Bloomreach Engagement Is Amazing! Here Is Why...
There is one Marketing Operation tool to rule them all. It is called Bloomreach Engagement.
About the Author:
Co-founder of Datacop, agency that fulfils marketing operation roles in large eCommerce companies such as OluKai, Melin, Roark, Visual Comfort and Company, Dedoles and others.
Dan and I (co-founders of Datacop) actually used to work for a company called Exponea, which was later acquired by Bloomreach. The platform Exponea developed was then rebranded as Bloomreach Engagement.
We left Exponea about a year before the Bloomreach acquisition to start our own agency. At the time, our relationship with Exponea wasn’t exactly at its peak, so naturally, we explored alternatives on the open market.
To our surprise, we couldn’t find anything that even came close to what we were used to with Exponea (now Bloomreach Engagement). That’s ultimately why we decided to stick with the technology. Fortunately, over the years, our relationship with Exponea (now Bloomreach) has improved significantly.
Of course, you might argue that since we worked for the company that built Bloomreach Engagement, we’re biased—and you may not be wrong. But at Datacop, we prioritize transparency in everything we do, and this article is no exception. We’ll openly lay out all the reasons why we believe Bloomreach Engagement is superior to other alternatives. In the end, you can judge for yourself whether our argument makes sense or if you find it overly biased.
Our reasoning for recommending Bloomreach Engagement over other tech stack alternatives has evolved over the years—and it will likely continue to evolve. This article presents the latest iteration of our argument for why we believe Bloomreach Engagement stands out among its competitors.
Hope you enjoy the read!
What Is Bloomreach Engagement?
Bloomreach Engagement is a unique platform that consolidates the functionality of multiple standalone tools into a single, tightly integrated system. In our view, the platform currently covers ten core functionalities, which we’ve visualized in the following diagram.
We believe there are several major advantages to this all-in-one approach compared to purchasing multiple separate tools and integrating them manually:
1. Reduced Integration Complexity
With Bloomreach Engagement, you only need to integrate one tool into your existing setup. In contrast, if you opt for five standalone tools to match its functionality, you must integrate all five with your infrastructure—and with each other. Maintaining these integrations so they work as expected at all times adds ongoing complexity.
There’s also a significant upfront cost to setting up these integrations, along with recurring expenses for maintenance. From our own experience, we worked with a client who transitioned from Bloomreach Engagement to a collection of separate tools. After the switch, we noticed a clear shift in the type of work we were doing for them—we spent far more time maintaining data pipelines between multiple systems and much less time on revenue-generating use cases and strategic initiatives.
2. Simplicity
Instead of juggling five different logins and interfaces across multiple platforms, you only need one.
3. Cost Efficiency
From our experience, purchasing multiple platforms to approximate Bloomreach Engagement’s functionality is typically more expensive than simply paying for Bloomreach Engagement itself. Additionally, maintaining Bloomreach Engagement and deploying new use cases within the platform is likely 40%+ cheaper compared to managing an alternative tech stack. This cost efficiency is a major factor that businesses should consider.
4. Flexibility
Bloomreach Engagement is incredibly flexible. If you have a use case in mind, chances are you can execute it within the platform. Unfortunately, we’ve found that this level of adaptability is often lacking in other alternatives we’ve tested.
Are There Any Disadvantages?
Because Bloomreach Engagement offers unparalleled flexibility and consolidates at least ten core functionalities into a single platform, it is naturally more complex than a point solution like Klaviyo. However, this challenge can be easily addressed by hiring the right skill set within your marketing operations team—something we’ve covered in this article:
When implemented successfully, this approach significantly enhances your ability to execute revenue-generating use cases. In fact, compared to alternative tech stacks, the impact on your business could be an order of magnitude greater.
10 Core Functionalities of Bloomreach Engagement
In this section, we’ll discuss the architecture and key functionalities of Bloomreach Engagement.
CDP (Single Customer Profile)
One of the smartest decisions Bloomreach Engagement made early on was structuring its platform around a true Customer Data Platform (CDP) at its core. From there, they built out-of-the-box marketing channels such as email and website CRO & personalization around this CDP.
I emphasize “true” CDP because many companies claim to have one, but in our opinion, their products don’t fully meet the definition. We explain this argument in detail in this article:
It’s also worth noting that some companies started as single or multiple-channel marketing tools (e.g., Braze initially focused on mobile apps) and later expanded to support additional channels. Others, like Klaviyo, attempted to bolt on a “CDP” after the fact. However, it appears that adding a CDP as an afterthought is far more difficult than designing the platform around a CDP from the very beginning and then building marketing channels on top of it.
In many ways, Bloomreach Engagement’s CDP-centric architecture directly influences the functionality of all its marketing channels. Because the CDP was designed properly from the start, we haven’t encountered any significant limitations—whether in the individual marketing channels or in how they work together within the platform.
The Power of a Single Customer Profile in a CDP
One of the core features of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is the creation of a single customer profile—essentially a centralized record that consolidates all important customer or website visitor interactions. This profile aggregates data from various sources, whether it’s offline purchasing behavior, online browsing and shopping activity, or interactions with your email and SMS marketing campaigns.
Since email and SMS are natively integrated into Bloomreach Engagement, there’s no need to manually sync data from these channels into the CDP—it’s already there out of the box. Beyond that, the profile can also include insights such as which A/B test group the customer was part of, what products were recommended to them on your website, and more.
