Skip to content

SAP Emarsys

SAP Emarsys

SAP Emarsys is a cloud-based omnichannel customer engagement platform by SAP. It was developed to help marketing teams provide personalized and cross-channel customer experiences and, as a consequence, improve business results. Thanks to its KPI-based approach and marketer-friendly AI, the system enables users to easily plan and create campaigns that can be used for a targeted and real-time customer addressing.

Claudio Endres

Product Manager at FIS

Kontakt aufnehmen

What is SAP Emarsys?

SAP Emarsys is an omnichannel customer engagement platform that enables companies to address their customers effectively and in a personalized manner across various channels. SAP Emarsys enables companies to automate marketing campaigns and consistently address customers in real time across all relevant channels – from e-mail, Web and mobile to social media.

In doing so, SAP Emarsys eliminates silos and consolidates customer data via an open structure and API in such a way that omnichannel engagement is actively promoted. Integrated omnichannel automation simplifies cross-channel implementation and links marketing activities to create a fully optimized customer experience across all channels.

Play

This system is an integral part of the SAP customer experience portfolio and is considered SAP’s strategic marketing cloud solution. The solution bundles information and customer data from all systems involved in the sales process, such as ERP, CRM, online shop and customer service, in an integrated data basis.

This creates a 360 degree view of each customer: All interactions, transaction data and service contacts are centrally consolidated. This enables marketers to create campaigns that are tailored to the needs of individual customers and present them automatically across a wide variety of channels.

As part of the SAP customer experience (SAP CX) product line, Emarsys focuses particularly on improving the customer experience through consistent omnichannel experiences. Companies can strengthen customer retention, increase sales volume and boost the customer lifetime value with targeted, key figure-based marketing campaigns.

SAP Emarsys was originally developed as an independent marketing platform and acquired by SAP in 2020. Since then, Emarsys has been fully integrated into the SAP strategy and complements other CX solutions (for sales and distribution, service, e-commerce, etc.) to form a holistic suite.

SAP Emarsys

SAP Emarsys and the FIS Group

Customer engagement – automated across all channels

To the product

What functions are provided by SAP Emarsys Marketing Cloud?

SAP Emarsys Marketing Cloud offers a wide range of functions that enable companies to run high-level marketing automation. Some of the most important functions are as follows:

  • Omnichannel campaign management:
    Marketing campaigns can be planned and controlled across all channels. Emarsys supports e-mail, SMS, mobile push, social media, ads and offline channels so that customers can be addressed in a consistent way on each channel. This ensures that messages are received in a uniform and relevant manner.
  • Personalization in real time:
    Emarsys enables individual contents based on user behavior – in e-mails, on websites or mobile devices. The integrated AI recognizes relevant products or offers and ensures personalized experiences in real time.
  • Marketing automation and tactics:
    With over 100 predefined campaign templates, typical scenarios, such as shopping cart abandonment or reactivation, can be mapped automatically. Campaigns can be created and presented along the customer lifecycle using drag and drop.
  • Segments and target groups:
    Emarsys offers predefined segments based on best practices from 1,500 brands – e.g. first-time buyers or regular customers. These segments can be adapted flexibly or completely redefined in order to present contents in a targeted manner.
  • Analyses and AI insights:
    Dashboards and smart insights show how campaigns are performing in real time. AI identifies potentials in the target group and provides data-based recommendations for optimizing and increasing the customer lifetime value.
  • Integration into the system landscape:
    SAP Emarsys can be integrated seamlessly into existing system environments, such as SAP Commerce Cloud, CRM or CMS. This creates a uniform data basis across all systems.
  • User-friendly platform:
    The user interface is intuitively designed. Campaigns can be created quickly using Drag&Drop and templates make management easier. Fast implementation reduces effort and IT costs and updates are performed automatically in the cloud.

How does the omnichannel customer engagement platform work?

SAP Emarsys works by intelligently consolidating data and automating marketing processes. First, the platform aggregates customer data and contents from a single source in a central data layer: All relevant information from sales and distribution, online shop, CRM, service and other sources is brought together. This consolidated customer data enables a comprehensive understanding of each customer or sales prospect – from previous purchases and service requests to usage behavior on the website.

Based on this 360 degree view, AI algorithms can recognize patterns and suggest target group classifications. Marketing managers then define rules or use the suggested tactics to create fully automated campaigns. A triggered campaign can be created for instance that sends a customer an e-mail with a suitable offer the next day after visiting the website (without making a purchase). Emarsys manages interactions across all channels: Depending on the defined target and customer behavior, the system selects the optimal channel and time to send a message.

A key principle is omnichannel orchestration:
This means that Emarsys coordinates e-mails, SMS, push notifications, ads etc. in such a way that the customer experiences a coherent customer journey – without duplicate addressing or inappropriate contents. All customer responses are recorded in Emarsys enabling real-time adjustments to ongoing campaigns.nen ermöglicht.

