Five Questions for a Martech Consultant about the Emarsys CXP

Customer Experience Platform (CXP) as a clearing in the MarTech jungle?

In the field of marketing technologies (MarTech), we like to speak metaphorically of a jungle, because the subject proves to be a multifaceted landscape with different terrains and disciplines. Due to the sheer mass, one easily runs the risk of losing the overview.

In the context of this metaphor, Customer Experience Platforms (CXPs) can be described as green clearings from which the majority of these terrains can be accessed. One of these clearings may be Emarsys.

To give a better perspective on the topic and the tool, we asked our colleague and MarTech Consultant David five questions about Emarsys. David has been working for many years not only in the MarTech environment, but also with Emarsys as a tool and is therefore an absolute expert in the field. He knows the features inside out and knows exactly what marketing automation and data-driven marketing is all about.

What is Emarsys and what can the tool do?

First of all, let’s clarify some MarTech terminology: In the Marketing Automation context, we work with two basic systems: CDP and CXP. The Customer Data Platform (also called CDP) focuses as a tool on the preparation, transformation and aggregation of customer data. A Customer Experience Platform (CXP for short) focuses its attention on the omnichannel customer experience. It enables omnichannel delivery of relevant marketing messages to the target audience. Emarsys, as part of SAP, has undergone a strong evolution in recent years. Many still know Emarsys exclusively as an email marketing tool, but that is far from all! The tool has now evolved into an omnichannel engagement platform, fulfilling all the requirements for a successful CXP.

After all, personalizing the customer experience has long since ceased to be a purely email-based affair and now spans a multitude of channels. Emarsys therefore offers online marketing, lead management and campaign management in addition to features such as reporting and analytics. This enables the creation of personalized, data-driven campaigns.

Which business problems does Emarsys solve?

Emarsys can be used to solve all the well-known problems of online marketing in e-commerce. One of them is inconsistent customer targeting. Customers are contacted by the company through different communication channels, but the overall experience (the customer experience) is still not thought holistically. Emarsys addresses this problem and ensures a consistent omnichannel customer approach through its different templates and functions. This ensures a holistic customer experience across all company channels.

Predefined use case templates and workflows for personalized addressing of customers are another specialty of Emarsys. Especially in the classic B2C environment, this enables a greater competitive advantage in retail or e-commerce. For example, increases in the average shopping cart value or the conversion rate can be achieved quite efficiently.

What makes the tool special?

A highlight of Emarsys is the aforementioned selection of diverse use case templates that find an answer to a wide variety of e-commerce problems. Companies can increase their brand awareness faster through the predefined strategies and measure and monitor their activities in a more targeted way.

Emarsys also has a very good and intuitive template builder. Since the tool has historically grown up in email marketing, the builder is particularly strong in this area.

And Emarsys has also found its place in the SAP family. The tool is integrating better and better with the existing SAP Flagships, enabling increasingly seamless collaboration between different tools.

What development potential do you see?

When working with segmentations, unfortunately not all data points and data sources can be used at the same time yet. Therefore, a separate segmentation builder is always needed per data source, which could sometimes prove impractical in application.

Emarsys has some limitations in web tracking. A problem for which SAP, on the other hand, has already found a suitable solution with its CDP.

What advice do you have for others who are considering using this tool?

Before implementing Emarsys and importing data into the tool, you should first think in detail about your own data strategy. This means that the first thing to do is to build an architecture and identify source systems from which the marketing use cases can sustainably benefit.

It also makes sense to take a look at the SAP CDP, which can be connected before Emarsys. This namely offers some additional possibilities for data transformation as well as aggregation.

Thanks for sharing your valuable experience with us, David!