” level of specificity.

Every part of the digital experience related to tools and technology should be supported by thoroughly organizing content and providing effective labels. Unfortunately, this is typically what holds people back, since it’s time consuming and potentially mind numbing.

2. Approach and apply data strategically

Most organizations we work with are sitting on valuable data, but very few are applying it in the most effective way. All the data possibilities can  tempt you to get way too complex.

Remember, many things are doable, but not all are beneficial. Sure, it’s possible to personalize virtually every aspect of your customer’s experience. But should you?

Understand where and how to personalize in a way that works toward your goals. Consider the attributes and triggers you’ll use. Will there be enough content to match the level of detail you’re aiming for? Of course, having a thoughtful content strategy helps, since it’s the foundation for anything you want to do with your technology.

3. Develop a structured content mindset

Structured content is the idea the you create once, publish everywhere. This means your content can be broken apart and served up in different channels based on the customer need or your experience goals.

Tools can automate the process of serving up bits of content to the right channels. But content creators need to have the structure in mind from the beginning for the automation to truly be effective.

Make your content do more for you with a structured content approach. Think of structured content as a recipe, which includes ingredients and instructions. List all the ingredients as individual pieces of content (as well as part of the recipe), and a user can automatically add those ingredients to a shopping list or a cart.

4. Be globally sophisticated

Marketing technology can localize content for different geographies, but, again, a strategy behind that capability is key to making it work.

A one-size-fits-all tactic usually isn’t very effective. Consider using different levels or tiers, where the websites for some regions or countries have the complete experience, and others have a scaled-down version. This allows for a resource-sensitive approach to localization.

Globalization must also go hand-in-hand with cultural sensitivity. That can’t all be done with automation. You can easily translate the information, but also consider if elements like your photography is culturally appropriate, relevant, and engaging. It’s not just about the words; you’re creating a whole experience for each locality.

5. Access true ROI

Analytics boils down to the ability to measure everything you’ve done and then optimize based on those results. But it’s hard to optimize if you don’t know what you’re measuring.

You might have all the numbers at your fingertips, but if you don’t have a measurement plan, the numbers won’t get you anywhere. Each piece of content should have a measurable goal, otherwise you just have a lot of pretty dashboards that don’t inform ROI. You should be able to find out how your content stacks up against your goals.

So when there’s a new tool that you’re itching to add to your marketing quiver, remember—no matter how cool it is, developing ­­a strategy around it will ensure it’s really worth your while. Make the technology work for you, not the other way around.

For more from Lindy, check out her presentation on using personas to inform content strategy and UX at the UXPA International Conference in Puerto Rico, June 25–28. And stay tuned for a full recap of her presentation to follow!