Here’s an illustrative example of what a single customer profile looks like within Bloomreach Engagement:
The Challenge of Maintaining a Unified Profile
However, it’s important to acknowledge that maintaining a single, accurate customer profile in today’s digital landscape is not an easy task. This isn’t a limitation of tools like Bloomreach Engagement but rather a consequence of how customers interact with websites across multiple browsers and devices.
There are many strategies to maximize the accuracy of single customer profiles, which we’ve outlined in detail in this article:
When it comes to executing revenue-generating use cases or answering critical business questions through data analytics, the effectiveness of these efforts heavily depends on the quality of the data they rely on—as illustrated in the visualization below.
This means that both the quality and quantity of data in your database directly determine your ability to drive revenue and make well-informed decisions. That’s why having a strong, high-quality database at the center of all your marketing operations is absolutely crucial.
In the case of Bloomreach Engagement, this central database functions as a highly flexible and incredibly fast CDP, ensuring that every connected marketing channel operates with accurate, unified, and actionable data—ready to be leveraged in real time.
This means that if a website visitor performs a certain action, you can respond almost immediately within the same session. This level of real-time responsiveness is not a standard feature across all marketing operations tools available on the market today, making it a significant advantage of Bloomreach Engagement.
Zero-Party Data
In addition to tracking customer or website visitor interactions across your site and marketing channels, Bloomreach Engagement allows you to store zero-party data (ZPD) within the same customer profile.
Zero-party data represents explicit customer preferences that are voluntarily shared—typically through direct questions such as:
"What is your shoe size?"
Bloomreach Engagement provides a comprehensive infrastructure for collecting ZPD across multiple channels, including your website, email, SMS, and more.
We’ve actually written a detailed guide on collecting ZPD, which you can find in this article:
It also includes free templates we’ve developed, which you can use in your Bloomreach Engagement project—free of charge:
Email Marketing
Everything you’d expect from an email marketing automation tool like Klaviyo is also available in Bloomreach Engagement.
In fact, we believe that email marketing executed through Bloomreach Engagement outperforms Klaviyo—and we explain our reasoning in detail in this article:
SMS (WhatsApp) Marketing
Bloomreach Engagement includes a robust SMS and WhatsApp marketing channel, eliminating the need for third-party integrations. Traditionally, businesses would have to rely on tools like Attentive to access this functionality, but with Bloomreach Engagement, it’s natively built in—allowing for seamless execution and data unification across all marketing channels.
Mobile Push Notification
If you have a mobile app where customers can shop outside of your website, Bloomreach Engagement has you covered. The platform enables you to send personalized push notifications directly to your customers, keeping them engaged and driving conversions.
Paid Retargeting
Bloomreach Engagement also allows you to seamlessly sync audiences built within your CDP to Facebook, Google, and other advertising platforms. This enables you to retarget customers based on first-party & zero-party data that advertising platforms typically don’t have access to.
Additionally, you can exclude customers already subscribed to email, SMS, or mobile push notifications—helping you reduce ad spend and improve efficiency.
Data Analytics
Bloomreach Engagement features a powerful analytics module that provides exceptionally fast data processing. Thanks to its real-time data storage, reports and computations are incredibly fast, making it an invaluable tool for ad-hoc analysis.
Unlike many competitors that operate on a 5- to 15-minute refresh window, Bloomreach Engagement provides true real-time reporting, allowing you to make data-driven decisions instantly.
Mobile App CRO & Personalization
Beyond push notifications, Bloomreach Engagement also enables real-time personalization within mobile apps, allowing you to dynamically tailor the user experience.
For example, if a customer adds a product to their cart, you can dynamically update their hero image based on the product they’re interested in. We originally developed this use case for website personalization, but the same approach can be applied to mobile apps as well. You can read more about it in this article:
Web CRO & Personalization
Bloomreach Engagement is an exceptionally powerful tool for website CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) and personalization. It allows you to implement a wide range of use cases, from simple customizations—such as displaying a welcome discount to new visitors across the website and other channels—
— to more advanced strategies, such as delivering entirely different homepage experiences tailored to specific customer cohorts. With Bloomreach Engagement, you have the flexibility and infrastructure to execute both quick wins and ambitious personalization initiatives at scale.
Notification System
As proof of Bloomreach Engagement’s flexibility, we’d love to showcase a custom functionality that we at Datacop have built on top of the platform.
We developed a comprehensive revenue loss prevention notification system with two main objectives:
Monitoring Marketing Automations & Data Flows – Ensuring that all workflows are running as expected and catching any potential issues early.
Detecting Anomalies – Identifying both positive and negative trends in your data that are worth investigating.
We’ve described this solution in detail in the article below, where we break down how it works and how it helps businesses stay proactive in preventing revenue loss:
Anything Missing?
If there’s a channel or functionality not natively available in Bloomreach Engagement, you can easily integrate third-party tools to fill the gap.
Additionally, Bloomreach Engagement offers several other features that we didn’t cover in dedicated sections, such as deploying a simple Loyalty Program and Data Predictions. While these functionalities may not be as widely used, they are still available within the platform.
As we mentioned at the beginning, Bloomreach Engagement is an incredibly flexible platform. If you have a specific use case in mind, chances are you can execute it within Bloomreach Engagement—a statement we probably wouldn’t make about any other tool on the market.
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