Marketers usually have a lot to achieve. From content creation and promotional campaigns to bringing in sales, the marketing team is overall responsible for the company’s ROI. Fortunately, today, digital marketers get a lot of support from software integrations. And for a seasoned expert, a lot of the strategies are done through APIs in digital marketing. 

API Management marketing is projected to be worth over $5.1 billion by 2023. Although investing in incompetent APIs has recently led to a rise in cyber threat incidents globally, a report by Cloud Elements found that 85% of IT professionals consider API integration one of the most critical parts of their business strategy. 

While APIs aren’t a new concept for experienced marketers, a large section of junior marketers is still unaware of API marketing strategies.

What is API integration?

API or Application Programming Interface is a common tool in software technology. It’s a set of different rules and programming that allows various software applications to communicate and interact with each other.

Although the concept of API in digital marketing seems complex, we use API integrations almost every day in our digital interactions. API is a bridge that helps software systems to exchange data and functionality seamlessly.

A simple act of asking Google Assistance about the weather forecast would entail the use of API integration. Google would likely pull data from your current location’s weather forecast. Similarly, when you search for a particular business, you would get data from their Google business profile API. 

API typically follows a request-response model. The software sends a request to an API, mentioning the desired data. The API would process the request and send back a response containing the requested information or the result of the operation.

Common Types of API Integration

Usually, APIs are categorized into different types based on their purpose and functionality.

Operating System APIs

These types of APIs are provided by the operating system to assist interactions with system resources- for example, hardware devices, network connections, or file systems. They help developers create applications that can leverage the capabilities of the underlying operating system.

Library APIs

These are very common where developers use a set of functions or classes for their application. These APIs offer pre-built functionality which the developers would implement into their software. 

Web APIs

These are specifically designed for web applications to enable developers to incorporate third-party services, such as payment gateways, social media platforms, and mapping services, into their applications. Think about libraries found in WordPress CMS.

Database APIs

Data operations like inserting, updating, deleting records, or generating queries are done through database APIs. They offer a standardized way for applications to interconnect with various database management systems.

Why is API important for marketing?

Let us be clear. API in itself isn’t that helpful for digital marketing. But, the marketing world has various reasons to rely on APIs. 

See, marketing doesn’t mean telling your followers to install a new app or join a live session because it’s cool. It involves a series of strategies to appeal to its target audience and drive them through the sales funnel, encouraging them to make a purchase. 

It is done through multiple channels including a chatbot in Facebook Messenger or a newsletter with the latest products. Marketing requires technology, which is why most digital marketing agencies rely on custom API development services to enhance customer experience. 

APIs play a vital role in enabling digital marketing strategies and initiatives.

Here are the primary reasons why API in digital marketing is a crucial aspect:

Helps with Marketing Automation

Other than that, automation APIs assist marketers with monitoring program performance, transactions, connections to different systems, and maintaining customer-brand relationships. With human resources, these tasks would end up costing a huge sum of money to companies. For example, an online eCommerce store can use APIs to process orders, transactions, receive complaints, and adjust inventory levels. 

Automation APIs also enable tasks, such as data synchronization, content publishing, social media posting, email marketing, and campaign management. As a marketer, you can focus on value-added activities like analysis, innovation, strategizing, and scalability. 

Makes Data Collection and Integration Easier

Database APIs help with data integration from several sources, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, e-commerce platforms, social media platforms, and analytics tools. This helps you understand your customers better, resulting in creating more targeted campaigns based on their psychological traits. 

APIs allow marketers to consolidate data from different channels and touchpoints. This offers a more detailed customer behavior pattern, preferences, and interactions. In return, you can gain deep insights into customer segments and make data-driven personalized campaigns to achieve better ROI. 

Helps with Omnichannel Marketing 

If numbers are to be believed, around 40% of marketing experts say that digital transformation gave a spike in their need for API app integration. Digital transformation is responsible for the popularity of omnichannel marketing. 

API in digital marketing benefits seamless communication and data exchange between different marketing channels and platforms. This facilitates omnichannel marketing strategies essential to creating a memorable customer experience. Other than this, APIs can enable you to build cohesive and consistent experiences across multiple channels, including websites, mobile apps, social media, email, and offline touchpoints.

Email marketing APIs allow marketers to send important notifications and updates to their clients. This includes anything from verification codes, offers, discounts, and even upcoming events. 

APIs Enhance Your Seo Efforts

SEO is an indispensable aspect of any digital marketing strategy. Without proper SEO, organic marketing is almost useless. Marketers can use APIs to conduct various SEO measures like web scraping, conducting keyword research, and backlink checkers. 

With keyword research APIs, you can speed up the entire process of conducting keyword research for every single content. You can also integrate SEO API for web scraping. Web scraping with APIs would gather all the necessary information that you can implement in your SEO strategy and help you to interpret the data. 

These processes help SEO strategies to be data-driven and faster.

Boost Customer Experience And Communication

Communication is a vital part of being a marketer. You need to communicate your product and brand message effectively to enhance conversions. Customer communication is also an essential part of the customer experience. Marketing APIs for businesses enable the development of customized applications, widgets, and interactive features that enhance customer experiences. Marketers can use specific API tools like Messaging APIs to stay in touch with their customers. 

