Integrating Marketing Automation Tools: Native vs Custom Solutions Explained
Marketing automation platforms are the backbone of scalable, personalized, and data-driven customer communication. But their true power lies in how well they integrate with the rest of your marketing stack — your CRM, CMS, analytics tools, and more.
In this article, I’ll break down two key paths to integration: native (out-of-the-box) and custom — and share insights from my work integrating tools like Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) and Adobe Campaign.
I’ll also compare these capabilities with other marketing automation tools such as Braze and Mailchimp, highlighting how each platform approaches extensibility and integration.
Native Integrations
Native integrations are pre-built connectors between the marketing tool and other platforms — think Salesforce CRM to SFMC, or AEM to Adobe Campaign. They’re built and maintained by the vendors themselves.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
In Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the Marketing Cloud Connect integration syncs your Sales/Service Cloud data directly with SFMC for real-time segmentation and triggered journeys.
Native connectors also exist for other Salesforce tools – for example, integration with Salesforce CDP (Customer Data Platform) and Marketing Cloud Intelligence (Datorama) for unified data and analytics
SFMC can integrate with Google Analytics 360/GA4 as well – this official integration allows marketers to share GA4 audiences with Salesforce Marketing Cloud
In addition to its native and API-based integration capabilities, Salesforce Marketing Cloud benefits from full access to MuleSoft, Salesforce’s enterprise-grade integration platform. MuleSoft allows businesses to connect virtually any system, database, or application — whether on-premise or cloud-based — using a scalable, API-led architecture.
Adobe Campaign Classic v7, v8 (ACC)
the legacy on-premise or managed-hosting solution, is known for its flexible data integration capabilities. While it doesn’t have the same plug-and-play cloud connectors as Adobe Campaign Standard, it excels at connecting to external databases and systems through its “external account” framework. Campaign Classic allows direct database connections (Federated Data Access) to external SQL databases. This means a technical user can configure an ODBC/JDBC connection to, say, a customer data warehouse or CRM database, and Campaign can read from or write to those tables directly as if they were part of Campaign’s data model. This is a powerful feature for on-premise integrations, enabling real-time or on-demand data access without flat-file transfers.
Adobe Campaign Classic supports CRM integrations through add-on packages and connectors that extend its native capabilities. While not all CRM systems are supported out-of-the-box, Adobe provides integration packages for popular platforms like Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, and others. These packages allow for bidirectional sync of contact, lead, and campaign data, enabling marketers to use CRM insights directly within campaign workflows.
external accounts for SFTP servers (to import or export files) and web services. For instance, an Adobe Campaign workflow can be set up to pick up a daily CSV from an SFTP, import it into campaign as new recipients, or conversely, output campaign results to an SFTP for other systems to consume. With scripting, Campaign Classic can even make HTTP requests to external APIs: its workflow engine supports a JavaScript activity, and by using server-side JS one can call external REST/SOAP services (though this often requires careful scripting or command-line calls). In terms of Adobe ecosystem, Campaign Classic can integrate with Adobe Analytics and other Experience Cloud tools as well, but often via add-on modules or custom configurations rather than the seamless built-in links of ACS. (For example, there are published connectors to Adobe Analytics for ACC to push tracking data, and one can use Adobe’s Experience Cloud ID to tie Campaign recipients to Analytics visitors for cross-channel analytics.)
Custom Integrations
When native options fall short or you need more control, custom integration is the answer. Custom integrations involve building your own connections between platforms using platform’s scripting language, APIs, SFTP transfers, or custom middleware. This is where a tech consultant (like me) becomes essential.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is highly extensible via APIs and developer tools. It provides two APIs – a REST API for broad Marketing Cloud capabilities and a SOAP API for legacy email functions.
In Salesforce Marketing Cloud, I’ve implemented automations that ingest data from SFTP and perform contact cleaning using the API or segmentation. I’ve also built custom solutions such as a push notification service and API-driven consent updates. These APIs allow programmatic access to nearly all SFMC functionality.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud also supports server-side scripting (AMPscript and SSJS within emails/automation) which can call external APIs or process data, providing another route for custom integrations.
Adobe Campaign Classic
We can use external accounts for SFTP servers (to import or export files) and web services. For instance, an Adobe Campaign workflow can be set up to pick up a daily CSV from an SFTP, import it into campaign as new recipients, or conversely, output campaign results to an SFTP for other systems to consume. With scripting, Campaign Classic can even make HTTP requests to external APIs: its workflow engine supports a JavaScript activity, and by using server-side JS (SSJS) one can call external REST/SOAP services (though this often requires careful scripting or command-line calls).
One example of such integration via API is pulling financial product updates from an external system and using that data to send monthly update newsletters to users who have subscribed to those specific products.
Integration capabilities of small enterprise marketing platforms
While platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Campaign are built for complex, enterprise-grade environments, there’s a growing class of small enterprise or mid-market marketing platforms — such as Braze, Mailchimp, and HubSpot — that offer powerful features with a lower barrier to entry.
These tools prioritize ease of use, speed to deploy, and out-of-the-box functionality. When it comes to integration, they typically provide a wide range of native connectors, user-friendly APIs, and plug-ins for popular apps — but may have limitations in terms of deep customization or large-scale data handling. In this section, we’ll explore how these platforms handle integrations, where they shine, and when a business might outgrow them.
