Building Effective Marketing Campaigns with SAP Emarsys

Here’s the gap I keep seeing. The platform is configured. The data is connected. And then the marketing team stares at the screen with no idea what to launch first. That’s where implementations stall. Every time.

Emarsys takes a different approach than most marketing tools. Instead of handing you a blank canvas and saying figure it out, it ships 60+ pre-built tactical programmes designed for specific business outcomes. You customise them, launch them, measure what they bring in. The tactics library is, hands down, the most underused feature we see. Teams spend weeks building abandoned cart flows that Emarsys already ships out of the box. Nota bene: check the tactics library before you build anything from scratch.

TL;DR: Emarsys campaigns work across 6 channels (email, SMS, push, in-app, web, ads) driven by dynamic segments that update in real time. Email marketing delivers an average ROI of $36 per $1 spent (Litmus, 2023). Emarsys extends that ROI by adding pre-built tactics (abandoned cart, win-back, post-purchase), AI-optimised send times, and revenue attribution from actual transaction data.

How Does the Emarsys Campaign Workflow Work?

Litmus found that email marketing delivers an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent (Litmus, 2023). Emarsys is designed to make that ROI repeatable across multiple channels. But the biggest mistake we see is teams jumping straight to campaign creation without getting segmentation and data right first. Do the boring stuff. Then launch.

Step 1: Build your audience segments

Everything starts with segmentation. In Emarsys, segments are dynamic: they recalculate automatically based on current data whenever a campaign launches.

You can build segments from:

• Contact properties: demographics, location, language, custom fields
• Email behaviour: opened, clicked, didn’t open, bounced
• Purchase history: bought product X, spent over EUR 200, purchased in the last 30 days
• Web behaviour: browsed category Y, viewed product Z three times
• Loyalty data: current tier, points balance, days since last redemption
• Lifecycle stage: new lead, first-time buyer, active customer, at risk, churned

The real power is combining these. “Gold loyalty members who browsed winter coats at least twice but haven’t purchased in 30 days” becomes a single segment that updates on its own. That’s a neat bit of engineering.

Step 2: Choose your campaign type

Emarsys supports several campaign types, each suited to a different job:

Batch campaigns send a message to an entire segment at a scheduled time. Product launches, seasonal promotions, newsletter-style stuff. They support A/B testing with different subject lines, content, or send times.

Triggered campaigns fire automatically when a specific event occurs: customer abandons a cart, completes a purchase, reaches a loyalty milestone, goes quiet for 60 days. These are consistently the highest-performing campaigns because they arrive at exactly the right moment. I’ve seen triggered abandoned cart emails generate 15-20x the revenue per send of batch campaigns. That’s not an exaggeration.

Transactional messages handle order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets. Separate from marketing campaigns but they use the same personalisation engine.

Step 3: Create personalised content

Emarsys provides a Visual Content Editor for building emails without code. But proper personalisation goes well beyond inserting a first name.

With SAP data flowing into Emarsys, you can personalise based on:

• Points balance and next tier threshold from SAP Loyalty
• Recently viewed products from Commerce Cloud
• Order status from S/4HANA
• Support ticket history from Service Cloud
• Consent preferences from CDC

Conditional content blocks let you show different content to different segments within the same campaign. A Gold member sees premium product recommendations. A Bronze member sees an upgrade incentive. Same email template, different experience. Crisp.

Step 4: Set timing and channel

Emarsys’s AI-powered optimal send time figures out when each contact is most likely to engage, based on their historical behaviour. Instead of blasting everyone at 10 AM, each recipient gets the message at their personal best time.

For omnichannel campaigns, you set channel priorities. Customer doesn’t open the email within 24 hours? Trigger an SMS. Still no engagement? Try a push notification. The system handles the cascade on its own.

What Pre-Built Tactics Does Emarsys Offer?

McKinsey reports that 71% of consumers expect personalised interactions from brands, and 76% get frustrated when they don’t receive them (McKinsey, 2021). Pre-built tactics make that personalisation operational from day one.

