Braze is a customer engagement platform that enables relevant and memorable experiences between consumers and the brands they love. With Braze, global brands can ingest and process customer data in real time, orchestrate and optimize contextually relevant, cross-channel marketing campaigns and continuously evolve their customer engagement strategies.
Braze is a fantastic tool if you're looking to build a large number of CRM journeys using complex canvas structures and maximising use of customer data to segment and personalise. There are numerous tools to ensure each channel is maximising impact and engagement. Braze offers great features for testing, managing message frequency and control groups and using dynamic attributes and liquid code. If you're looking to limit your use to single-send campaigns with no or few automations, I don't think this is the right tool. From my experience, many Braze users also use external tools for analytics rather than Braze's native analytics.
Landing pages. Say, a webinar optin page. Or a lead magnet optin page. People can be persuaded to believe that others like the lead magnet and don't want to be left behind and also they can trust others opinions. So, having a widget on these pages that shows, "XYZ just signed up" can help with getting more sign ups. A widget that shows the amount of people that are looking at a certain page is also beneficial. The best thing to do, is to test at all times. See if the conversion rate is increased or if it drops. And test variations of the widget one at a time. Sometimes, it helps, but in some cases, one can see little difference. So the key is to test. We used it on a front page and we optimized it for speed. We saw that we had several things that slowed our site down. So we decided to take away some of the items. This included our widget from Provely. It does not take a lot of resources, but we were super savvy and wanted the optimal speed. We might revert back into adding it again, but for now, we stripped the page for all extra baggage so we were certain that we had the correct overview on the speed that was needed. The widgets can be less appropriate also, if one wants full attention to the copy on a page. This is also a savvy choice. So the key is to TEST, again... To determine if it helps or halts conversions. This example we are seeing on direct response sales pages in the make money online nice. They rarely use this. Some do. So again, testing will determine the effect. (A savvy user tests, but even those, skip it some times, so it is best to use your own due diligence)
Canvas feature has been really good for creating customer journey paths and long-term messaging campaigns.
They have been addressing feature requests to continue to improve the Canvas feature. One of the simplest but most-handy features is allowing Delay steps wait for a very specific date on a calendar -- so you can plan seasonal campaigns or when you have evergreen-style drip campaigns it allows for avoiding public holidays/etc.
The catalog feature provides a lot of use-cases and flexibility for personalizing comms or customizing comms for whitelabeled versions of our standard comms (for our B2B2C scenarios).
We use the catalog as a repository of our B2B2C brand info, messaging customization - it basically allows us to offer a whitelabeled configurable version of our optimized automated in-life comms in the branding of our b2b customers.
Enabling GIF/videos to be directly uploaded on to Braze's platform
Easier way of creating canvases; right now it is too complex for someone new who is starting off in the company to understand what things do and where things are
Ability to track duplicate user profiles within the entire audience segment
Automated deduplicating email addresses/phone numbers in each targeting segment; right now it's done manually after extracting csv files
We are on a mission for an omnichannel experience for our customers and are already making good progress with Braze able to fully support and optimise this
We see the professional look it gives, and the live proof it provides. It helps with conversions, so we want to be sure we have the optimized numbers for our business. It is worth keeping so we earn more leads, and sales by piggybacking on the psychological effect of FOMO and more. We believe it is a must have in our arsenal, at least on selected pages.
It is an easy-to-understand platform, thanks to its design and accessibility. You can, for example, easily find any users and their data, check exact volumes of segments, follow the history of messages sent, and create reports. We can connect Braze with other platforms for analysis or email design (Snowflake, Hightouch, Stripo...).
Very responsive and helpful on simple questions, but not great other than that. They do not have a way for the customer/user to escalate a ticket. You have to contact your rep and in some cases, they don't respond within 24 hours so you have no idea if they have escalated it. There is no phone number for an urgent issue - you have to rely on email
We had a question... We asked about a certain feature... One that was not present. So, what happened is that they responded quickly, but also, they developed the feature FOR US, which is unprecedented in many ways. It is not the norm, so we were taken great care of. The support was more than helpful and we would recommend them any day of the week.
The only thing to note, if you're afraid of tech, get the developer to install the code. You can do the design, but maybe get someone to install the code, again, it is done in minutes. Maybe 5. The other thing to note, keep an eye on your stats and analytics. You install this for a reason, to help with conversions. The only way to know for sure if it is right for your page(s) is to track it. If it does not aid your % it is of no use. Not EVERY page will be a candidate at all times. BUT, most are. So my advice is to go for it, get it set up. Track your before and after. If you an uplift in your % then keep it. If there is no visible change, maybe you're not tracking the right metrics over the right amount of time, so check if you can track deeper. If you have tracked really well, and not seeing an uplift, maybe change the wording, the widget, or the placement of it. And keep tracking. If there is no change short-term or long-term, then I would reflect on the usage. It is made to uplift conversions and it does so. But it is your job to place it where it matters, like on a lead magnet page, where others can see that they are not alone in both wanting and/or taking action and physically signing up to a lead magnet. So, again, my advice, get it set up. You will most likely do the job right on the first go, and from there, enjoy, and keep tracking
Braze is just the best one when it comes to aesthetics and usability, which matter when you're working every day, making complex or even simple changes to highly contextual campaigns for multiple stakeholders. Even without following tutorials, you just get it instantly and start crafting journeys very quickly. And they continue to keep adding new features at a rapid pace, so credit where it's due.
We have tested 3 other products in the past, all failed to have the complete solution we were looking for. Provely is here to stay and has added lots of features. 1 of the other tools we tested are low on features. 1 of the tools we tested had a short run and updates stopped and the project was abandoned. 1 of them never worked properly.
