We are excited to announce the new functionality available in PathFactory’s first release of 2021, Product Release A and our 100th. That’s a lot of releases but we have so many ahead of us as we have some great things coming down the pipe.
This release includes enhancements across all of our modules and a brand new feature within Campaign Tools, Microsite Builder! Dig in to learn more about the latest and greatest.
Platform Updates
Dynamic rendering for SEO
We’re always striving to implement SEO best-practices within PathFactory to ensure that when used with your Website PathFactory can only help. Dynamic rendering improves the rendering of your assets through PathFactory for search engine crawlers and reduces the need for search crawlers to execute javascript. This increases the likelihood that your pages get correctly indexed. Note: this improvement has already been implemented across all PathFactory customers so no action is required on your part to take advantage of this new capability.
“JavaScript can both slow pages down and be difficult for search engines to process successfully or immediately. By eliminating the need for search engines to process JavaScript, you can improve both speed-related crawl budget issues and prevent search engines from missing your JavaScript-loaded content.” (From Botify)
Dynamic logo in headers
In 2020 Release G we released dynamic logos on Explore Pages in defined locations and in the subsequent release we added dynamic text on explore pages. This functionality helps to more easily scale your ABM efforts for 1:many campaigns. In this release we’re adding the capability to have dynamic logos to your headers within the appearance settings. The dynamic logo header can be applied to Content Tracks, Microsites and VEX pages and will automatically change based on this visitor’s company as identified by our included 6sense account identification.
Campaign Tools
Microsite Builder
Many of you have told us that you want to include more than one Content Track on an Explore page. Well, now you can. And for those of you who know one of our Solutions Architects Murali, he’s been asking for three years for this feature! Yes, we are listening. We are excited to launch the initial release of Microsite Builder for Campaign Tools! It greatly expands on how Explore Pages get used and has many uses in your B2B Marketing.
Microsite Builder is a new sub-module within the Campaign Tools module. To learn more about it see our new nook article on how it works.
As we look to further enhance this feature in the coming months, we encourage you to provide feedback to your Customer Success Manager or Solutions Architect with any improvements you’d like to see. We’ll try to address them in future releases.
VEX
VEX has been updated to Zoom SDK version 1.8.6
This update now provides support for breakout rooms (in Zoom meetings) and polling (in Zoom Webinars) amongst other new features. Create even more interaction for your live events, using Zoom SDK 1.8.6. Note: we’ve automatically applied this update for all PathFactory VEX customers, so no action is required on your part to take advantage of these new features.
Visit the Zoom Web SDK release notes page for further details.
Preview your landing page with copy and share buttons
We’ve added both copy and share buttons for your VEX landing pages to easily preview them in a new tab and share them externally.
Remove on-demand videos from sessions
In the past, if you added an on-demand video to a session, you were only able to change it to another video, not remove an on-demand video altogether. Now you can remove the on-demand video by using the available delete button. This is helpful in scenarios where you might not want to make a live session available on-demand after it ends.
Update the look of your virtual event in the appearance settings
Previously the appearance settings of your VEX events piggybacked on existing Campaign Tools appearance settings (like Explore Pages and Target Content Tracks). This was a temporary solution designed to get VEX in your hands faster, but for a more permanent solution and to reduce confusion during configuration we’ve added a new dedicated appearance setting for VEX. This allows you to configure a background color, header title style, body title style and active body title style for your sessions. Previously the appearances of your sessions piggybacked on the Target – Flow appearance setting, so if you’re looking to change the appearance of your sessions you’ll want to use this new appearance setting and not Flow. You can also choose to hide the default navigation bar (ie the ‘header’), which is useful if you only have one video associated to your VEX event and do not need to navigate to additional videos.
Website Tools
Website Tools Analytics are now available within Path Analytics
The comprehensive suite of Website Tools analytics now has a new home – under Path Analytics. We wanted to assure you we are working to one cohesive view of your content, visitors and engagement performance on our journey to deliver “Content Intelligence”. This is the first step towards that and there is more to come.
A new drop down menu option under Path Analytics now provides complete access to all the Website Tools reports and dashboards. These dashboards are organized under various logical categories to provide you with deep insights into your visitors, their accounts, your content, and the interaction between these variables. This aligns with what is currently available for Campaign Tools performance metrics. And, if you have applied recommendations on your website, then additional sets of corresponding reports and dashboards are also made available under this drop down to show you how recommendations are working for you.
This new home for Website Tools analytics also ensures that ‘all’ users are now able to access the reports and dashboards and not just admin users as was the case previously.
New Carousel type added – ‘Recently Visited’
Research from leading analyst firms has shown that B2B buyers return to the same content over-and-over before buying. This is also something we see time and time again in our data. In our vision of making B2B marketing more like the great consumer platforms (like Amazon and Netflix), we wanted to ensure your visitors can pick right back up where they left off just like they do with these platforms in their consumer lives. Now, with the newly added concierge carousel “Recently Visited”, they can do just that. You can embed this carousel on your web pages to provide visitors an easy view and access to their recent consumption history on your website. The number of content assets to be shown on this new carousel can also be configured to your preference.
Default state of Guide component changed to “Open” state
To grab more visitor attention and drive higher clicks with recommendations on your website, the default behavior of Guide is now set to be in “open” state instead of closed state. This ensures that desktop visitors of your website are not missing or overlooking valuable recommendations. Note: you can still trigger when Guide opens based on a visitor’s time spent on page (in seconds) and/or their scroll distance.
Optimized mobile experience
For those visitors who access your websites on mobile devices, we have now enhanced the overall experience they get with carousels, whether recommendations, recently visited or manually curated by you, the marketer. This ensures smooth and seamless scrolls of the recommendations, intuitive arrows to provide scrolling cues, and clean presentation of each card. This enhancement also ensures the recommended content not hosted on your domain renders correctly in an overlay screen of your device with a simple click to close the overlay.
PathFactory for Sales
Improved Search behaviour
In the past when searching for a piece of content in PathFactory for Sales, assets that did not match the search criteria would still be displayed in the results list but would be greyed out, which, we admit, was confusing! Now, when searching for a piece of content, only matching assets will display in the list to provide a cleaner view for the user.
VEX events and sessions available in Content Activation Tab
Sales team members can now easily share VEX event and session URLs with prospects, customers, partners and more. So, the lifespan of virtual events, available on demand, can be extended and more users can share the hard work your marketing team has done to create really great virtual events.
VEX events and sessions available in Chrome Extension
Vex event and session URLs will also be available to share within the Chrome Extension, again, enabling your colleagues, whether in sales, marketing or customer success, to share your on-demand and live events with the world.
We know there is a lot to digest in this release. Your Customer Success Manager, Solutions Architect, Support and our product management team are here to help. Feel free to reach out if you need further clarification or would like a tour of some of the new features. We’ll be happy to assist.