From feature flags to Liquid tags, Braze’s robust set of features helps marketers get the right message to their customers on the right channels.
Braze is for marketers who want better solutions. Stitch is for marketers who use Braze.
With a bold promise of helping brands get the right message to customers on any channel, Braze is today's leader in integrated customer engagement. Users clearly see the value that the Braze platform adds to their businesses. Braze’s customer base and user community are growing. There is a ton of evidence to explain why.
Forrester Wave scored Braze highly for innovation, performance, roadmap, and support for products and services. Braze has a 4.5-star rating on G2.com and the platform has appeared on several G2 "Best of" lists in 2023 already 1
At Stitch, we are particularly excited about some of Braze’s features. These include frequency capping, teams, in-message reporting, and feature flags. As Braze experts, we study and understand Braze’s product documentation. We test their new products and features to help businesses in implementation.
To get the most out of Braze, it's important to understand all of its capabilities. These are the features you should be incorporating into your customer engagement strategy:
Braze content cards are a premium feature that embeds content directly into the interface of an app or website. Unlike a push notification, content cards feel natural and do not disrupt a user's experience. Braze says content cards have a 3,800% higher success rate than emails when it comes to boosting sales over a 72-hour window2. Content cards are permissionless, meaning that customers do not need to opt-in.
Braze’s reporting on content card metrics differentiates between impressions and unique viewers. One person viewing the same content card seven times in a day increases impressions by seven, but it does not affect the count of unique viewers. Impressions show the reach of a campaign, but unique viewers reveal the penetration. Recording the number of times each user viewed a content card helps isolate highly engaged users for further retargeting.
Liquid tags are akin to placeholders in dynamic programs. Braze liquid tags are expressed using curly brackets that let Braze know you intend to put dynamic content there. This feature helps you personalize the messages you send or display to customers. You can dynamically add customer names, email addresses, cities, countries, and even timestamps to your content3.
Canvas is a Braze tool that allows you to set up a full customer journey instead of a one-off campaign. Braze describes Canvas as a visual programming language4. It allows you to set up triggers and messages that lead customers to a predetermined end. In fact, each canvas can have up to four different conversion events, which allows for better segmentation. You can split users by building different workflows on Canvas to see which leads to better outcomes.
Braze feature flags allow businesses to enable or disable a functionality for a particular class of users5. This means you must specify a criterion when creating a new feature flag.
Feature flags are great when you are rolling out a new feature or product. You can begin with a soft launch while observing the reception, making changes, and then allowing more users access.
Braze feature flags are still in beta mode, but your business can still use them effectively with the help of Braze experts.
Braze tools enrich the lifecycle marketing strategy of your business. The lifecycle marketing model aims to optimize communication with your leads to convert them into customers and keep them through retargeting.
The customer lifecycle journey begins with awareness. Your business needs to meet customers as they search for solutions to their problems. You can first capture their attention through avenues such as social media ads.
The second step is engagement. Engagement begins when customers take steps such as following you on social media or clicking on an ad. Visiting your website from search engine results also counts as engagement.
The third step is evaluation. Evaluation happens when customers are considering whether to purchase your product. Brands need to communicate their value proposition clearly at this stage to maximize conversions.
The fourth step is the actual purchase. However, the lifecycle does not stop there. Businesses need to follow up with customers for feedback and more sales opportunities. Some customer journeys end after the purchase, but the best-case scenario is when a customer becomes an advocate for your brand.
At each stage of the journey, you need to pick the right communication tools and send the right message to guide leads down the sales funnel. Braze experts help you curate the right strategies to use at each stage.
Experts help you pick the right features of your products to highlight to get the most attention when launching a new campaign. At Stitch, we help you set up Blaze email campaigns to provide useful information for leads who need to understand your products better. We can also help you test different feature flags to help convert promising leads. When your subscription service is experiencing too much churn, our Braze experts will help you implement a retargeting strategy to encourage renewals.
Braze provides an ecosystem it calls Alloys to allow Braze users to extend customer engagement capabilities6. Braze works together with multiple technology partners to create well-vetted integrations that can scale reliably. Here are a few examples of what is possible with integrations:
Braze’s integration with Snowflake (a cloud solutions provider) enables users to maximize the value of their customer and campaign data. The integration allows businesses to sync customer attributes, actions, and events for greater personalization. Companies that use Snowflake can share otherwise siloed data, as Braze campaigns can be triggered by a customer’s action regardless of the platform that captured the action.
Braze’s integration with AccuWeather means that businesses can use real-time and forecasted weather data to send dynamic messages to customers.
The Datadog integration allows users to send their Braze metrics to Datadog for insights on uptime, security, and messaging activity.
Integrating Braze with Looker (a business intelligence platform) enables businesses to draw more precise insights from their customer engagement data. They can build dashboards that stream data using the Braze API in real-time.
ContentSquare's integration allows businesses to use customer experience data for more nuanced messaging. ContentSquare tracks activity such as mouse movements, clicks, and other browsing behavior. The analyzed data can help businesses become more responsive to user needs especially when it reveals potential poor experience issues.
With over 100 listed technology partners, Braze users have a whole host of ways to use the Braze architecture to enrich their customer engagement activity.
Stitch is proud to be a Braze solutions partner. We partner with Braze to build new products and improve existing ones to create more meaningful experiences for users. We work with clients from strategy creation to implementation to help them get the most out of Braze.
Braze experts need to understand lifecycle marketing, analytics, and creativity to find ways to draw value from the Braze platform. Experts have deep knowledge of Braze documentation and use their experience to build usable, scalable solutions.
True experts should have Braze practitioner certification. Braze categorizes this certification into two learning paths: Braze Dashboard Certifications and Braze Developer Certifications7. The latter focuses on Braze SDK integrations for iOS and Android.
At Stitch, our team has earned these certifications, and we bring a wealth of hands-on experience to every project. We have built Braze solutions for clients in hospitality, media, tech, healthcare, and financial services.
Braze’s website does not disclose prices. They also have no free plan or a trial version of their platform. Like other SaaS companies, they charge a subscription fee based on the number of users. Some features attract a premium fee beyond the basic subscription. Braze alternatives, such as Moengage and CleverTap, also do not reveal their pricing model explicitly on their websites.
When considering the cost of your Braze subscription, it's important to factor in the cost of hiring a Braze expert as well. Braze is a complex platform. Realizing its true value requires the support of a Braze expert to develop strategies, pick the right tools, and adjust when necessary.
Stitch Braze experts help you with the preparation of data pipelines and data cleaning as part of your strategy implementation. We identify data governance issues and help you with their management. Stitch also provides training on Braze tools whenever your internal team needs it. A Stitch partnership truly unlocks the value of your Braze subscription.
To learn more about Stitch's services and a possible partnership with us, schedule a Braze demo here. You can also check out more resources on how to make the most of your martech.
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