Comparing Email Capabilities in Enterprise Marketing Platforms

Adobe Campaign V8 vs HubSpot vs Braze vs Zeta vs Marketo Engage vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

How do you choose? Because really, how advanced can emailing get? (spoiler:very!)

We’ve worked with all the leading big-name platforms: Adobe Campaign v8, HubSpot, Braze, Zeta, Marketo Engage and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. This unbiased comparison will delve into the key features and benefits to help you understand the landscape a little better.

First, let’s set some boundaries. Email marketing software is a £1b+ industry ($1.5b) as of early 2024. It’s a growth market. But here’s the interesting part. That figure doesn’t include the platforms we’re talking about. It only accounts for standalone email automation platforms. As Gartner’s research points out, those are “a vanishing breed” among the clients we’re working with.

Standalone email marketing service providers are a vanishing breed in both the enterprise and midmarket spaces, as vendors expand to include capabilities typical of multichannel marketing hubs (MMHs) and customer data platforms (CDPs).

Market Guide for Email Marketing, Gartner 2023

If you’re wondering why Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign and their ilk didn’t make the list, it’s because we’re focused on the email functionality in enterprise marketing platforms. It’s also a question of what we know. Although we regularly engage with standalone email platforms, most of our clients are enterprise-sized and use full-featured marketing automation platforms. So, this guide will help if you’re:

• Thinking about switching email platforms
• Amalgamating your martech stack
• Growing beyond the limits of your current email platform

Besides, comparing the full features suites is so complex that you’d be here for hours and end up more confused than when you started (you’re welcome). 

Later, we’ll outline the practical considerations for all those cases. But first, let’s compare features.

Adobe Campaign v8

What it does

Adobe Campaign v8 is positioned as a cross-channel marketing platform and workflow manager.

That means it’s good at managing customer data and centralising data from different touchpoints. By the time you send an email, a lot has happened behind the scenes to make messages more personalised and profitable. And it happens at warp speed. Adobe Campaign v8 works with Snowflake database architecture, enabling you to process enormous data sets fast. We’re talking real-time personalised marketing for 1m+ database contacts in almost real time.

That said, Adobe Campaign v8 is – by Adobe’s admission – built for batch-based multichannel marketing programs. If you want a journey-focused platform, you’re looking for Adobe Journey Optimizer.

Who it’s for

Adobe Campaign v8 suits large enterprises with a 1m+ contact database and a preference for batch-based emailing. It’s great for onboarding, abandoned carts, lead generation linking to web apps, seasonal campaigns, appointment and notification systems – all those batched campaigns are seamless, even at scale. 

It’s particularly well-suited for brands with big and cumbersome databases, and ideally with other Adobe Experience Cloud subscriptions.

Why we like it

Building Adobe Campaign v8 on Snowflake architecture was a genius move. The new platform is much faster than v7 and way more stable. That’s great for cross-channel automation. Fast ETL (exchange, transform, load) speeds mean you can take data from any touchpoint – including offline – and use it to launch a personalised email in minutes.

On the front end, Adobe Campaign v8 is highly customisable. There’s a decent learning curve, as with all Adobe Marketing Cloud platforms. But once you’re confident, you can make intricate workflows, create personalised journeys, and get more value from connected Adobe Experience Platform apps.

HubSpot

What it does

HubSpot Marketing Hub is an all-in-one marketing solution that includes email marketing as standard. While there’s no standalone email tool, the Marketing Hub product suite is quite email-centric. 

You get a wide range of features, including customisable email and landing page templates, contact management, reporting tools and social media integration. They’re built around the HubSpot CRM, which means they’re built around the customer. Big plus. You can have 15m overall contacts, but only target emails and ads to the number you pay for. 

Why we like it

HubSpot Marketing Hub is notoriously user-friendly. A bunch of templates and WYSIWYG builders make it easy to craft emails and landing pages, run A/B tests, segment audiences and automate simple workflows. We also like that HubSpot is built around a CRM. While that’s not unusual in enterprise marketing platforms, it does remove growing pains.

Who it’s for

The only drawback is the complexity of HubSpot’s model. The Enterprise plan, which starts at £3k per month (plus a £5k one-time onboarding fee), only gets you 10k marketing contacts* and 5 users. Adding more gets expensive fast. We worked out that your monthly subscription at 500k marketing contacts would cost £6,058. While that is comparable to other enterprise platforms, it doesn’t include extra seats or additional “Hubs” like Sales or Content. These can add three or four figures per month.

