Migrating to Braze? Critical Factors for Successful Customer Engagement

Choosing the right customer engagement platform is crucial for success. Braze has emerged as a leading solution, offering a comprehensive suite of tools for multichannel marketing, customer relationship management, and advanced personalization.

Drawing from our extensive Braze implementation experience, we've distilled the critical factors that drive platform success. These insights will guide your evaluation and ensure you maximize Braze's potential from day one.

App Readiness: Laying the Foundation

Before implementing the Braze software development kit (SDK), it's important to understand the technical requirements that will streamline integration and enable full platform functionality:

1. Check the latest SDK documentation for current iOS, Android, and web browser version requirements. Your applications must support the minimum required versions to implement the SDK.
2. Not all development frameworks are supported. Verify that your development platforms for both mobile and web are compatible with the SDK.
3. Your applications must be able to implement proper user consent mechanisms and meet data collection regulations.
4. For high-volume applications, verify that your infrastructure can handle the platform's API rate limits per workspace.

TL;DR: Conduct a thorough technical assessment with your development teams early in the evaluation process. Meeting these requirements ensures a smooth SDK implementation, enabling full access to key messaging channels like push notifications, content cards, and in-app/in-browser messaging.

MarTech Integration: Connecting Your Ecosystem

One of the many strengths of Braze is its ability to integrate with a wide range of marketing technologies. That means you should evaluate your existing tech stack's compatibility with Braze.

Identify which of your current tools have pre-built integrations with Braze. Common integrations include:

• Customer data platforms (CDPs) (e.g.,mParticle and Segment)
• Analytics platforms (e.g.,Amplitude, Mixpanel, and Google Analytics)
• Attribution platforms (e.g.,AppsFlyer and Branch)
• Loyalty platforms (e.g.,Talon.One and Punchh)
• Data warehouses (e.g.,Snowflake and BigQuery)

TL;DR: A well-planned integration strategy ensures Braze works harmoniously with your existing MarTech stack, optimizing its value within your overall marketing ecosystem.

Defining Goals and KPIs: Setting Objective to Inform Strategy

Defining clear objectives and success metrics early in the process is the foundation for effective implementation of any customer engagement platform. This goal-driven approach ensures your campaigns/use cases and data requirements align with your business objectives:

1. Identify primary goals such as increasing user retention, boosting conversion rates, improving customer lifetime value, driving frequency, etc.
2. Determine KPIs that will indicate success or failure for each objective
3. Establish baseline metrics and target improvements

TL;DR: Well-defined goals and KPIs will set the right Braze foundation and guide implementation priorities.

Campaign Planning: Prioritizing for Platform Success

With clear objectives and success metrics established, you can create a well-defined campaign strategy and maximize Braze's capabilities right away:

1. Map existing campaigns that need to be transitioned to Braze
2. Identify new use cases enabled by Braze's capabilities
3. Define campaign-specific success metrics, accounting for the entire customer journey
4. Create a campaign rollout timeline, prioritizing high-impact initiatives
5. Plan channel strategy across email, push, SMS, in-app, and content cards

TL;DR: A well-planned campaign strategy ensures each initiative contributes to your broader business objectives while optimizing Braze's full capabilities

Data Planning: Powering Your Customer Engagement Strategy

After defining your campaigns, it's critical to identify and map out the required data points to power your desired use cases:

1. For each planned campaign, identify specific user attributes, custom events, and conversion events. These will be used for targeting, personalization, triggering workflows, and measuring success.
2. Evaluate which required data points are currently available and which need to be collected or created.
3. Establish a reliable system for unique user identification across all touchpoints.
4. Ensure data quality and compliance with privacy regulations across all required data points.

TL;DR: Your campaign requirements should drive your data strategy. Understanding what data you need, where it lives, and how to get it into Braze will be crucial to the customer experience.

Channel Readiness: Establishing Your Multi-Channel Ecosystem

Each messaging channel in Braze has specific technical and strategic requirements that need to be evaluated before implementation. Below are just a few examples of the types of questions to ask during your readiness assessment:

• Email: How clean is your subscriber list? Have you implemented proper double opt-in and email sunsetting practices? Do you have a strategy for identifying engaged users for IP warming?
• Mobile push: How will you handle push registration across iOS and Android? Can you successfully migrate existing push tokens to maintain current subscriptions?
• Web push: Is your website technically ready to support web push notifications? Have you planned your opt-in strategy?
• SMS: Have you clearly defined your SMS use cases? For existing programs, can you verify and migrate user consent?
• Content cards: Have you identified where and how content cards will be integrated into your app or website, and do you have a clear strategy for how they'll complement your other messaging channels?

TL;DR: Each channel has unique technical and strategic requirements that need careful consideration. A thorough channel readiness assessment is crucial for leveraging Braze's multi-channel capabilities effectively.

Team Readiness: Who's Driving Your Race Car?

Think of Braze as a high-performance race car — you need an ace driver and pit crew to unleash its full potential. Ask yourself:

• Do you have marketers skilled in multi-channel campaign management?
• Do you have team members with expertise in specific messaging channels (email, push, SMS, in-app, etc.) to fully harness Braze customer engagement capabilities?
• Are your team members familiar with Braze's best practices and advanced features?
• Is your technical team prepared to handle SDK implementations and data integrations?
• Do you need to upskill existing team members or hire new talent with Braze expertise?
• Is there a dedicated project manager to oversee the implementation and ongoing use of Braze?

TL;DR: Braze is as good as the people operating it. With multiple ways to achieve the same outcome, having team members with platform experience can make or break your implementation success.

Final Thoughts: Your Approach Is Everything

Switching to Braze is a pivotal decision that can take your customer engagement capabilities to the next level. By carefully considering these key areas, you'll be well-positioned to make an informed choice and set the stage for long-term success with Braze. Take the time to plan thoroughly, involve stakeholders across your organization, and don't hesitate to seek expert guidance when needed. With the right approach, Braze can become a powerful asset in your customer engagement arsenal, driving meaningful connections and business growth.

If you have more questions about Braze customer engagement capabilities, we can help at any stage in your journey — just reach out.