Migrating to a new platform comes with a lot of pressure — because setting a solid foundation is critical to getting the most out of any tool in the long run. Getting decision-makers to buy in on a new software investment, handling data and integrations with your current tech stack, and having to teach your team a new platform and its accompanying set of new processes are all big challenges to tackle. So how do you make sure this process goes well? Our migration tips will help you successfully add Braze to your tech stack and start using it wisely.

However, before we dive into the specifics of planning and executing your migration from Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) to Braze, we want to level-set on why modern marketers are making the switch from their legacy marketing cloud to a modern customer engagement platform. 

‍

Why are marketers making the switch?

Legacy marketing clouds worked well for a time, but modern customer engagement is complex and non-linear — with rapid shifts in technology and consumer expectations — pushing marketers to continually adapt their strategies. Not only do legacy clouds not provide the required flexibility in their features to keep up with rapid changes, they also often pose challenges to marketers looking to make the most of their data, leading them to sometimes over-collect and manage more data than necessary.

Moving on from a legacy marketing cloud, such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, to a more modern customer engagement platform, like Braze, empowers marketers to get the most out of the data they collect and create meaningful, timely connections with customers.‍

6 Reasons Marketers are Moving to Braze

1. Cross-Channel Capabilities

‍Braze is considered a true cross-channel platform, consolidating data and events across email, web, mobile, SMS, WhatsApp, and advertising channels into one platform.

2. Real-Time Customer Journey Orchestration

‍Braze emphasizes real-time orchestration, utilizing its web and mobile SDKs for direct API access to front-end digital properties, enabling fast creation of personalized experiences.

3. Consolidation of Messaging Platforms

‍Brands are looking to consolidate their martech stack to reduce costs and technical debt. Braze offers a more integrated solution compared to using multiple platforms.

4. Contact-Based Licensing Concerns

‍Brands with longstanding relationships with Salesforce face contact count issues and high costs unless they have a strategy in place to regularly purge their instance. 

5. Data and Event Strategy

‍Brands making substantial shifts in data and event strategies, like adopting customer data platforms or cloud-based data warehouses, are moving to Braze.

6. Marketer-friendly User Interface

‍Braze provides a straightforward UI, removing barriers around data and process management, and enabling faster operational execution.

‍

Key Differences Between SFMC & Braze

Data-Centric vs. User-Centric

‍SFMC is data-centric, built on a backend SQL server focusing on data management. Braze is user-centric, designed to interact with consumers on mobile devices first, using flexible data specifications.

Complexity and Customization

‍SFMC offers extensive customization but is complex. Braze provides a simplified UI and easier front-end experience for marketers.‍

Partner Ecosystem

‍SFMC has an exhaustive network of technology and service partners due to its market share. Braze has an extensive and growing catalog of integrated partners.

Unified Toolset

‍Executing messages with SFMC involves jumping between different tools for various tasks. Braze offers a unified toolset for all messaging channels.

Data Integration

‍The main difference here is in the architecture focus, which informs data integration processes. SFMC has a relational-focused architecture, relying on SFTP integrations and delayed bulk uploads. Braze’s architecture is event-focused, resulting in near real-time data integration through APIs and direct connections to modern data warehouses.

If you’re still evaluating which platform is a better fit for your business, we’ve pulled together our insights on what to consider when evaluating Braze vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud to aid in your decision-making.

‍

Factors That Influence Migration Timelines

The first question we’re often asked by brands migrating to Braze from SFMC is, “How long is this going to take?” This varies greatly depending on your specific business's size, processes, data, and goals. We see several common scenarios that influence migration timelines the most and are key things to consider when determining the timing for your migration from SFMC to Braze.

Contract Deadlines

‍Current contract end dates are a huge factor that influences migration timelines. In about 1 in 3 conversations we have, brands are concerned about when their Salesforce Marketing Cloud contract ends, and what the implications are for their migration to Braze.‍

Brand Refreshes

‍A brand refresh involves significant work, including new assets, copy edits, and redesigns, which need to be considered when planning a migration.‍

Data & Event Projects

‍It's crucial to consider ongoing data and event projects (e.g., setting up a cloud data platform (CDP), introducing event streaming services, etc.) that might be happening at the same time that you are implementing Braze. Coordination with data and engineering teams is essential to ensure compliance and proper integration when migrating to Braze, and too much overlap with other critical projects can extend the timeline of your migration.

Seasonality

‍We recommend avoiding peak periods for your business (e.g., back-to-school season, Black Friday/Cyber Monday) when planning for your implementation and migration. Migrating during any major revenue-driving periods should be avoided to prevent disruptions.

Team Capacity

‍We’re noticing that many organizations are facing resource constraints due to economic conditions, and the decreased capacity can impact the speed and execution of a Braze migration. It’s important to recognize that your employees still need to manage their day-to-day tasks during the migration, so external help from a partner can ensure you have the proper resourcing in place for a successful migration.

Message Volume

‍Organizations with large customer bases and high message volumes need to consider the migration process carefully, as it can be time-consuming and complex. 

‍

Four Stages of Migrating to Braze

After you’ve determined the right timeline for your migration, it’s time to actually begin the transition. We’ve broken down the migration from SFMC to Braze into four main phases based on our hands-on experience managing these migrations for our clients. It’s important to consider each of these stages carefully to guide you and your team through a successful transition.

1. Evaluation

‍Before you get started, it’s important to define success criteria, identify key pain points, and establish KPIs to track your progress. You also should identify what objectives/functionalities are critical in the MVP stage and must be tackled right away, and which capabilities can be added to a “wishlist” to be implemented in later phases. 

2. Inventory

‍This stage involves evaluating and understanding your current resources and processes.

