Marketing APIs describe a variety of application programming interfaces that businesses and developers employ for customer outreach.
Lead nurturing and conversion are the responsibilities of well-intentioned marketing campaigns. But intention is not just good will. It’s planning, organization, and in this case, API integrations.
As much as 55% of API enthusiasts assert that APIs are critical to their business strategy. Nearly 30% said that APIs were at least “somewhat critical” for the same reason.
To learn about how marketing APIs play a role in marketing operations, keep reading! You’ll find out more soon.
What Is An API?
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are the go-between for interacting software. They allow different platforms to connect without error or compatibility issues.
Though this may seem complex, APIs are an integral part of almost every digital interaction. You probably use them every day without even noticing.
For example, if you ask Siri about the weather, she will likely take advantage of an API. In order to gather weather information, she would need to use an API to pull data from an external software platform, like weather.com, for example. The same goes for any digital assistant with similar functions.
Of course, this is only one example. There are several API examples showcasing their usage in the modern-day.
In reality, an API is a back-end structure that is encompassed within several thousand lines of server-side code. But its ability to serve as the middleman between distinct technologies is key to the utility of such an abstraction.
Related reading: Know The Top 7 API Integration Tools
Why Are APIs Important for Marketing?
It should be clear that APIs are important fixtures in the technology realm already. Without APIs, you wouldn’t be able to have much of the conveniences that warrant cross-platform operations. This includes travel booking via Google or online purchases with PayPal.
Naturally, the marketing world has its own reasons for relying so heavily on APIs. Marketing is not merely telling your best friend that you discovered a cool new app, though that is one of many of its branches.
Rather, marketing can look like receiving an email based on your latest purchase, encouraging you to pay more attention to the brand in question.
Or it can be a chatbot in Facebook messenger, giving you every ounce of energy it has. This is to ensure that your experience is rewarding and satisfying enough that you return to the associated business.
To put it one way, marketing is complex. And it also requires quite a bit of technology. In those examples alone, you can glimpse how software and marketing are bound to mix.
Therefore, marketing APIs are essential to navigating the software involved in a marketing campaign.
How Do APIs Help Marketing Operations?
APIs help marketing operations in a number of ways. Just below, you will learn some of the general applications of marketing APIs and the more specific tools they empower.
Marketing Automation
The importance of marketing automation in marketing campaigns mirrors that of marketing APIs.
Half of the time — well, really, most of the time — marketing automation is depending on APIs to clean up its act.
Using marketing automation tools and marketing APIs in unison help businesses boost productivity, save money, speed up operations, scale more efficiently.
You will find that marketing automation is a fundamental asset of every other software and API related to marketing operations.
Integration of Different Platforms
Another foundational element of marketing APIs is data integration. Making connections is at the heart of all APIs. It’s simply what they were meant to do.
With the use of APIs, you will be able to sync the various platforms you use together. The result is a fully-fledged software ecosystem for tackling daily marketing operations.
For you, this will look like connecting your content management system (CMS) or customer relationship management (CRM) platform to useful tools that can help your business thrive.
As an illustration, HubSpot APIs are notoriously recognized for being vital players for businesses that build websites using HubSpot.
This is because HubSpot APIs power HubSpot integrations which connect HubSpot websites to a variety of revenue-increasing software whether that’s MailChimp or WordPress.
Data Collection
Data collection serves as one more general use case for marketing APIs. RESTful APIs, especially, are designed to query web services for data.
If you were wondering, the REST in RESTful stands for Representational State Transfer. In short, REST APIs respond to HTTP requests to send data.
This method of data collection has become increasingly popular throughout the years. But web APIs overall are traditionally assigned this labor.
Data collection is indispensable for conducting market research. Although, it’s worth noting that after data collection, the focus becomes data analysis — in which case marketing APIs are still imperative.
Email Marketing
Email marketing APIs can be fairly diverse in their capabilities. Their most common use of marketing APIs for email campaigns is for notifications and transactional messages.
In this regard, business platforms work with email servers to notify customers of important information or confirm a transaction that just occurred.
Sure, you could send your customers an email manually, but this wouldn’t allow for much scalability in the future. This is just a sneak peek of what marketing automation can do.
To get an even more complex use of email marketing APIs, you can consider setting up workflows to send email messages at the most opportune moments depending on consumer interactions.
Lastly, you can connect software tools like your CMS and CRM to your email platform. By doing this, you can let customers know about new content or manage email contacts from your CRM.
Social Media
Social media is not just for young people. In 2019, 69% of U.S. adults were using Facebook. Though other social media platforms no doubt differ in participation, it’s safe to say that social media is an apt avenue for marketing.
The majority of social media platforms utilize social network APIs. In general, these types of APIs can query social networks for users, posts, and even demographic data.
In the context of marketing APIs, businesses are beholden to software that permits them to gather insights and analyze their metrics.
Comprehensive social media marketing can also streamline your campaign by letting you manage and monitor content all from the same dashboard. This can get as convenient as scheduling daily posts.
Conclusion
To put it briefly, marketing APIs fuel marketing operations. APIs as a whole are the backbone of software.
Marketing automation, data integration, and data collection are some of the more generalized uses of marketing APIs. But most marketing campaigns tend to look to social media and email marketing specifically to nurture and convert leads.
There is no question that marketing APIs will be necessary for your business’s growth. At Trio, you can hire qualified developers to build custom API integrations for all your marketing operations. Start working with Trio today!