Marketing API tools can help you build personalized recommendation engines, chatbots, social media integrations, interactive product catalogs, and other features that drive customer engagement. This helps to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, resulting in better conversion rates. 

Successful Third-Party Integrations

Nowadays, using third-party tools and features has become a necessity. Analytics tools, customer support systems, CMS—you cannot do without these tools. 

API in digital marketing enables you to successfully integrate third-party tools and services, expanding the capabilities of marketing systems. Marketers don’t have to do everything manually for better functionality. You can simply connect APIs to marketing platforms with advertising networks, customer support systems, analytics or monitoring tools, and CMS. 

This would allow improved data analysis and marketers would have access to multiple advertising channels. 

Provides real-time data for monitoring and reporting

Keeping track of your campaigns helps you to get ahead of any negative publicity and monitor your progress. Monitoring APIs provide access to real-time data, enabling marketers to monitor and analyze campaign performance, website metrics, social media interactions, and other crucial indicators.

Monitoring APIs don’t just help you find negative talks on the internet but also assist you in scanning the web for good ones. Along with this, API marketing strategies allow campaign managers to make timely adjustments to campaigns, optimize marketing strategies, and respond promptly to customer needs.

What are the popular API integrations in digital marketing?

While there are many types of API integrations, digital marketing has some of the most exciting ones. 

Advertising Platform APIs

Advertising APIs include Google Ads API, Facebook Ads API, and LinkedIn Ads API. 

• Facebook marketing API enables direct integration with the Facebook Ads platform to manage and optimize ad campaigns as well as retrieve campaign insights. 
• Google Ads API allows programmatic access to Google Ads, helping you to create, manage, and optimize advertising campaigns. 

Email Marketing APIs:

As mentioned before, email marketing APIs help you to enhance customer experience overall. Some examples include:

• SendGrid API offers access to the email delivery platform, assisting marketers with transactional and marketing emails, managing email templates, and tracking email events.
• Mailchimp API is useful in allowing marketers to manage mailing lists, create and send campaigns, and track email performance.

CRM APIs:

CRM APIs are extremely helpful in organizing customer data. 

• Salesforce API allows integration with its CRM, enabling you to manage leads, create campaigns, and manage data. 
• Similarly, HubSpot API allows managers to organize contacts, track interactions, build campaigns, and much more. 

Social media APIs:

Apart from managing campaigns, social media APIs help with consumer interactions as well. 

For example:

• Facebook marketing API helps you with posting content, retrieving user data, and tracking campaign performance.
• Instagram API enhances your all-over Instagram activities like retrieving user information and managing comments and interactions.

Popular examples of API integrations in digital marketing and customer experience

API integrations have a bigger purpose than fetching information. In reality, APIs are consumer products that boost software interconnectivity. 

We use API integrations all the time. Let us give you some examples:

Uber

Uber offers a strong API to third-party developers, allowing them to integrate Uber’s ride-hailing services into their applications. As a result, customers can easily book Uber rides through other applications. Uber uses API integration to enhance the convenience and expand their user base.

Siri

This is probably one of the most applied API integration. 

Siri uses API integrations for almost everything. For instance, when you ask Siri to give you directions to a restaurant, Siri would use an API to connect with the default navigational app.

When you ask Siri about anything, it will fetch answers from your default browser, most likely Google. 

Spotify

Spotify exclusively uses API integrations to improve the customer experience. The application leverages the Spotify API to integrate music recommendations and personalized playlists into third-party applications as well as different platforms.

This API implementation helps users discover and listen to music seamlessly within other apps. Spotify expands its reach and boosts audience engagement.

Amazon

You must have seen advertising campaigns by different brands on Amazon’s platforms.

Well, Amazon does it through their advertising API which allows advertisers to programmatically manage their ad campaigns. Not only can brands create campaigns, but it also helps them update, monitor, and access performance data.

Google

Like Amazon, Google also offers a wide range of APIs that brands can leverage for marketing purposes.

For instance, the Google Maps API allows businesses to integrate location data into their applications, proving features like store locators or route planning. And the Google AdWords API allows advertisers to manage and optimize their ad campaigns at scale.

Why does API matter in social media?

Social media marketing with APIs only fuels marketing operations. 

API integration in social media campaigns allows for seamless data synchronization between social media platforms and marketing tools. User data, profiles, engagement metrics, and campaign performance—all of this information can be transferred seamlessly. 

Another powerful way API integration helps with social media is through targeted advertising. Marketing APIs for businesses help marketers to access advanced targeting options, and create and manage ad campaigns. Advanced APIs also assist you to track ad performance and optimizing your targeting strategies based on real-time data.

With social media APIs, you can fully optimize your social media efforts and improve efficiency to deliver more impactful social media marketing campaigns.

Ultimately, it is not a matter of choice anymore. With the incorporation of API in digital marketing, you would help businesses to convert quality leads and improve customer experience—both of which are important to thrive in this overtly competitive market. Unfortunately, despite being a crucial part of marketing strategies, API integrations are never simple. Especially with custom API integrations, you need extensive planning, expert API developers, and experienced QA testers. Few companies, like Brainium, specialize in API development services, offering completely custom API integrations that would suit your specific business goals. 

To thrive in the marketing world, you need to accelerate your business by utilizing the power of API integration in digital marketing solutions.