Emarsys’s tactical programmes are organised by objective:

Acquisition tactics:

• Welcome series for new subscribers
• First-purchase incentive for leads who browse but don’t buy
• Referral programme activation

Retention tactics:

• Post-purchase follow-up with product care tips or cross-sell
• Birthday and anniversary campaigns
• Loyalty tier progression nudges (“You’re 200 points from Gold”)
• Re-engagement for customers inactive 30/60/90 days

Win-back tactics:

• Graduated discount offers for lapsed customers
• “We miss you” campaigns with personalised product recommendations
• Expiring points or benefits reminders

Revenue-driving tactics:

• Abandoned cart recovery (email + SMS cascade)
• Browse abandonment (viewed but didn’t add to cart)
• Replenishment reminders for consumable products
• Price drop alerts for wish-listed items

Each tactic comes with recommended channel selection, timing, and personalisation logic. You adjust the messaging, branding, and discount levels for your business. The underlying strategy is already figured out. That’s the part that saves you weeks.

How Do You Measure Campaign Success in Emarsys?

HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing report found that 63% of marketers plan to increase their marketing automation investment (HubSpot, 2024). What’s driving that spend? Measurement. If you can prove ROI, budgets follow. We’ve refined this measurement approach across multiple Emarsys implementations for retail and e-commerce clients.

Deliverability metrics: delivered count, bounce categories (soft, hard, block), exclusions from blocklists or frequency caps. These tell you whether your messages are actually reaching inboxes. If deliverability is dodgy, nothing else matters.

Engagement metrics: opens, clicks, social shares, unsubscribes. Trend analysis by time of day and day of week helps you optimise future send times.

Revenue metrics: this is where Emarsys pulls ahead of most platforms. Revenue attribution ties actual purchase data from SAP Commerce Cloud or S/4HANA to specific campaigns and channels. You see exactly how much revenue each campaign generated. Not estimated conversions. Real numbers from real transactions.

Lifecycle impact: track how campaigns affect customer lifecycle stage. Did the win-back campaign actually reactivate lapsed customers? Did the post-purchase series bump up repeat purchase rate? These are the metrics that justify the ongoing investment.

What Makes Email Campaigns Work in Emarsys?

Bain & Company found that increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost profits by 25-95% (Bain, 2023). Email is still the most cost-effective channel for driving retention. Here’s what Emarsys gives you specifically.

IP warm-up: before launching large-scale campaigns, Emarsys guides you through an IP warm-up programme to establish sender reputation. A lot of teams skip this. Don’t. Poor deliverability kills your ROI before you’ve even started.

Dynamic content: conditional blocks show different content to different segments within the same email. Loyal customer sees premium recommendations. New subscriber sees a welcome offer. Same template, different experience.

A/B testing: test subject lines, send times, content variations, and calls to action. Emarsys automatically routes to the winning variant based on your chosen metric (opens, clicks, or revenue).

Compliance: list-unsubscribe headers, frequency caps, consent-aware sending. Keeps you compliant with GDPR and CAN-SPAM. When connected to SAP CDC, consent changes propagate automatically.

FAQ

What types of campaigns can I run in Emarsys?

Three main types: batch campaigns (scheduled sends to segments), triggered campaigns (automated responses to events like cart abandonment or tier changes), and transactional messages (order confirmations, shipping notifications). Triggered campaigns consistently deliver the highest engagement because they arrive at exactly the right moment with relevant content.

How does Emarsys personalisation go beyond inserting a name?

Emarsys pulls live data from SAP systems: loyalty points balance, recently viewed products, order history, service interactions. All of that flows into personalisation tokens. Conditional content blocks show different content to different segments within the same campaign. AI optimises send time per individual contact. The result is genuinely contextual messages, not just “Hi [FirstName].”

Can I run campaigns without SAP Commerce Cloud?

Yes. Emarsys works with any e-commerce platform via API integration. That said, the pre-built product catalogue sync, real-time order events, and ERP-linked revenue attribution only activate with native SAP connections. Non-SAP integrations need custom development for the same data flows.

How do the pre-built tactics work?

Each tactic is a complete campaign strategy: trigger conditions, channel selection, timing, personalisation rules, recommended content structure. You customise the messaging, branding, and discount levels for your business. The abandoned cart tactic, for instance, includes a 1-hour email follow-up, a 24-hour SMS reminder, and a 48-hour push notification, with revenue tracked at each step.

What does revenue attribution look like in practice?

Emarsys matches campaign touchpoints to actual transactions in your commerce or ERP system. A dashboard shows: Campaign X was sent to 50,000 contacts, 12,000 opened, 3,200 clicked, 890 purchased, generating EUR 142,000 in revenue within the attribution window. Real transaction data. Not estimated conversions or modelled attribution.