Emarsys, acquired by SAP in 2020 and now called SAP Emarsys, offers enterprise omnichannel marketing automation and AI personalization. See features, pricing,…
Emarsys started in 2000 as an independent email service provider in Vienna, Austria, built by founders who saw that companies were collecting customer data faster than they could act on it. Over two decades it grew into a full omnichannel marketing automation suite covering email, SMS, mobile push, web personalization, and social advertising, with a particular focus on retail, e-commerce, and travel brands that need to run high-volume, personalized campaigns.
SAP acquired Emarsys in November 2020 and has since folded it into its customer experience portfolio, rebranding the product SAP Emarsys and, more recently, SAP Engagement Cloud. The underlying technology and Vienna-based team remain largely intact, and the platform still competes directly with tools like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Klaviyo, and Braze for enterprise marketing automation budgets.
The platform's core strength is its library of over 100 prebuilt marketing tactics — pre-configured automation patterns for things like cart abandonment, win-back campaigns, and loyalty triggers — that let marketing teams launch complex, multi-step customer journeys without building every workflow from scratch. This is paired with a unified customer data layer that consolidates behavioral, transactional, and demographic data into a single profile used across every channel.
AI-driven personalization and product recommendations run throughout the platform, and Emarsys has been named a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Personalization Engines multiple years running. Native integrations with major e-commerce platforms and a strategic focus on retail-specific use cases (like loyalty and replenishment campaigns) differentiate it from more general-purpose marketing automation tools.
Emarsys does not publish self-serve pricing or a free tier. SAP quotes custom packages built on a standard package that bundles the core data platform with the email channel, then layers on additional channels (SMS, mobile push, web personalization) and features as add-ons based on a company's contact volume and channel needs.
Because pricing is quote-based and negotiated per account, prospective buyers typically need to go through a sales conversation and demo before receiving a number, which is standard for enterprise marketing suites in this category but means Emarsys is generally out of reach for small businesses or solo marketers on a limited budget.
Yes. SAP acquired Emarsys in 2020 and has since rebranded the platform as SAP Emarsys, and more recently as SAP Engagement Cloud, while keeping the core technology and Vienna-based team.
Emarsys does not publish pricing. SAP quotes custom packages based on a base data-and-email package plus additional channels, tailored to each customer's contact volume and needs.
No. Emarsys is an enterprise product sold through a sales-led process with no published free tier or self-serve trial.
Mid-market and enterprise retail, e-commerce, and travel brands running high-volume, multi-channel campaigns that need AI-driven personalization at scale.
It includes a built-in unified customer data layer that covers many CDP use cases, though large enterprises may still pair it with a dedicated CDP for broader data governance needs.