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Creating a Content Card

This article covers how to create a Content Card in Braze when you build campaigns and Canvases. Here, we’ll walk you through choosing a messaging type, composing your card, and scheduling your message delivery.

Step 1: Choose where to build your message

Not sure whether your message should be sent with a campaign or a Canvas? Campaigns are better for single, simple messaging campaigns (such as informing users about a new product with a single message), while Canvases are better for multi-step user journeys (such as sending tailored product suggestions based on user behavior over time).

Steps:

  1. Go to Messaging > Campaigns and select Create Campaign.
  1. Select Content Cards or, for campaigns targeting multiple channels, select Multichannel Campaign.
  2. Name your campaign something clear and meaningful.
  3. Add Teams and Tags as needed.
    • Tags make your campaigns easier to find and build reports out of. For example, when using the Report Builder, you can filter by the relevant tags.
  4. Add and name as many variants as you like for your campaign. You can choose different platforms, message types, and layouts for each of your added variants. For more on variants, refer to Multivariate and A/B testing.

Steps:

  1. Create your Canvas using the Canvas composer.
  2. After setting up your Canvas, add a Message step in the Canvas builder. Name your step something clear and meaningful.
  3. Select Content Cards as your messaging channel.
  4. Choose when Braze calculates audience eligibility and personalization for the Content Card. This can be at step entry or at first impression (recommended). Steps containing Content Cards can be scheduled or action-based.
  5. Choose whether to remove Content Cards when users complete a purchase or perform a custom event.
  6. Set an expiration for the Content Card (time in feed). This can be after a duration of time or at a specific time.
  7. Filter your audience, or the receipients, for this step as necessary in the Delivery Settings. You can further refine your audience by specifying segments and adding additional filters. Audience options will be checked after the delay, at the time messages are sent.
  8. Choose any other messaging channels that you want to pair with your message.

Step 2: Specify your message types

Select one of three essential Content Card types: Classic, Captioned Image, and Image Only.

To learn more about the expected behavior and look of each type, refer to Creative Details, or check out the links in the following table. These Content Card types are accepted by both mobile apps and web applications.

Step 3: Compose a Content Card

You can edit all aspects of your message’s content and behavior in the Compose tab of the message editor.

Sample Content Card details in the Compose tab of the message editor

The content here varies based on the Card Type chosen in the previous step, but may include any of the following options:

Language

Select Add Languages to add your desired languages from the provided list. This will insert Liquid into your message. We recommend selecting your languages before writing your content so you can fill in your text where it belongs in the Liquid. See our full list of available languages.

A window with English, Spanish, and French selected for the languages, and title, description, and link text selected for fields to internationalize.

Title and message

Write anything you want. There are no limits, but the faster you can get your message across and get your customer clicking, the better! We recommend clear and concise titles and message content. Note that these fields aren’t provided for Image Only Cards.

Image

Add an image to your Content Card by selecting Add Image or providing an image URL. Selecting Add Image opens the Media Library, where you can select a previously uploaded image or add a new one. Each message type and platform may have its own suggested proportions and requirements, so be sure to check what those are before commissioning or making an image from scratch! Keep in mind that Content Card message fields are limited to 2 KB in total size.

Pin to top

A pinned card will display at the top of a user’s feed and can’t be dismissed by the user. If more than one card in a user’s feed is pinned, the pinned cards will display in chronological order. After a card has been sent, you can’t retroactively update its pinned option. Changing this option after a campaign has been sent will only affect future sends.

Side-by-side of the Content Card preview in Braze for Mobile and Web with the option "Pin this card to the top of the feed" selected.

On-click behavior

When your customer clicks on a presented link in the card, your link can either lead them deeper into your app or to another site. If you choose an on-click behavior for your Content Card, remember to update your Link Text accordingly.

The following actions are available to take for Content Card links:

Note: The Log Custom Event and Log Custom Attribute options require the following SDK Version compatibility:

Step 4: Configure additional settings (optional)

You can use key-value pairs to create categories for your Cards, create multiple Content Card feeds, and customize how cards are sorted.

To add key-value pairs to your message, switch to the Settings tab and click Add New Pair.

Step 5: Build the remainder of your campaign or Canvas

Build the remainder of your campaign. Continue to the next sections for additional details on how to best use our tools to build Content Cards.

Choose delivery schedule or trigger

Content Cards can be delivered based on a scheduled time, an action, or an API trigger. For more, refer to Scheduling your campaign.

You can also set the campaign’s duration and Quiet Hours and determine the Content Card’s expiration. Set a specific expiration date or the days until a Card expires, up to 30 days. All variants have identical expiration dates.

