MCP Servers: How to Give AI Direct Access to Your Business Tools

If you’ve been following anything related to the world of AI, you’ve probably seen “MCP” mentioned at least a few times—from marketing blogs to industry newsletters. People are implementing it, discussing its potential, and asking the same question: What exactly is an MCP server, and why should I care?

The confusion is warranted. Model Context Protocol, or “MCP,” servers represent a fundamental shift in how AI tools connect to real-world data, but the technical jargon can make them seem more complicated than they are.

This guide breaks down everything you need to know about MCP servers, how they work, and why businesses are using them to transform their AI workflows.

AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, and others are remarkably capable, but they operate in isolation from your actual business data. They can write, analyze, and reason, but they can't:

• Check your latest campaign performance
• Update a contact in your CRM
• Pull real-time data from your business systems
• Take actions across multiple platforms simultaneously

Before MCP, every connection between an AI tool and a business platform required custom development. Want Claude to access your marketing data? Build a custom integration. Need it to work with your sales platform too? Build another integration. This created what developers call the “NxM problem”—every new AI tool needs custom connectors for every business platform.

Rather than forcing you to replace or consolidate your existing tech stack, MCP introduces a new connectivity layer that sits between AI assistants and your business tools. Think of it as adding an intelligent translation layer to your current infrastructure. One that enables seamless AI-powered workflows across all your existing platforms without disrupting what already works.

This approach unlocks powerful agentic capabilities, where AI can autonomously orchestrate complex workflows across multiple tools.

Think of an MCP server as a translator that sits between your AI assistant and your business tools. Released by Anthropic in November 2024, MCP provides a standardized way for AI models to connect with external data sources and tools.

Here’s the simple analogy: If USB-C provides a universal way to connect devices to peripherals, MCP provides a universal way to connect AI models to your business data.

Key components: 

• MCP client: Functionality built into AI tools like Claude or Cursor, enabling connections to MCP servers (where the business data and context live)
• MCP server: The lightweight program that connects to your business platforms and responds to client requests

Your business context: The data and functionality that can be gathered/acted upon through the MCP server

When you ask Claude to “update Jane’s contact information in ActiveCampaign,” here’s what happens behind the scenes:

1. Natural Language Input: You type your request in plain English
2. Client Processing: Claude's MCP client interprets your request, assesses the capabilities available through the MCP server, and determines what action to take
3. Server Communication: The client sends a structured request to the ActiveCampaign MCP server
4. Platform Interaction: The server securely connects to ActiveCampaign and updates Jane's information
5. Response: You get confirmation that the task was completed

The entire process happens in seconds, without you needing to log into ActiveCampaign or write any code.

People often ask how MCP differs from Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Both enhance AI with external data, but they serve different purposes:

RAG is best for:

• Information retrieval from large document collections
• Knowledge base searches where you need to find relevant content
• Static data that doesn't change frequently
• Reading and analyzing existing information

MCP is best for:

• Taking actions in real-time (updating contacts, sending emails)
• Dynamic data that changes frequently (campaign performance, live metrics)
• Multi-platform workflows that span different business tools
• Two-way interactions where the AI both reads and writes data

Think of RAG as giving your AI a really good search engine for your documents. MCP gives your AI hands to actually take action inside of your business tools.

The power of MCP becomes clear when you see how businesses are actually using it:

For business owners

The challenge: "I need to check yesterday's email campaign performance, update a customer's contact info, and add them to a nurture sequence. That's three different logins and 15 minutes of clicking around."

The MCP solution: "Hey Claude, how did our 'Black Friday Sale' campaign perform yesterday, and can you add Sarah Johnson to our VIP customer list?"

For marketers

The challenge: Campaign analysis requires pulling data from multiple sources, manually creating reports, and switching between dashboards.

The MCP solution: "Analyze my top 5 campaigns from last month and suggest improvements based on engagement rates and learnings from my best-performing campaigns."

For agencies

The challenge: Managing an ActiveCampaign account for each client leads to leapfrogging between accounts all day.

