Email Marketing Platform Comparison: Ometria vs Emarsys vs Bronto

One of the oldest forms of digital marketing is the email channel. This has improved immeasurably with technology over the years and can still be a highly effective method for driving sales in certain industries.

As the system for creating campaigns and sending emails, email marketing platforms are incredibly important to any eCommerce business or retailer.

There are 3.8 billion email users worldwide, so although there are many more internet users in the world than this, the best way of directly marketing to them is via their email addresses. When it comes to acquiring a new customer, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-guide

Contents Guide: (Click the link to skip to the section you’re looking for)
https://remarkable.net/blog/ometria-vs-emarsys-vs-bronto/#what-is-an-email-marketing-platform
https://remarkable.net/blog/ometria-vs-emarsys-vs-bronto/#benefits-of-an-email-marketing-platform
https://remarkable.net/blog/ometria-vs-emarsys-vs-bronto/#finding-the-right-email-marketing-platform
https://remarkable.net/blog/ometria-vs-emarsys-vs-bronto/#email-marketing-providers-pros-and-cons

What is an Email Marketing Platform?

An email marketing platform is a technology used by a retailer to send emails and campaigns out to their previous/potential customers. These systems are typically licensed under a SaaS (software-as-a-service) model, and a retailer will sign a contract for a fixed length of time to use the software.

There is a scale of how advanced and powerful email marketing platforms are, starting with lower-end – often cheaper – systems which allow the /retailer to send basic campaigns. All the way up to high-end, enterprise-grade solutions which are fully automated, include large amounts of A.I. (artificial intelligence) and are very expensive.

However, although A.I. is still relatively ‘new’ in eCommerce, it has been reported that companies who send automated emails https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/which-email-marketing-tool-is-best-for-you. Over 75% of email revenue is generated by triggered campaigns, rather than one-size-fits-all campaigns. Automated email campaigns account for 21% of email marketing revenue.

What are the benefits of Email Marketing?

When a retailer is looking to scale and grow their sales, marketing (both digital and offline) is the driving activity which enables this. Email marketing has many benefits, which are applicable to almost all sizes of retailers. The key benefits are:

💰 Easy to measure ROI

Like most forms of digital marketing, it is relatively easily easy to measure the ROI (return on investment) for campaigns and activity that is generated and managed by systems and platforms.

Email marketing activity itself normally includes a set of tracking settings, which allow for both the ESP itself and other systems (like Google Analytics) to track the performance and measure how much revenue has been generated for each campaign or email send.

👋 Personalisation & connecting with your customer

Born from the ancient world of “Mail merge”, where a customer or prospect’s name would be dynamically inserted into a piece of marketing or communication – personalisation is simple in theory; give each recipient unique content based on known factors or data.

Modern-day personalisation is comprehensive and normally includes recommended products based on the customer's previous buying behaviour or viewing data. This type of data can then be used to personalise each email to include graphics/banners that are relevant, and even the language/tone of voice is often tailored and personalised.

📱 Mobile devices allow people to check their email constantly

It is common for most of us to turn off notifications on our phones for apps like our Email, so we are not bombarded with a “ding” every few minutes with yet another spam email. So although emails are opened in a slightly less ‘reactive’/’instant’ manner, consumers still believe that most emails should be read. Mostly because of FOMO.

🔁 Closing the marketing cycle

Companies spend vast amounts of money generating traffic for their website. Email is a great way of re-engaging these customers, ensuring you are getting the most out of other marketing campaigns.

What to ask when considering an Email Marketing system

Like any other piece of technology or software, due diligence is important when selecting a new provider. These are the common questions which we recommend asking your shortlist when you’re going through a procurement phase:

• What functionality do you offer, that your competitors don’t?

The above are questions that we suggest our clients ask before they commit to a provider. At Remarkable Commerce, we have integrated well over 30 different ESP (email-sending platforms) over the last 20 years, including the three systems we are comparing in this article. Bronto – an Oracle-owned platform is a well-tested tool used by many mid-to-large retailers, Ometria – a high-end platform focused on customer engagement and content interaction, and Emarsys – is a powerful and comprehensive system, perfect for larger direct marketing teams.

Our other ESP integrations include Smart Focus, Pure 360, Mapp, Mailgun, Mailchimp, iContact, Communicator, Sailthru, RedEye, Klaviyo, Marketo, DotMailer/DotDigital and many, many more.

Ometria Platform

https://ometria.com/ was founded in 2013 and since 2017 has raised several rounds of funding to develop its technology into a leading ‘marketing experience’ platform. As of early 2020, Ometria has 200 clients across a range of sectors.

Ometria has grown its market share and this is a result of marketing itself as a ‘Marketing Experience Platform’ with cross-channel capabilities. So the technology is not just for coordinating email sends, but instead orchestrating marketing activity for email, social, SMS, push notifications and direct mail too.

Pros:

• Ometria can work with most platforms, including the 

Limitations:

• Technically, there are a few issues. However, we’ve heard reports of how proactive

Emarsys Platform

Labelling themselves as an “https://emarsys.com/“, Emarsys have several thousand clients across most territories and in most industries too.

Although Emarsys has many competitors, they are still predominantly known for their strong “crowdsourcing” strategies – where known campaigns and activity can be used as a template to give a retailer a “head start”.

Pros:

• Although we cannot attest to this, Emarsys claim onboarding and setup can be completed within 1 day. Which if true, is a lot

Limitations:

• Training is often not included in the package and is charged on top of your license fee. This is typically negotiable, but be sure to include training with your contract.

Bronto Platform

In June 2015, cloud ERP vendor NetSuite acquired Bronto to combine Bronto’s industry-leading email marketing system with its omnichannel marketing platform. Then in November 2016, Oracle acquired NetSuite, and therefore Bronto became part of Oracle.

Since that point of ownership, https://www.netsuite.com/portal/home.shtml has been seen as a high-end player and has focused its efforts on its ecosystem of technology, rather than its email marketing system itself. (Fun fact – did you know, one of the Oracle board of directors is the former Director of the CIA!)

Pros:

• Analytics, data and tracking – with API capability for getting under the bonnet when required.

Limitations:

• With Bronto’s Oracle US-based ownership comes a corporate attitude and approach, with their communications known to be formal and considered – this often means they can be slow to reply.

Choosing the best email marketing platform for your business will hugely depend on your current position in the market and your business strategy for the foreseeable future. 

The best ‘all-rounder’ email marketing platform is…

In general, we would recommend Bronto as a good ‘all-round’ ESP – especially for medium-sized businesses (including B2B sectors). If you have less than 200 staff, it is probably overkilled. If you’re larger, it won’t have the flexibility of some of the enterprise-level ESPs.

The best email marketing platform for B2C retailers is…

Ometria certainly is not just another email system and merchants fall in love with the insight that this gives them into their customers. Retailers are able to engage with their customers, rather than just firing emails their way.

If you’re looking for an eCommerce platform that seamlessly integrates with your current third-party software, our https://remarkable.net/commerce-platform/ integrates with a wide variety of https://remarkable.net/integrations/ including Ometria, Emarsys and Bronto. Give our experts a call for more information.