Smart Engagement: How To Turn Data into Meaningful Customer Connections

At Product Camp, Brazil’s largest product event, Minders brought a series of talks to its Content Aquarium, curating relevant themes for professionals in product, data, martech, and growth. One of the standout presentations was by Junior Castro, Senior Solutions Consultant at Braze, titled: «Connecting Experiences: How Braze Transforms User Engagement.»

In this presentation, Junior shared how Braze enables the creation of personalized and effective engagement campaigns, integrating data, channels, and artificial intelligence to transform the customer experience. Let’s explore the key insights from this talk, showcasing how technology and strategy can come together to create lasting connections with users.

Understanding Braze: A Platform for User Engagement

Braze is a platform that offers robust tools for businesses to connect with their customers. Its focus is on transforming data into personalized actions, facilitating the engagement process across multiple channels. During the presentation, Junior highlighted the pillars that support Braze:

• Data Collection:
  
  • SDKs: Integrate apps and websites, capturing real-time events like clicks and user actions.
    
  • APIs: Allow synchronization of data from external systems.
    
  • Partnerships: Connection with platforms like Amplitude and AppFlyer to broaden the understanding of user behavior.
    
  • Data Export:
    
    • Currents: Braze’s product that integrates data directly with partners like Snowflake, Tableau, and Segment, enabling real-time advanced analytics.
      
• Advanced Segmentation:
  With the collected data, Braze enables highly detailed segments, such as “users who started a session in the last week, are in Brazil, and are gluten intolerant.”
  These segments are essential for creating targeted campaigns with a higher potential for conversion. 

Multichannel: Engaging Users at the Right Moment

One of Braze’s major differentiators is its ability to orchestrate communications across multiple channels, including mobile push, WhatsApp, SMS, email, in-app messages, and even webhooks. Junior explained that each channel has a purpose.

• WhatsApp: High urgency and immediate engagement.
  
• Email: Ideal for less urgent communications with more detailed content.
  
• In-App: Perfect for contextual personalization within the app. 

Junior presented a channel matrix to help companies understand which to use in each situation, emphasizing that multichannel strategies significantly increase engagement and conversions. For example, combining WhatsApp with emails can boost user purchase volume by up to 25%.

Canvas: Orchestrating Personalized Journeys

Beyond simple campaigns, Braze offers Canvas, an orchestrator that allows the creation of complex and dynamic journeys for users. Junior presented a practical example:

• Initial Trigger: The user makes a purchase or takes an action in the app.
  
• Decision Tree:
  
  • If the user interacts with the first channel (e.g., push notification), an in-app message will be sent.
    
  • If they don’t interact, an email will be triggered.
    
  • If the email also doesn’t engage, an ad can be directed via synchronized audience.
    

This flexibility allows testing multiple paths and maximizing conversion chances.

Artificial Intelligence: Optimizing Engagement

Braze has used AI since its foundation, with features that include:

• Smart A/B Testing: Automated selection of the best campaign variant.
  
• Timing Optimization: Automated triggering at the most appropriate time for each user.
  
• AI Copywriting: Automatic generation of content based on provided inputs. 

These solutions are powered by real-time data, ensuring increasingly accurate decisions that align with user behaviors.

Analytics and Reports: Turning Data into Insights

Junior highlighted that all campaigns and journeys created in Braze generate detailed reports, including:

• Email open rates.
  
• Conversions through journey funnels.
  
• Retention and engagement by channel. 

Additionally, Braze allows exporting these reports to external tools, enabling more in-depth and customized analysis.

Conclusion: Braze as an Ally in Digital Transformation

Junior concluded his presentation by emphasizing that Braze is more than just a tool—it’s a strategic partner for businesses that want to create personalized and relevant experiences for their customers. With cutting-edge technology, multichannel capabilities, and artificial intelligence, Braze helps brands build long-lasting relationships.