Braze integration capabilities
Its approach to integrations is somewhat different from traditional email-first marketing tools. Rather than a vast marketplace of one-click integrations, Braze provides a robust core and relies on partners or APIs for many connections. Key native integrations include mobile and web SDKs provided by Braze – integrating the Braze SDK into your iOS, Android, or web application is a primary way to feed user data (in-app events, user profiles, device tokens for push notifications) into Braze.
This native SDK integration is crucial for Braze’s real-time personalization (for example, an e-commerce app can send purchase events to Braze immediately through the SDK, triggering follow-up campaigns). Braze also has pre-built technology partner integrations for common marketing and data tools. For instance, Braze can integrate with Segment and mParticle (customer data platforms) as sources of data – companies can pipe data from many apps into Braze via those CDPs.
There are also direct integrations for message delivery channels: Braze works with push notification services (APNS for Apple, FCM for Android) natively, and with email/SMS providers (Braze can either serve as the ESP itself or integrate with ESPs and SMS gateways through partnerships). In terms of external outputs, Braze’s Currents feature is a notable integration capability – Currents allows Braze to stream data out to other systems in real-time. For example, using Currents, Braze can send live data on customer events and campaign engagement to destinations like data warehouses (Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery), or analytics platforms.
Custom integrations
However, there are trade-offs. For example, Braze does not offer a built-in scripting environment — meaning all outbound API calls or data transformations must happen through webhooks or external middleware. This contrasts with platforms like Adobe Campaign Classic, which allow internal scripting and in-platform logic. While Braze excels at ingesting real-time data and triggering personalized messages, deeper orchestration often relies on external systems.
HubSpot integration capabilities
HubSpot provides one of the most extensive native integration ecosystems among marketing automation platforms. Through the HubSpot App Marketplace, users can connect hundreds of third-party applications with a few clicks. These integrations cover CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, social media, webinar tools, customer support systems and more. For example, HubSpot has an official two-way Salesforce CRM integration (allowing companies to use Salesforce for CRM while HubSpot manages marketing, syncing leads and contacts between the two). It also offers native connectors for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, NetSuite, and other CRM/ERP tools via its data sync features. In the e-commerce domain, HubSpot easily integrates with platforms like Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce, syncing customer and order data to power marketing campaigns. There are built-in social media integrations (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter) for social publishing and social lead syncing, as well as connections to Google Ads and Facebook Ads to bring ad interaction data into HubSpot. HubSpot’s breadth of native integrations is a strong suit – its marketplace has hundreds of apps across categories (analytics, scheduling, CMS, video conferencing, you name it) that have pre-built connectors to HubSpot. This means non-technical users can often connect HubSpot to their other business systems without custom development. Moreover, HubSpot includes a data sync (Operations Hub) feature (some free, some paid tiers) that provides out-of-the-box two-way sync for common data sources (e.g., Google Contacts, Mailchimp, Outlook, etc.), effectively acting as an integration middleware with field mapping, eliminating the need for a separate iPaaS in many cases.
In addition to its native apps, HubSpot has robust APIs that allow custom integrations when needed. HubSpot provides a comprehensive REST API (covering contacts, companies, deals, emails, forms, analytics, etc.) and even supports GraphQL for certain data queries.
The APIs are well-documented and developer-friendly, enabling integration of HubSpot with any external system or custom application. Common uses of the API include syncing contact data from a bespoke app to HubSpot, triggering HubSpot workflows from external events, or extracting engagement data for use in external reporting dashboards. HubSpot also supports webhooks: it can send event notifications (e.g., form submissions, contact property changes) to external endpoints in real-time, which is useful for keeping external systems updated.
For developers, HubSpot offers SDKs and client libraries for various languages, and an OAuth 2.0 based authentication for building third-party apps. Moreover, HubSpot recently introduced a Serverless Functions feature and Custom Coded Actions within workflows – allowing technical users to write JavaScript that runs on HubSpot’s platform (for example, to transform data or call an external API as part of an automation). This blurs the line between “native” and “custom” integration, giving consultants a way to extend HubSpot’s behavior without external infrastructure.
HubSpot’s support for modern data integration also includes integrations to data warehouses: there are connectors or third-party tools to pipe HubSpot data to Snowflake or BigQuery, and reverse ETL tools (like Census or Hightouch) to pull data from a warehouse into HubSpot are commonly used.
Custom integrations
With Operations Hub Professional or Enterprise, you can incorporate Custom Code Actions into your workflows. These actions allow you to execute JavaScript code using the Node.js runtime environment. This feature is particularly useful for:
- Integrating with external APIs: Fetch or send data to third-party services.
- Data transformation: Manipulate and format data before it’s used in subsequent workflow steps.
- Conditional logic: Implement complex decision-making processes beyond standard workflow capabilities
Limitations
Execution Time: Scripts have a maximum execution time, so long-running processes may not be suitable.
Resource Constraints: There are limits on memory usage and CPU time to ensure fair usage across all HubSpot users.
No Global Scripting Engine: Unlike some enterprise platforms, HubSpot doesn’t offer a global scripting environment for data processing across the entire platform.
Sources
- Integrating the Braze SDK
- HubSpot vs. Braze: The Ultimate Marketing Automation Showdown
- From limited native connectors to more control and supported uses cases