Bottom line, HubSpot is ideal for up-to-mid-sized businesses that do a lot of emailing or don’t have a huge marketing database. There’s a solid business case if email marketing is your main revenue channel. If not – i.e. you need more cross-channel activation or lead nurturing capabilities – HubSpot might not be right.

Braze

What it does

Braze is an omnichannel customer engagement platform that focuses on real-time engagement and personalisation. You can send batch emails, but Braze leans toward triggered campaigns and cross-channel personalisation. The email automation capabilities are particularly strong in delivering personalised messages that create consistent journeys across email, mobile, SMS and web platforms.

What’s different here is that Braze allows marketers to create and deploy dynamic, contextually relevant emails based on real-time user data. 

Who it’s for

Braze is best suited for mid-to-large enterprises that are evolving towards real-time, customer-centric engagement. Braze could be the one if you need an email marketing platform capable of handling complex personalisation at scale. 

It’s particularly valuable for brands that need to deliver timely, relevant emails as part of an integrated, omnichannel CXM strategy. Think retail, eCommerce, travel and hospitality, media and entertainment – all those customer-facing cases where speed and accuracy make a big difference.

Why we like it

Braze represents the evolution of CXM from personalised selling (that follows customers around) to personalised experiences (that move with the customer at their pace). The focus on customer engagement means emails aren’t just sent to segments. They’re strategically designed to foster mutually valuable relationships, and work within a broader context of personalised customer journeys. 

Zeta ESP

What it does

Although it’s lesser-known here in the UK, Zeta has more than earned a place on this list. As a full-featured personalised marketing platform built around a CDP, Zeta’s closest companion in this list is Braze. That includes the way email marketing features work. 

Zeta Messaging – also called Zeta Enterprise Email Service Provider (ESP) – is natively omnichannel. It combines sophisticated data intelligence with customer journey orchestration to deliver highly targeted cross-channel communications. 

In other words? Zeta is another example of the evolution away from batch-and-blast marketing towards customer-centric, always-on experiences. You might not send as many emails, but the emails you do send will be significantly more valuable. 

Who it’s for

In our experience with Zeta, it’s particularly effective for businesses that need deep data integration and advanced analytics to drive personalised marketing at scale. It’s useful for global email lists, thanks to robust compliance measures. But it’s especially useful for making sure the right message goes out on the right channel. Being built on a CDP, Zeta Messaging helps you craft valuable experiences using customer information and trillions of other data points.

Why we like it

We appreciate Zeta’s focus on creating highly personalised experiences at scale. That’s essential for driving engagement and conversions in today’s competitive landscape. The comprehensive analytics and reporting tools also provide valuable insights that help marketers continuously optimise their strategies and achieve better ROI.

Marketo Engage

Marketo Engage is almost the B2B version of Adobe Campaign v8. Almost. 

Marketo excels in lead nurturing, segmentation and analytics. The email automation tools leverage CRM connectors – Marketo, like Campaign and unlike HubSpot, is not a CRM. 

Other marketing automation features like predictive account identification, lead generation and content personalisation draw on the same data. It allows marketers to create highly personalised and targeted email campaigns in a B2B context. 

However, unlike Adobe Campaign v8, Marketo Engage doesn’t integrate directly with Snowflake. There are custom API workarounds, but you’re not going to get the same speed and scalability – but that might not be as important in B2B marketing.

Who it’s for

In our (extensive) experience, mid-to-large B2B companies with sophisticated lead management needs get the most value from Marketo Engage. It’s tuned for complex sales cycles, account-based marketing strategies, and sales and marketing alignment. 

Marketo stands out for scalability, security and consistency. That’s particularly important for brand houses or global companies. For example, we’re working with Colliers to unify marketing intelligence for teams in 11+ countries using a single, segmented Marketo Engage instance. You can read more about that here.