Scheduled delivery

For Content Card campaigns with scheduled delivery, you can choose when Braze evaluates audience eligibility and personalization for new Content Card campaigns by specifying when the card is created. For more, refer to card creation.

Choose users to target

Next, target users by choosing segments or filters to narrow down your audience. You’ll automatically be given a snapshot of what that approximate segment population looks like right now. Keep in mind that exact segment membership is always calculated just before the message is sent.

Choose conversion events

Braze allows you to track how often users perform specific actions, conversion events, after receiving a campaign. You have the option of allowing up to a 30-day window during which a conversion will be counted if the user takes the specified action.

If you haven’t done so already, complete the remaining sections of your Canvas component. For further details on how build out the rest of your Canvas, implement multivariate testing and Intelligent Selection, and more, refer to the Build your Canvas step of our Canvas documentation.

Step 6: Review and deploy

After you’ve finished building the last of your campaign or Canvas, review its details, test it, then send it when you’re ready.

Next, check out Content Card reporting to learn how you can access the results of your Content Card campaigns.

Things to know

Sending behavior

After Content Cards have been sent, they sit waiting in an “inbox” ready to be delivered to the user (similar to what happens for emails). After content is pulled into the Content Card (at time of displaying), the content cannot be changed during its lifespan. This applies even if you’re calling an API through Connected Content, and the data from the endpoint changes. This data won’t get updated. It can only be stopped from sending to new users and removed from users’ feeds. If you modify a campaign, only future cards that are sent will have the update.

If you need to remove old cards, you must first stop the campaign. To stop a campaign, open your Content Card campaign and select Stop Campaign. Stopping the campaign will prompt you to decide how to handle users that have already received your card. If you want to remove the Content Card from your users’ feeds, select Remove card from feed. The card will then be hidden by the SDK on the next sync.

Dialog for confirming Content Card deactivation

Card removal events

Some Content Cards are only relevant up until a user performs some action. For example, a card nudging users to activate their account shouldn’t be shown after the user completes that onboarding task.

Within a campaign or Canvas message, you can optionally add a Removal Event to specify which custom events or purchases should cause previously sent cards to be removed from that user’s feed—triggered by the SDK or REST API.

Content Card Removal Conditions panel with Content Card Removal Event option

Updating launched cards

Content Cards can’t be edited after they are sent. If you find you need to make changes to cards that have already been sent, consider using campaign re-eligibility as shown in the following options.

Option 1: Duplicating the campaign

One approach is to archive the campaign and remove active cards from the feed. Then you can duplicate the campaign and launch it with updates so that any eligible users would received the updated cards.

  • If users should never be re-eligible for a Content Card, you can filter for users who haven’t received the previous version of the Content Card by setting the filter Received Message from Campaign to the condition to Has Not.
  • If users who received the prior card should be re-eligible in X days, you can set the filter for Last Received Message from specific campaign to more than X days ago OR Received Message from Campaign with the Has Not condition.
Use case

Let’s say you’ve set a campaign to be triggered by a session start and it has re-eligibility set to 30 days. A user received the campaign two days ago, and you want to change the copy. First, you’d archive the campaign and remove the cards from feed. Second, you’d duplicate the campaign and re-launch with the new copy. If the user has another session, they’ll immediately receive the new card.

Impact
  • Reporting: Each version of the card would have separate analytics.
  • Existing Recipients: New and existing recipients would see the updated card at the next feed refresh if they are eligible.

Option 2: Stop and relaunch

If a card has re-eligibility turned on, you could chose to:

  1. Stop your campaign.
  2. Remove active Content Cards from users’ feeds.
  3. Edit your campaign as needed.
  4. Restart your campaign.

With this approach, newly eligible users will get the new card and previous recipients would get the new card when they’re re-eligible.

Use case

Let’s say you have a campaign that’s triggered by a session start and has re-eligibility set to 30 days. A user received the campaign two days ago, and you want to change the copy. First, stop the campaign and remove the card from the feed. Second, re-publish the campaign with the new copy. If the user has another session, they’ll receive the new card in 28 days.

Impact
  • Reporting: One campaign will contain all reporting analytics for the card versions launched. Braze won’t differentiate between the versions launched.
  • Existing recipients: Users who have already received the card would not receive the updated cards until they become re-eligible. If re-eligibility is turned off, they would never receive the new card.

Keeping cards in users’ feeds

If desired, you could keep an active Content Card campaign in users’ feeds and not remove them. When the live campaign is edited, the previous unedited version of the campaign card will still be live, and only users that meet the criteria after the edits will see the new version. However, users already exposed to the campaign may see two versions of the card.

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