Thanks to its deep integration with SAP systems, Emarsys can also use SD and service triggers. A sales employee, for instance, can automatically be notified when an important customer responds to a marketing campaign or a service ticket can influence which marketing message a customer receives (for the time being). This interconnection of front office (marketing, commerce) and back office (ERP, supply chain) data ensures that marketing campaigns always take place in the right context. Overall, SAP Emarsys functions as a hub for personalized customer addressing where all data is pooled and the right interactions are automatically triggered at the right time from there.

What benefits are provided by SAP Emarsys compared to conventional marketing tools?

  • Increase of customer lifetime value and business volume due to personalized addressing
  • Strengthening of the brand thanks to uniform appearance on different channels
  • Fast entry and target achievement by means of preconfigured best practices, strategies, tactics and fully integrated analyses
  • Increase of conversion rate through AI-supported evaluations in real time
  • Uniform data basis thanks to deep SAP integration
  • Continuous communication with sales prospects and customers due to marketing automation
  • High acceptance thanks to user-friendly user interfaces

What enterprises and industries is SAP Emarsys suitable for?

SAP Emarsys is aimed at medium to large companies in virtually all industries that manage many customer touchpoints. Emarsys really shines in the B2C environment, such as retail, e-commerce, telecommunications or financial services, by making personalized omnichannel experiences happen for millions of end customers.

However, B2B companies such as industrial manufacturers or wholesalers (e.g. in technical wholesale) also benefit from Emarsys: Here, the platform supports complex sales processes with marketing automation, e.g. through lead nurturing, account-based marketing and targeted support for existing customers. In short, SAP Emarsys is the ideal solution wherever personalized marketing needs to be scaled across multiple channels and throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

Smaller companies with a very manageable customer master sometimes do not need this level of performance, but Emarsys creates significant added value for growth-oriented companies with many interactions and channels.

SAP Emarsys in technical wholesale

SAP Emarsys also offers significant added value for companies in technical wholesale -i.e. B2B wholesalers of industrial needs, electrical components or other technical assortments. In this traditional sector, digital marketing is becoming increasingly important in order to better reach customers via online shops and digital channels. SAP Emarsys can be seamlessly integrated into existing ERP and e-commerce systems allowing wholesalers to use their extensive product and customer data for personalized marketing campaigns.

Does SAP Emarsys use artificial intelligence?

SAP Emarsys integrates artificial intelligence on multiple levels to make marketing more efficient, personalized and creative. Generative AI can be used to automatically create e-mail subject lines, content blocks and product searches for instance. Predictive analytics segments customer groups according to behavior, such as purchase or churn risk, and enables targeted campaigns. Automated omnichannel tactics such as “abandoned browse” or cross-selling effectively implement these insights. AI also optimizes shipping times and channel selection, delivers real-time personalization across all communication paths and consistently complies with data protection and ethical guidelines.

Conclusion

SAP Emarsys provides marketing decision-makers with a powerful omnichannel customer engagement platform that enables them to implement personalized customer experiences on a large scale. The platform combines data from various sources and enables marketers to centrally manage interactions across all channels – from e-mail marketing and Web personalization to mobile and e-commerce. Thanks to extensive marketing automation functions (including predefined tactics and AI-based insights), companies can efficiently automate their marketing campaigns while tailoring them to each individual customer. The results are greater customer retention, improved business results and a consistent brand experience across all points of contact. With rapid implementation, deep integration into SAP systems and a user-friendly user interface, SAP Emarsys offers a future-proof solution for companies looking to take their customer experience to the next level.

FAQ – frequently asked questions

No, SAP Emarsys is not a classical CRM system but a marketing and customer engagement platform. While a CRM (e.g. SAP Sales Cloud) is primarily used to manage customer master data and sales activities, Emarsys focuses on marketing automation, personalized customer addressing and omnichannel campaigns.

However, Emarsys uses data from CRM and other systems and supplements it in order to address customers specifically. It works hand in hand with CRM systems, but specializes in marketing and customer experience.

SAP acquired Emarsys in fall 2020. The acquisition was announced on October 1, 2020, and Emarsys has since been fully integrated into the SAP portfolio. Since the acquisition, the product has been marketed as SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement and is part of the SAP Customer Experience Suite. For Emarsys customers, this meant that new features and deeper integration with other SAP solutions were added on a regular basis.

Tactics are predefined, automated marketing campaigns supporting marketers in achieving a specific objective. This includes, for instance, reminders in the event of an abandoned search or the customer win-back. For creating the tactics, best practice solutions and experiences of all Emarsys customers were used. By means of individual configuration, the tactics can be adjusted to enterprise-specific requirements. The provided tactics enable a fast and easy entry into a successful marketing automation.

Lifecycle marketing is the total of all experiences a customer gains with a specific enterprise. This includes interactions as well as consumed content. Effective lifecycle marketing does not only support users in winning new customers, but also helps enterprises continuously bind existing customers to them. SAP Emarsys provides different tactics to address customers on the different levels of the customer lifecycle. This comprises, for instance, regular information by newsletters, personalized offers or rewards for customers who have reached certain milestones in their relationship with the enterprise.

By default, SAP Emarsys provides predefined interfaces to e-commerce platforms, such as SAP Commerce Cloud for instance. These standardized interfaces are continuously expanded. Furthermore, individual interfaces can be developed in CRM and service applications for instance.