Why we like it

Marketo’s big selling point is sales and marketing alignment. When it’s used as a hub for B2B marketing automation, and all your teams, data flows and processes are set up accordingly, you’ll get great ROI. This goes both ways. Marketo Engage both enables sales and marketing alignment, and performs better when sales and marketing are aligned. 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement

What it does

After retiring Pardot in late 2022, Salesforce is nudging new customers towards a new suite of tools. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement is what they call the email, mobile and advertising tool. Similar to the Adobe Marketing Cloud model, with Campaign for B2C and Marketo for B2B, each Salesforce Marketing Cloud tool has a different use case. Where Salesforce differs is that all the platforms are built on Salesforce’s proprietary CRM, while Adobe works with third-party CRMs (including Salesforce).

“But that’s like HubSpot Marketing Hub!” you cry, wringing your hands in confusion. Yes and no. 

Despite the similarities, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement is bigger, more scalable, and better suited to messaging large databases. HubSpot is favoured among inbound marketers and growing companies.

The other difference that helps you understand Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the way its features are positioned. The product list includes:

• CDP
• Email, mobile and advertising
• B2B marketing automation
• Loyalty management
• Referral marketing
• Cross-channel personalisation
• Analytics
• AI for personalised journeys

Looking at this list, it seems like Salesforce is reinventing itself. It used to be the ‘big strong CRM with marketing features,’ and now it’s the ‘build-it-yourself marketing automation hub’.

Who it’s for

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement is best for large enterprises that already use the Salesforce CRM and need an integrated marketing automation solution. That’s true for all B2B and B2C use cases alike. It’s particularly popular among enterprise companies with extensive customer databases and complex email marketing needs. Although we were comparing HubSpot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement a minute ago, it’s more of an Adobe Campaign competitor through this lens. Both tools connect to Salesforce CRM. It’s up to you whether Adobe’s features meet your needs better than Salesforce’s or vice versa.

Why we like it

We like Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement for its scalability and depth. The native integration with Salesforce CRM means that email campaigns are data-driven and aligned with broader customer engagement strategies. This leads to more consistent and intelligent experiences. Additionally, you get some pretty advanced analytics with Salesforce leaning into AI.

While it comes with a steep price tag, the value it delivers in terms of capability and integration makes it a top choice if you can afford it.

How to pick an email marketing platform

We could keep picking apart the features of each platform. We could compare email deliverability rates, ETL speed, personalisation options and experience-building tools. But at the end of the day, which marketing automation platform you’ll choose comes down to three things: 

• Specific use cases: Are you primarily focused on email marketing, or do you need a more comprehensive marketing automation platform?
• Business profile: Although the lines are blurring between B2B and B2C marketing, most tools still lean in one direction. It’s important to choose tech that integrates with your operations.
• Personal preference: Ultimately, the best platform for you is the one that you and your team feel comfortable using.

In our experience, these are the main drivers. But there’s one that trumps them all.

How valuable is the platform?

Email marketing platform migrations aren’t easy. Before you think about a new tool, consider what email marketing means to your organisation. Where does it sit in your CXM strategy? How does email create value for customers? Where is that value reflected in your business goals?

The modern marketer’s challenge is to put the customer at the centre of every interaction. Your email automation platform should enable that. It should help you evolve from batch-and-blast communications to personalised, progressive experiences.

This requires more than just user-friendly features. It demands clarity around customer behaviour, preferences and lifecycle stages. Crucially, you can’t lose that clarity as you grow.

So, when it comes to choosing an email automation platform, certainly consider your use cases and personal preferences. 

But also consider:

• Customer centricity: Look for platforms that integrate with your existing (or planned) tech and enable you to evolve from personalised selling to personalised experiences.
• Growth ambitions: How far does your email tool need to scale? Consider database size, user limits and pricing structures.
• Creating mutually valuable experiences: To win in the new world of enterprise marketing, you need to know your customers. You may not be there yet – choose the tool that gives you room to mature.

Get the best tools for your business case

Choosing the right email automation platform is a crucial decision. Still, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. At Tap CXM, we understand the challenges and practicalities of successful email marketing migrations. We know the real impact comes from how well martech is integrated into your broader CXM strategy.

By working with you to align strategy, process, data and technology behind business goals, we can help you evolve into a truly customer-centric organisation. Our focus is on enabling you to create mutually rewarding experiences that deliver quantifiable value. 

Whether you’re in the final stages of selecting a new email marketing tool, or just starting on the quest to overhaul your CXM strategy, we can help.