Marketing technologies have been on a spree. Digitisation, paired with the diverse demography and expectations of millennial customers, has driven organisations to engage their customers online and deliver seamless CX at every touchpoint.
Omnichannel orchestration has come to the fore of marketing technologies, and APIs are leading the way to collaboration.
Application Programming Interface (API) has made integration between digital assets and external systems possible. It allows businesses to collaborate and open the doorways. Businesses can leverage the benefits of varied technological systems and solutions to create, manage, and deliver data from centralised sources and, eventually, deliver cohesive and personalised customer experience across channels. For this to happen, it’s important that APIs support varied systems/platforms, websites, chatbots, Alexa, IoT devices, agent portals, B2B portals, partner sites, and call centers.
Handing over API ownership
Businesses have relied on developers for API integration, but in our opinion, MarTech teams are the ones running the show of devising and implementing marketing strategies.
They chalk out the plans for expansion and collaboration. And they deal with technical abilities day in and day out. For marketing campaigns to be efficient, operationally and technology-wise, MarTech teams should not have to go to developers for simple encryption or data exposure. They should be able to create, manage, encrypt, and expose APIs without assistance from developers.
API integration and developer dependency sound like a synchronised symphony to many teams. However, we disagree. A lot of APIs should be managed and controlled by the MarTech teams. Here’s why.
- Master Data API – It exposes data from master data. Managing this API does not require technical or coding abilities, and developer dependency should take a backseat. MarTech teams should be able to manage the searchable master data via API without requiring assistance from a developer. For instance, if a finance company needs to open a branch, then MarTech teams should be able to go to data, add a branch.
- Data Collector API – Data Collector APIs collect data from internal and external customers like testimonials, feedback, grievances, leads, etc. Such APIs should be controlled by MarTech teams as such data is integral to their marketing strategies. They should be able to receive, manage, encrypt, and expose the data to implement their strategies.
- Business Logic API – Business Logic APIs are commonly used to optimise data exchange with the app for multiple data collections, validating app user actions to enforce business rules, etc. And this would require the intervention of the developers.
- Third-Party API – The most common examples of third-party APIs are all social media apps like Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. MarTech should be able to control such APIs. For example, they should be able to enable or disable social media or any third-party API to suit their marketing strategies.
Why MarTech should control APIs
First off, MarTech has the technical abilities to manage and control APIs.
They are researching and leading their marketing campaigns in the digital space. One of the most important factors in the effectiveness of the campaign is time. Every time an individual runs to a developer for API needs, time is wasted. When MarTech gets to control and manage APIs, it becomes simpler and easier to manage their single source of truth and deliver seamless communication across the channels.
We love API management tools like SHAFT (our preference), WSO2, Apigee, and Wilsoft.
With our business-first approach, we ensure that collaborations happening at the business level are easily manageable by the business teams without having to go to deployment teams repeatedly. API for MarTech is the dawning age businesses will thrive in the years to come, and SHAFT is already making success stories.