What is our primary use case?
I am responsible for all email marketing push notifications, in-app messages, and building out landing pages, so I am in the platform one hundred percent of my time at work.
We set up campaigns for our weekly newsletters and set up canvases for journeys specifically with our game zone notifications dependent on a fan's custom events. If fans have opted into certain games, they will receive certain emails depending on that selection. When it comes to in-app messaging, we promote that on our site. We are also building out a new app, so we are in the beginning stages of sending out push notifications. When it comes to landing pages, we have partnered promotions with our clients that we typically build out contest pages.
Day to day specifically, I am creating the emails. We have an internal design team that will help me build out the creative, but I will be using content blocks to pull in certain modules. If we are pulling in a fan's favorite team and if they have that data field in their profile, I create content blocks that will change depending on a fan's data profile. I only have to build out one email, but within that one email, there are multiple content blocks to use different dynamic content as well as pulling in personalization in the first name of the subject line. We also do AB testing creatively as well as time of day testing, and our send time optimization per fan.
What is most valuable?
For me, the ease of Braze is valuable. It is very user friendly, so anyone like myself can pick it up and learn quite quickly. I personally appreciate that I can do everything relatively quickly, and Braze can have the checks of whether or not my email is applicable for all devices. They have their own litmus testing equivalent, and then it flags any accessibility issues as well, which is good to note before sending out.
I am the sole proprietor on Braze, so I do not really collaborate with anyone else on my team when it comes to accessibility and those checks. It is helpful because as someone that is not a front end or full-stack developer, these are things that I definitely need to make note of and change in order to have our email render properly on every device, whether that is mobile or desktop. I have learned that some of our brand guidelines, fonts, and colors do not render on light and dark mode, and these are things that I have had to make note of moving forward with our emails in the present and in the future.
What needs improvement?
One of my biggest drawbacks with Braze, coming from someone with experience in Salesforce, HubSpot, Adobe Campaign, and Pardot, is that I am very well versed in the data world and knowing that the data is the most important thing when it comes to sending out emails. If your data is not proper, then that causes problems with you sending out correct information. Having to use a third party data asset management tool such as Snowflake in order to have our data stream through Ticketmaster, then go through Snowflake, and then go into Braze has become more complicated than having a platform that has the data built in, such as Salesforce, where you can access the data via SQL query. With Braze, you have to open Snowflake in order to then create a table and then have that table. There are multiple tables, and it is just becoming not one master table where all the data lives and then creating segments off of that.
My biggest complaint for the most part is how complicated it tends to be with Ticketmaster specifically. Ticketmaster will ingest data directly into Braze, but it will also ingest data into Snowflake, meaning that there is double the amount of information going into Braze. I do not know if that is something that was told by my data team internally, but that is something that is not best case. It would be great for someone in my role to be able to go in, check out the entire master data, and see if there is anything in terms of an outlier or if there are data field names that need to be improved. It is just not as simple as what Braze ought to be. The platform should be very user friendly, and it is not.
I would probably give it a six out of ten, seeing how I have had experience in other CRM platforms. It is definitely not my favorite, but it is definitely easy for people that are not technical.
The reason I would rate it this way is because it does not have that technical layer that Salesforce does when you can go into the master table and look at all the data. You essentially have to have multiple connections for the data itself. For me, what is most important is the data, and that is what is lacking with Braze.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Braze since the beginning of April with this new job, so five months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not experienced any stability issues. Everything has been smooth sailing. I have not had any of my emails break. The only thing would be that Braze's litmus equivalent is not actually litmus, and so when you view an email in their litmus equivalent, it does not actually look like that, which I find concerning. When you send an email and you are seeing the preview in Braze, in Outlook for mobile for example, and then I send myself an email in Outlook and look at it on mobile, it does not render how it is showing me on screen. This is a big concern if someone is just going off of the preview feature that they have.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We do not have a large volume. Our biggest audience size that we send to is about two hundred and fifty thousand. Some of the other clubs have about a million in terms of audience size, but from our volume, we have not experienced any issues. I know some clubs when it comes to their sends are having issues with their Hotmail and seeing that it is considered spam and that they will not send to Hotmail users, and then they have to warm the IP. I do not know why one team is experiencing that or whether their club was not set up correctly, but that is something that I have noticed.
