Making the Move: Why Marketers are Moving from Responsys to Braze

If you’re here, you may be feeling like Responsys isn’t cutting it anymore. Responsys is a legacy marketing cloud and is often seen as slow, clunky, and built for a batch-and-blast era. TL;DR: it's not built for the fast, real-time customer engagement brands need today. 

Braze, on the other hand, is modern, agile, and built for today’s marketers. 

However, ensuring the switch from Responsys to Braze is successful requires planning, strategy, and the right execution.

That’s where we come in.

At Stitch, we’ve helped several brands make this move (and avoid the headaches that come with it). This guide walks you through the why, how, and what *not* to do when migrating from Responsys to Braze.

Why Brands Are Switching to Braze

Let’s start with ‘why.’ Why are marketers moving to Braze?

When migrating from Responsys to Braze, we can not emphasize this enough: this is not a 1:1 lift and shift of platforms. 

Moving to Braze requires a different way of thinking about customer engagement. Brands that move to Braze realize the value of seamless cross-channel communications and enabling agility throughout their campaign process with better technology. 

Here are the key differences between Responsys and Braze that make Braze an attractive solution:

• Data Architecture: Responsys runs on SQL lists and profile extension tables (PETs) — which are populated by SFTP file imports. While Responsys can support API/event-triggered journeys, real-time data ingestion is not its strong suit nor what it was built for. On the other hand, Braze runs on real-time event data, meaning you can engage customers as they interact with your brand.
• Journey Orchestration: Responsys’ Programs are generally rigid and rules-based. Braze Canvases are flexible, visual, and built for real-time interactions and extending beyond native channels. Plus, Braze has more native channels (especially mobile and web). More on this later.
• Personalization & AI: Braze delivers dynamic personalization and AI-powered recommendations, while Responsys is better suited for static segmentation.
• Cross-Channel Engagement: Braze is purpose-built for seamless cross-channel messaging orchestration — supporting email, push, in-app messages, SMS, webhooks, and Connected TV in one workflow, meeting your clients where they prefer to be communicated with. Braze is bolstered by the flexibility of features and channels like WhatsApp, Content Cards, and Feature Flags, enabling marketers to truly connect with their customers anywhere. (Side note: we even helped a global gaming company reach their players through personalized in-game messaging powered by Braze). Responsys supports email, push, and SMS — but with a more disjointed experience (for both marketers and customers), and is not comparable to the flexibility offered through Braze.
• Ease of Use & Speed: Braze’s drag-and-drop interface makes campaign building a breeze. Their UI was specifically designed to empower marketers to control and manage their own campaigns. TL;DR - Responsys feels like you need a degree in database management to use it.
• Platform Management: Responsys users rely heavily on internal services from Responsys to leverage the platform. Braze was purpose-built for marketers to have more autonomy within the platform — which is why it’s so popular for marketers ranging from startups to global enterprises. For marketers who want to have continued support, Braze offers an extensive global network of service partners, like Stitch. 
• Superior education and enablement: Braze's documentation, education paths, and overall support are robust, easy to use, and meet you where you’re at in terms of learning and overall platform maturity. Add in a services partner, and you get the white-glove AND the red carpet treatment.
• Continuous innovation: Braze has a strong focus on innovation, releasing product updates on a monthly basis. As a publicly-traded company, they are incentivized to find new ways to create value for their customers, and thus, are often at the forefront of marketing innovation, having been named as a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Multichannel Marketing Hubs.

What does all this mean for you?

Brands that we’ve helped migrate to Braze see significant improvements in these areas:

• Faster campaign deployment. Marketers move quicker with Braze’s user-friendly setup. Braze’s intuitive UI, paired with Stitch’s focus on implementing AI and automation, has resulted in up to a 72% reduction in time to deploy new campaigns. 
• Better customer engagement. Personalized, real-time messaging means higher conversions. By implementing new channels, a large CPG brand saw a 102% lift in campaign conversions — within only one week of launching.
• Less reliance on developers. Marketing teams can own their campaigns without waiting on IT and engineering. This means marketers can work with services partners like Stitch to truly advance and innovate on their marketing strategies, versus being stuck in the hamster wheel of technical development. 
• More agility. Braze makes it easier to test, learn, and optimize — with easy-to-use features like AI-powered analytics, image and copy generation as an added bonus.