The MCP solution: "Create the following tags and custom fields for the new customer I just signed."

ActiveCampaign was among the first marketing platforms to embrace MCP, launching our Remote MCP Server to solve real problems marketers face daily.

Core capabilities:

• Contact management: Create, update, and organize contacts with natural language commands
• Automation control: Add or remove contacts from live automations instantly
• Campaign analytics: Get performance insights without logging into your dashboard
• Bulk operations: Create tags, custom fields, and lists across multiple contacts simultaneously
• Cross-platform actions: Combine ActiveCampaign actions with other MCP-enabled platforms

Example prompts you can try:

• "Create a tag called 'Conference Attendee' and add it to these 30 contacts."
• "How did my welcome email sequence perform last week?"
• "Update Emma's phone number and add her to the re-engagement automation."
• "Show me which campaigns had the highest click rates this month."

The MCP ecosystem is growing rapidly, but ActiveCampaign stands out in several key areas:

Market leadership

Currently, only a few marketing platforms offer MCP servers:

• ActiveCampaign (Seamless setup with automation management)
• HubSpot (Limited capabilities)
• Klaviyo (Basic functionality)
• Brevo (Recently announced)

Unique differentiators:

• True autonomous marketing: ActiveCampaign’s MCP server can take action on your behalf, from updating contacts to adding tags to enrolling customers into new automations.
• Automation management: ActiveCampaign is currently the only MCP server that can add or remove contacts from live automations—a capability competitors haven't matched.
• Comprehensive action set: Our MCP server covers the full marketing lifecycle with actionable capabilities, from contact management to campaign execution, while competitors are stuck in read-only or analysis mode.
• Multi-platform integration: You can connect ActiveCampaign's MCP server alongside others (like Square for e-commerce) to create cross-platform workflows.

Example multi-platform workflow:

"Find all customers who paid through [chosen point of sale software] and haven't purchased in the last 6 months, then add them to our 'Win-Back Campaign' automation in ActiveCampaign."

This single prompt works across two platforms, eliminating the need to export data, clean it up, and manually import it.

You can set up the ActiveCampaign MCP server in just a few clicks, with no coding experience required:

Set-up process:

You can connect ActiveCampaign MCP server to your preferred tool in just a few steps:

1. Copy your unique Remote MCP URL, which can be found in your ActiveCampaign account
2. Paste your Remote MCP URL into your preferred tool’s account settings
3. Authenticate and connect your ActiveCampaign account to complete the connection

For more detailed instructions, you can reference the documents below:

• Connect Claude to the ActiveCampaign MCP Server
• Connect ChatGPT to the ActiveCampaign MCP Server

We’re actively developing our MCP server and want to hear from you. Your feedback will directly influence how we build features that save you time and streamline your workflows.

Have you tried our MCP server? We’d love to learn about your experience and understand what would make it even more valuable for your team. Click on the link below to submit our feedback form and let your voice be heard.

MCP represents more than just a new way to connect tools—it's the foundation for truly autonomous marketing workflows. As the ecosystem matures, we're likely to see:

• Smarter automation: AI agents that can analyze campaign performance and automatically optimize targeting
• Cross-platform intelligence: Systems that learn from data across all your marketing tools
• Predictive actions: AI that anticipates what you need before you ask

For marketers ready to move beyond manual platform management, MCP servers offer a glimpse into this more efficient future.

MCP servers transform how AI assistants interact with your business data, moving from isolated chat interfaces to genuine business automation tools. ActiveCampaign's MCP server puts this power in your hands today, with no coding required.

Whether you're a business owner tired of juggling multiple dashboards or a marketer looking to automate routine tasks, MCP offers a standardized way to make your AI assistant genuinely useful for real work.

The technology is ready, the ecosystem is growing, and the early results speak for themselves. The question isn't whether MCP will become standard in business AI workflows—it's whether you'll be among the early adopters who gain a competitive advantage.

Need help getting started? Our support team can walk you through the setup process and help you identify the best use cases for your business.