How are customer service and support?
I do not particularly like our support team. I find that they are very salesy, and that is not what I am looking for. I am looking for technical answers, and all I am getting is questions about whether I want to come to events that they have a conference for and whether there is anything that they can add to my account to improve my budget, which discourages and upsets me. When our support representative cannot answer the questions, they ask us to put in a ticket, so it feels that I have this person when they cannot even answer any of my questions, and I have to submit a ticket. It feels that the need or the ask that I am searching for, they cannot even answer.
So far, I think things are fine. I have not experienced any issues with regards to not following compliance. I think we are good on that front, but I find that our designated support representative is not well versed in the technical or compliance capabilities, so that makes things complicated. I feel that I am talking to a sales rep and I am not actually talking to someone that has that level of detail that I am looking for.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Pardot, Adobe Campaign, and HubSpot, as well as Mailchimp. Working at an agency, I was able to work on different CRM platforms.
What was our ROI?
The issue with me starting five months ago and looking back at some of the metrics from the previous person is that this role was not filled for an entire year, which means that we were not sending emails and I cannot base my changes that I am making in Braze on previous data. I know that what I am doing is impacting because I can see that we are at about a hundred percent increase overall in fan engagement or unique click-through rate when it comes to contest pages or just being able to segment our audiences based off of province and send out emails for those. I think internally, the company has seen a surplus of engagement, but I cannot justify that from previous numbers because there are no numbers that I can go off of.
I am somewhat of an outlier because year over year, obviously, the numbers have improved significantly because we were not pushing through any emails as of last year. I can tell you from when I started until now that we have seen stagnant numbers of about an industry average of three percent click-through rate and a forty percent open rate. I do not know if those metrics are a result of me including first name personalization in the subject line or adding a CFL logo to Gmail so fans can see that CFL is an identified domain and that it is trusted. I am just doing what I know from past experiences in email marketing and applying them to this role.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
My only thought is that Braze is not my first choice in CRM platform. One that has stood out to me, which I still have not used to this day, is Klaviyo. That could be because of how it is being sold to me, but from a technicality aspect, that is something that I am more leaning towards when it comes to our renewal if that is a possibility. I do not want to be hopping from one CRM platform to another. I want to stick with one that has all of the use cases that we need and then we are set to go. I just find that our biggest weakness is the data and then our Braze support team, which feels very sales-like. The conversations go on and on, and I am looking for someone with more technical experience when we have to have monthly conversations with our Braze support representative. I do not want to be talking about the Forge conference that is happening in Las Vegas.
What other advice do I have?
From my previous experience working at an agency, I was only focused on the deployment and data side as well as reporting. Being in this new role, I feel that I am doing six people's jobs in one in terms of designing, deploying, reporting, and building landing pages as a full stack developer. I am assuming the company is very happy with me being in this new role. Instead of hiring six different employees, they can have me. But it is still not ideal, especially if you are sending out large volumes of emails and it is only one singular person.
I cannot answer what other options were available because the contract was submitted in twenty twenty-five, and it was a three-year contract. I do not know what other options were available. All I do know is that they needed to look at easier options that can be implemented across all of the clubs, especially from their marketing side that may not have the technical background. If I am assuming correctly, I am sure it was between Braze, Klaviyo, and potentially HubSpot. But I do not have that information.
My advice would be for organizations that do not want a heavy data aspect. If they are just looking for something easy to use and a teachable platform, then Braze is a good choice. However, if you are looking for something more complex, I do not think that Braze is the solution. In terms of design and ease of use, it is great, but from a technical data aspect, that is where it is lacking. I would rate Braze a six out of ten based on my experience.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other