The Game Plan: Your Step-by-Step Guide to a Zero-Disruption Migration

Step 1: Discovery & Planning

A smooth migration starts with a clear plan. Here’s what to think about and ask yourself first:

• Audit your Responsys setup. What data, journeys, and segments need to move?
• Define what success looks like. What are your goals for the migration?
• Identify what to keep vs. optimize. Don’t just copy-paste workflows — use this as a chance to improve and find opportunities for low-LOE, high-impact changes to sprinkle into your migration. This could be incorporating new channels into existing journeys, updating the creative for low-performing emails, or re-imagining what and how a customer is being engaged with throughout their customer lifecycle. 
• Set timelines and identify key resources. Who needs to be involved, and how long will it take? Most often, marketing ops, data, engineering, IT, CRM, and lifecycle marketing teams have roles in the migration process. Additionally, consider what you would want to leverage a services partner for versus handling internally. Typically, brands will outsource a lot of the heavy lifting of migration so that their internal teams can focus on moving the company forward and doing what they do best. 

Step 2: Data & Infrastructure Migration

Data migration is where things can sometimes be lengthy. You can help ensure things move forward smoothly by:

• Mapping your Responsys data to Braze’s event-driven model. Braze focuses more on attributes and events rather than static field values. This may take time to reorient how you think of a customer profile, but the result is a more intentional, strategic approach to collecting and activating customer data. 
• Migrating historical data cleanly. Marketers have a tendency to want to hoard data, but we promise: you’ll be better off in the long run if you only move what you need (like, really need) and make sure it’s structured correctly.
• Rebuilding segments the Braze way. Dynamic, real-time segmentation is table stakes in Braze. This means more sophisticated audiences, which means better personalization, which means better engagement. 
• Ensuring integrations are ready to go. Braze was built to be at the center of your modern composable marketing engine — giving you the ability to assemble a best-in-class martech stack. Integrate your data and analytics tools, along with whatever else your team needs to be successful. Stitch can also help you evaluate if migrating to Braze may create redundancies in your tech stack, ultimately identifying cost-savings opportunities. 

Step 3: Campaign & Journey Rebuild

This is where the real fun begins. Instead of a straight “lift and shift,” take the opportunity to:

• Rethink customer journeys. What journeys are highest performing vs. what could be optimized? How could leveraging a real-time trigger improve customer acquisition & retention? 
• Simplify your workflows. This is one of our favorite parts of moving marketers to Braze! We’ve helped brands consolidate the amount of ‘journeys’ they need by 75% with more sophisticated Canvas flows, automated key lifecycle moments that have resulted in lower lift campaigns that drive more revenue, and reduced the time to deploy campaigns by up to 72%.
• Take advantage of cross-channel capabilities. What are some quick wins that you can introduce new channels into existing campaigns to drive immediate boosts in engagement? We once helped a brand we were migrating incorporate push notifications into their journeys within 3 weeks of the migration kicking off. 

Step 4: Testing & Validation

You’re almost there! Before you flip the switch, make sure everything is working perfectly:

• Validate data accuracy. Missing attributes or broken segments can derail campaigns. This requires some extensive QA and is not the most exhilarating marketing task, but it’s a necessary activity to ensure things work as they should. 
• Run test campaigns. Compare performance with your new Braze campaigns to Responsys benchmark. This exercise will help you start to craft a pretty compelling story for your C-Suite on the ROI of migrating to Braze. 
• IP warming. Execute your IP warming plan to ensure your emails continue to go out without a hitch. You’ll be set up by success here by identifying your high-performing campaigns and audience segments and slow-rolling your messaging out of Braze to them.
• QA everything. From email templates to push notifications, check every detail. We built an AI-powered QA bot for a global QSR brand that shaved 40% of hours spent on QA.

Step 5: Training & Adoption

Even the best migration won’t matter if your team isn’t on board. Make sure to:

• Train your team on Braze’s features. Interactive demos work best. Shameless plug: you can also learn more about Braze with some of these key resources:
  
  • Thread The Needle: Short Braze demo videos
  • Cutting Edge: Our monthly newsletter for marketers who use Braze
  • Stitch resource hub: Blogs and articles on all things ‘Braze’
• Document new workflows. Keep it simple, clear, and accessible. 
• Encourage hands-on learning. The more they use it, the faster they’ll get comfortable.
• Build your roadmap for continued growth on the platform. Have a documented plan to continue unlocking new features and advancing the ways your team uses Braze. 
• Have a plan for sunsetting Responsys. Ultimately, staying on Responsys for longer than necessary only creates more work for your team and negatively affects the ROI on Braze. When you migrate, you’re getting everything Responsys offers and way more — so there’s no reason to stay on Responsys once the migration is complete. 

Ready to Make the Move?

Migrating to Braze is a big deal, but you don’t have to do it alone. At Stitch, we help brands navigate every step of the migration process, ensuring a smooth transition without the headaches.

Let’s Talk

Considering a move to Braze? Let's chat.

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