Braze is a powerful customer engagement platform that helps brands create meaningful experiences for their customers.
Braze is for marketers who want better solutions. Stitch is for marketers who use Braze.
In today’s competitive business landscape, brands are constantly trying to figure out ways to attract and retain their customers’ attention. Every bit of customer interaction is precious. Every touch point is an opportunity.
For this reason, modern software architectures like Braze help organizations have a more in-depth understanding of the varying context of their customers. Armed with these insights, brands are better positioned to craft a message that their audience resonates with. With such a powerful tool, brands can create meaningful interactions with their customers and cultivate a systemized customer-centric approach in their marketing.
To unleash the full capabilities of this customer engagement platform, you can tap into the expertise of a Braze consultant. For this reason, the software company introduced Braze Alloys, a curation of solution partners and agencies that they vetted to help architect a holistic strategy for your business.
This way, you don’t have to let your staff go through the steep learning curve and the frustrating trial-and-error process just to get the most out of the software. Hiring a Braze-focused consultancy like Stitch allows you to draw on years’ worth of marketing and technical knowledge from a team of seasoned martech professionals, which in turn helps you make the most out of your investment in Braze.
A Braze solution architect creates a roadmap tailored to your unique customer lifecycle. Each stage of the customer’s journey is plotted out with the right message or action across multiple channels. The consultant would also be involved in setting up internal processes to run a complex marketing campaign and continuously improve it based on additional customer insights and industry standards.
To sum up, the consultant can map out the customers’ journey, from the first touchpoint, recurring messages across different channels, welcome messages once the customer decides to buy your product or sign up for your service, and notifications even when they’ve onboarded.
It’s not just enough to plan out the strategy. The consultant is like your Braze partner who would also do the gruntwork of implementing the strategy precisely. This process includes migrating data, as well as engineering platform configuration and components. The Braze consultant will also be responsible for identifying and resolving issues in the data feed, as well as making iterations based on the information at hand.
The beauty of hiring an agency as your Braze partner is that you don’t just get a Braze technical expert on your team. You also get a marketing professional to help orchestrate your campaign. This includes crafting the right message for the right audience at the right stage of the customer journey and to the right channel. This process alone is very tedious as it involves constant optimization before you create a well-oiled machine that produces excellent results every time.
The Braze consultant is also in charge of cleaning and analyzing data so you always have actionable information for your marketing campaign. With a martech expert on your team, you can easily segment your audience and identify their unique context to deliver the best customer experience. There’s nothing like a data-driven process to drive your marketing campaign.
The value that Braze customer engagement platform offers to your brand cannot be understated. In fact, it’s been named a leader in the 2023 Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Marketing Hubs report1. Using 26 criteria, the report evaluated 15 campaign management solutions. Braze received the highest possible score in 8 criteria and came out as a leader, besting even other strong performers like Microsoft, SAP, MoEngage, and Insider.
According to Forrester, Braze “suits organizations looking for a flexible and marketer-friendly cross-channel marketing hubs solution to refresh their digital experience strategy." This customer engagement platform simply offers strong service and strategy.
So, what does Braze do? What are its features for it to receive such an accolade? Here’s a roundup:
Braze’s intuitive interface and superb architecture provide live-updating data so your brand can act based on real-time customer behavior. The platform allows data ingestion from varied sources using APIs, SDKs, CSV imports, and its open partner ecosystem. You can also say goodbye to data silos with the platform’s easy streaming and sharing function across different data technologies that other departments in your organization may use.
You can also generate real-time analytics and in-depth reporting within Braze’s platform. This way, you immediately pick up trends and get regular updates on your marketing campaigns. This allows you to quickly tweak strategies for the best results.
You can orchestrate customer journeys right within the platform using Braze Canvas Flow. The drag-and-drop journey builder allows you to identify actions that will trigger a message, craft personalized messages, and add the next step of your customer's journey based on their actions, preferences, or channel.
Canvas Flow allows you to rapidly split-test messages, channels, and frequency of your campaign. This makes for faster optimization so you get to deliver the best customer experience. And your brand enjoys a bump in engagement, open rates, and conversion rates.
You can deliver personalized messages to targeted audiences across multiple channels–all within Braze platform. Here are the different channels that this customer engagement platform supports:
Braze’s comprehensive customer engagement platform and machine learning model provide marketers with the leverage to automate the process or make informed decisions. Here are two nifty tools within the platform that uses AI and machine learning model:
Predictive Suite
You don’t need a crystal ball to identify customers who are most likely to unsubscribe or customers who are most likely to make a purchase. Braze’s Predictive Suite can do those wonders for you; no magic is needed – it’s all down to data and machine learning algorithms.
Intelligence Suite
Get the when, where, and what of every campaign right within Braze’s Intelligence Suite. The algorithm will help you send the right message at a time and to a channel where customers are most likely engaged.
Braze consultants achieve mastery of the platform by climbing the Braze practitioner certification ladder. You can check out these certifications by clicking on Braze Learning page.
These certifications cover dashboard usage, creating and executing campaigns, and channel mastery:
Braze Certified Practitioner
This is the first level of Braze mastery. Practitioners who have completed and passed this certification will have gained the knowledge to differentiate the varying data collection methods that Braze uses, including CSV imports, SDK, API, and partner integrations. On top of that, this level will also touch on identifying the key stages of the customer’s journey.
Braze Certified Marketer
This Braze certification will cover the nitty-gritty details of planning, implementing, and reporting a marketing campaign. Once completed, practitioners are expected to be knowledgeable in message personalization, channel mastery, and customer journey orchestration–from start to finish.
Braze Certified Administrator
Certified administrators are expected to know how to configure Braze and customize it to suit the brand’s goals with the campaign. This certification touches on administrative functions, data collection and reporting, and campaign planning.
Specifically designed for developers, this certification validates the candidate’s mastery of Braze’s Native SDK integrations.
Braze Certified Android SDK
Certified Android SDK developers validate the candidate’s mastery of integrating Braze Android SDK. Certified developers will have in-depth knowledge of in-app messaging, content cards, push notifications, deep links, geofencing, and user identity.
Braze Certified iOS SDK
Developers who have passed this certification have demonstrated their mastery of integrating Braze iOS SDK. The learning pathway includes data ingestion methods, iOS SDK integrations, and troubleshooting of data flows.
In conclusion, mastery of the Braze platform takes time and effort. Sometimes, it takes a team of martech experts to fully capitalize on the extensive capabilities of this software. Thus, working with a Braze partner agency or consultant can be the wisest decision for your brand if you want to reach your goals fast without having to go through the lengthy learning process.