• Audit your data and assets: Many customers have been using SFMC for several years and have accumulated a lot of data and assets. It's crucial to assess what's actually utilized in your marketing versus what may have accumulated over time but is no longer valuable for your current strategy and messaging mix. 
• Examine your campaign process: Additionally, it's important to define the campaign process and anticipate necessary changes due to differences between SFMC and Braze. Preparing for these aspects now will help ease the transition and set a solid foundation for future operations.

3. Workshop

‍The workshop stage focuses on envisioning the future state, designing the architecture, and determining the optimal data sources and methods. It typically involves deep dives into 3 key areas:

• Architecture & Integrations: When we conduct these sessions with clients we delve into the mechanics of data flow and address potential latency issues between different systems like a CDP, data warehouse, or front-end platform
• Campaign Process & Messaging: It’s important to thoroughly examine the campaign process within Braze, recognizing that it will differ from SFMC. While many steps may remain unchanged, switching to Braze may result in some operational changes for your team, as their user-friendly interface aims to streamline operations and reduce friction for marketing teams.
• Timing, Prioritization & Resourcing: This involves creating a detailed plan for your migration, sometimes broken down week by week. Certain migration tasks, such as sender authentication packages and DNS setup, are essential and non-negotiable, though they may take time. 

4. Migrate

‍This phase is where you execute the transition of integrations from one platform to another, specifically setting up Braze for use in active and future channels. 

• Foundational Set-Up & Configuration: This step ensures you have the foundational elements of Braze configured before you add in data, integrations, or campaigns. Workspace setup, channel enablement, and establishing your data and event model occur at this time. This is the time to authenticate your sending domains, enable your campaign operations team to adapt to scripting changes, and manage your event structures. 
• Data & Integrations: Next, it’s time to move your data and integrations to Braze. Data integration tasks include transitioning file feeds that you may have going to the SFTP today to a cloud data ingestion into Braze. This moves data more directly, enhancing security which is a big win because the data never has to be extracted or stored somewhere else, like a middleware platform.
• Asset & Campaign Migration: The last step is to bring your assets and campaigns to Braze. It involves reviewing and migrating marketing assets, determining your content strategy, and deciding on the use of content blocks, dynamic content, drag-and-drop templates, or HTML to ensure ongoing operational efficiencies.

‍

The Biggest Changes for Your Team & How to Manage Them

Change management is one of the most challenging aspects of transitioning from one martech platform to another. Identifying the changes that will impact your team the most during your transition from SFMC to Braze will help you anticipate and mitigate roadblocks and keep your migration on track.

How Customer Profile Data is Defined & Stored

In SFMC, customer profile data is defined by rows on a table. New attributes (fields) are appended to tables for all customers. In Braze, customer profiles are unique to the individual based on attributes, events and interactions across digital and offline sources.

How to manage the change:

‍Establish a strong method to document this in the form of a data & event dictionary. In our experience, this needs to be a living document that will iterate over time.

Data Transformation Capabilities

‍Many SFMC customers do major data transformation within SFMC through SQL queries and Automation Studio. In many cases, SFMC becomes a marketing database-of-record used to transform & build audiences based on relational data. Braze takes a different approach, focusing on messaging, customer journey building, and actionable data to deliver messaging at scale. Braze’s methodology promotes coordination, integration, and collaboration between data teams and marketing teams to let marketers focus on marketing.

How to manage the change:

Bridge the gap between data teams (IT/Engineering) & marketers to feed Braze with the right data to power communications. 

Navigating Messaging Channels

‍In SFMC you need to jump around between different acquired pieces of the stack to leverage different messaging channels. You may jump between several different studios and builders to execute a campaign - e.g. Email Studio for email, Mobile Studio for SMS, Marketing Cloud Personalization for web personalization, Journey Builder for campaign automation, etc. In Braze, all channel building capabilities are embedded in one location, Messaging, and are executed in Campaigns or Canvases.

How to manage the change:

Build a strong point-of-view on the value of a centralized location for messaging channels and plan to activate all Braze channels (emails, SMS, push, Content Cards, Feature Flags, in-app messaging, Webhooks, Audience Sync) to make the most of the platform.

Differences in Coding Language

‍SFMC uses AmpScript for dynamic content and personalization. AmpScript requires a unique skill-set but provides a wide variety of options. Braze uses Liquid scripting (developed by Shopify and written in Ruby) for dynamic content & personalization.

How to manage the change:

We recommend having resources that understand the differences in functions and operators and how those translate or differ in structure/solution to help bridge functionality gaps in messaging.

‍

3 Things You Can Do To Start Planning for Your Migration

1. Audit Your Current SFMC Instance

‍Conduct an audit to understand your current setup, including active components and any integrations. Use a workbook to document everything for the cross-functional migration team to ensure everyone understands the existing setup.‍

2. Start People Planning

‍Assess the roles and resources needed to support Braze, including marketing, campaign operations, and IT/engineering teams. Consider the learning curve for roles like email developers and SQL query specialists. Coordinate with teams outside of marketing, like IT and engineering, on the data side to ensure they are prepared for the changes.‍

3. Talk to an Expert

‍Find someone who can help you unpack the size, complexity, and level of effort for the change. Engaging with experienced consultants like Stitch, who understand both platforms and can help you anticipate and navigate complexities and challenges. Experts can provide insights on converting processes and addressing key changes, such as transitioning from AMPscript to Liquid, and offer perspectives on data, operational, and resourcing considerations.

‍

How Stitch Can Help

While migrating data and content to a new marketing tool can seem overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be with a good plan in place and the assistance of the right partner. Because of our deep experience within both platforms, Stitch is uniquely positioned to help companies migrate to Braze from Salesforce. If you need more advice and support for your migration process, reach out to our team at Stitch.