Braze, Inc.

My main use case for Braze is as a CRM strategist and previously a CRM campaign manager, where we had a team, so it was basically just quality assuring everything, occasionally using Canvas, building out SMS journeys, and handling audiences.

I built an onboarding journey using Braze that required multiple Canvas because there was a mix of email, SMS, as well as app messages that needed to be triggered at certain times and based on certain customer actions that we were able to record.

The best features Braze offers include being very intuitive, allowing everything to be brought in-house, which enabled us to get off a couple of different tools by having email, SMS, and app messages in one. There is great connectivity to other applications such as Twilio and Snowflake, which we had as our CDP. I really appreciated Canvas because it made app messaging really easy, whether it was an inbox message within our app, a pop-up, or a push notification.

Canvas made everything easier, allowing us to integrate everything. We previously used Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which was really difficult when using app messages and making sure we could tie it all into a customer journey, so having that with Braze was excellent.

Braze has positively impacted our organization by allowing us to save money. I believe we saved around $800,000 by switching from Salesforce Marketing Cloud to Braze. We were also able to see our customer journeys in an easier way, and it was easier for our producers to set up things. Liquid logic has been easier than AMPscript.

I did not find anything significant that needed to be improved about Braze, but perhaps making it easier to have linear journeys instead of building just three or four would be beneficial. Anything is better than Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Reporting in Braze was quite satisfactory. I wish there was a little better heat mapping when reporting on emails, just a better understanding of where people are clicking. Other than that, reporting in Braze was adequate.

I have been working in this field for around eight years now.

The transition was fairly easy, as setting everything up in Braze felt like a more modern tool than Salesforce Marketing Cloud. IP warming was straightforward, and the Braze customer account manager really helped us and walked us through everything. Braze has excellent documentation, which also helped.

Regarding Braze's AI capabilities, I have not tested this feature too extensively, and I have not seen any concerning issues.

Regarding Braze's AI capabilities, I am somewhat skeptical, but I have seen some positives in using it, such as being able to use AI to determine when people are clicking or opening emails at the best time and using that as a send time indicator, thus having that level of personalization.

The advice I would give to others looking into using Braze is to definitely ask about all the features because there are many, and definitely use the account managers that you receive. I would rate Braze an eight out of ten overall.

At Fox, we send a lot of communication to our customers, who are also our subscribers. We have Fox One where we offer subscription-based services. We send emails, in-app messages, and push notifications about any particular show or particular sports. We also send communications regarding upcoming sport events or upcoming shows on Fox Nation and anything content-related. Additionally, we have different use cases for transactional emails.

There are plenty of campaigns I have executed. I will take an example of a recent event that took place for the World Cup. We conducted many campaigns for the World Cup, including push notifications, emails, and highlights of the game. We have sent many in-app messages whenever the game was starting, such as 10 minutes or 15 minutes before the game. We deployed many push notifications using Campaigns and Canvas.

All campaigns I executed were done very well. Braze was instrumental in configuring and delivering communications in time with very few incidents. My experience has been great.

Braze offers great features including inbuilt in-apps that do not require installation or additional packages. You can use cross channels including webhooks, Content Cards, push notifications, and in-app messages, which are great features that Braze provides.

In terms of Braze features, I find it easy to coordinate campaigns across channels. I see room for more improvements regarding those features.

Braze has had a positive impact on my organization that is significant. I really appreciate the platform's flexibility. Our biggest advantage is managing multiple channels from one place, whether it is email, push, in-app messages, content cards, or webhooks. I also appreciate Canvas, which allows us to build more complex, multiple-step customer journeys and trigger communication based on customer behavior. The segmentation and personalization capabilities are very useful as we can target customers based on their subscription engagement or content preferences. I find valuable the ability to test different messages and channels through A/B testing and optimize based on performance. Overall, the combination of cross-channel orchestration, real-time triggers, personalization, and experimentation makes Braze very powerful for our marketing use cases and positively fits our organization.

