Data integration in email marketing

Modern marketing is data-driven marketing, both from the point of view of building profiles and typologies and visualising results. We could say that data is at the heart of today's marketing.
When we talk about data integration in marketing we are referring to the systems and processes that connect data from different channels or applications with the aim of improving outcomes (In this regard, we recommend reading the Forbes study ".Data driven and customer centric: marketers turning insights into impact").
Generally, the integrations that email marketing teams are calling for are as follows:
Integrate the CRM with the ESP (Email Service Provider). In this case, the objective is to "push" the socio-demographic, purchase and/or contact data associated with an email to the campaign management platform. In this way, we can, for example, personalise the content of the email or segment in the campaign manager.
Another option is to transfer the "post-campaign" information from the ESP to the CRM. For example, it can be interesting to enrich our CRM profiles with information on whether or not our emails are opened or not, or if the email we had is invalid (bounce).
Integrating ecommerce with ESP. This integration will allow us to collect information on conversions (number of transactions and amounts) and "upload" it to ESP. This will allow us to visualise, in the reporting, the conversions and amounts generated by each campaign. In addition, we will be able to use this information to create segments of the type (buyers, buyers of more than n €, etc...).
These two examples are the most common, although each business will have specific integration needs with other environments such as ticketing platforms or booking engines. Integrations can be manual or automated. It is always advisable to automate processes, either by saving time or by eliminating handling errors. Nowadays, automatic integrations are often done with APIS.
What is an API?
The definition we have found clearest for the layman is this: "...the API is about pre-programming a system that consists of a series of lists of words (functions) that execute things in your application or display some of the information in your service.
This list of words or functions is published in the API documentation. So when an external programmer wants the information you host to be displayed in their program, they only have to call the appropriate function that you provide.
It is a way of giving restricted access to your application's information without letting the external programmer access your code, he can only use and execute those things that you have prepared and allowed him to." (source: https://loogic.com/que-es-una-api/). Nowadays, most ESPs have their own API libraries that allow integration with external systems. For this, it will be necessary for a technical profile to have access to the API documentation and to develop it appropriately.
App integration platforms . There are tools that connect web applications. The general idea is that when an event is executed in one application (for example a user registers in Hubspot CRM), another event will be executed in the other connected application (in this case it could be the insertion of that registration in Mailchimp). These platforms also allow developers to add their own APIs so that they connect to third party systems. Two alternatives are Zapier o Workato.