How marketers are leveling up with evolved messaging platforms

The email service provider (ESP) landscape is certainly not what it looked like in the ’90s. The very definition of what an ESP is, as well as the technological capabilities, have undergone a complete structural transformation. With frequent and rapid changes across the industry and among consumer expectations—which haven’t shown any signs of slowing—brands and vendors should continue to challenge their preexisting thoughts about how ESPs can support the customer experience.

Industry shifts and trends are driven by many factors, including technology and platform advancements, data privacy regulations, and customer experience standards. When ESP platforms first came into existence, the sheer amount of data that we have available today would have been unfathomable. In the last decade or so, what we call “next-generation ESPs” like Cordial were born out of the need to solve more robust marketing challenges and go far beyond sending basic emails.

With increased data capabilities, some next-gen platforms, like Cordial, allow marketers to bring in unlimited customer and business data for real-time marketing use. Data, coupled with predictive intelligence and machine learning, gives marketing teams the ability to optimize and build stronger campaigns. This has created a natural evolution and an even larger divide between traditional “legacy” ESPs and the next-gen providers.

Plain and simple: marketers who have the ability to use more data to engage customers can deliver outsized results. With legacy ESPs, you’ll uncover several limitations when it comes to cross-channel orchestration and personalization—both of which are imperative in a thoughtful, personal customer experience. Foundations built with one channel (email) in mind, and with a rigid data structure that does not receive real-time data, make it nearly impossible to make a personal connection in the moment across email, mobile app, and SMS/MMS.

Marketers are increasingly expected to be nimble when addressing their customers’ needs, which requires the technology partners they choose to be flexible too. Cordial was built on this exact premise. The platform ingests, activates, and transforms data from any source in a frictionless way, without sacrificing enterprise performance and security. In turn, marketers are able to utilize all of their data quickly, efficiently, and in innovative ways. For more on this topic, see Cordial’s CEO and co-founder, Jeremy Swift’s point of view on the ESP landscape and how Cordial has uncovered a more powerful way to market thoughtfully.