Overall, my experience with Braze has been very positive. If I had to mention areas for improvement, I would say the number of campaigns, canvas segments, and channel growth can become challenging to manage and organize. I would also like to see more flexibility around reporting and analytics, especially being able to easily combine cross-channel data and customize reports without relying on additional data from outside of Braze or data platform teams. Braze has been improving its reporting capabilities, and new reporting and dashboard features are definitely moving in the right direction. Additionally, making complex journeys easier to troubleshoot and maintain would be beneficial. When large canvases have multiple branches and conditions, having strong visibility into why a customer took a particular path would ease things for engineering and marketing teams. There is also a limitation regarding making the platform easier to manage at an enterprise scale, especially with a growing number of campaigns since Braze does not have features such as folders for organization.

Regarding improvements, Braze's technical support is excellent, but I see areas where the experience could be smoother. On integration, Braze has a strong set of pre-built integrations and APIs; however, for some complex enterprise systems, integration can require engineering effort. More out-of-the-box connectors and simpler configurations would definitely help. From a UI perspective, while the platform is powerful, navigating and troubleshooting can take time with a large number of campaigns and complex canvases. Apart from that, I find the support extremely helpful overall, so I would not say there are major gaps, just opportunities for making this already strong platform easier to manage at scale.

One area I would like to see improvement in is the visibility and troubleshooting experience. When running large-scale campaigns across multiple channels, more detailed end-to-end visibility on user interactions would be helpful, such as tracking when a particular user enters or exits a canvas or whether an issue occurs. I would also like to see ongoing improvements in reporting, particularly making it easier to connect campaign performance to our broader business metrics without extra engineering work. As Braze adds more AI capabilities, I see an opportunity to leverage AI not just for content creation but also for troubleshooting, identifying campaign issues, and explaining performance trends. This would save a significant amount of time for both the marketing and engineering teams.

I have been using Braze for four years.

Braze is stable, and I have not experienced any downtime or reliability issues.

Braze handles growth and increased workloads well in terms of scalability.

The customer support from Braze is responsive and very supportive. They provide 24/7 customer support, offering immediate answers. Each business also has their own account executive who is responsive and helpful when assistance is necessary.

We previously used Salesforce Marketing Cloud, but the pricing became a pain as the licensing costs significantly increased, which prompted our decision to transition to Braze.

We did a trial-and-error process exclusively with Braze, and that was the only platform we tested.

Braze fits into our existing marketing stack through API, SDK, and webhooks integration with our backend and data systems. We utilize customer and subscription data from our existing system to build audience segments and trigger personalized communication in Braze. Braze also supports bidirectional data movements, so engagement data can be sent back to other systems for reporting and analysis.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide that information due to our internal policies, but I can definitely say that Braze will yield a good return on investment. It certainly saves a lot of time and requires fewer engineers to manage things, as Braze has all the capabilities.

I was not involved in the pricing, setup cost, or licensing.

We did a trial-and-error process exclusively with Braze, and that was the only platform we tested.

I would rate the customer support as an 8 out of 10.

Braze's personalization and segmentation features are great. We use segments for audience segmentation, and Braze provides controls around personalization. At Fox, we have various types of subscribers with different content interests, so we do not want to send the same communication to everyone. We can segment users based on subscription engagement, content preference, and previous interactions, then personalize communication according to their attributes or behaviors. Braze supports dynamic segmentation using real-time events and user attributes, making targeting much more relevant. Segmentation and personalization are very helpful as they allow us to make communication even more relevant while providing the marketing team with substantial flexibility without requiring engineering effort for every audience change.

We handle training and onboarding for new users on Braze by providing extensive documentation. Any new member on the team goes through knowledge transfer and Braze platform training. We only bring on team members who have experience using Braze. With every new release, Braze offers training on the updated features.

I advise others looking into using Braze to consider it as a better option compared to other marketing tools, especially regarding pricing and cross-functional effectiveness. I would strongly suggest exploring it before making any purchase decisions.

I think Braze is great, and I definitely recommend that people do their homework before making any purchase decisions. However, with the experience we have had, especially considering the complexity of projects we have handled, Braze has been incredibly helpful and has supported us in the ways we needed. I have rated this review an 8.5 out of 10.