Get Flexible, Real-Time Analytics with Braze Instant Insights

The rise of mobile more than 15 years ago kicked off a revolution regarding digital engagement, connectedness, and customer data. With so many consumers flocking to smartphones and other mobile devices so quickly, the amount of information marketers could gather on their customers exploded, creating massive opportunities for more innovative, more effective customer engagement. However, it also surfaced significant challenges regarding data collection, management, and processing. In a survey conducted by Braze, 80% of marketers believe they’re collecting too much information, resulting in data they’re unable to use effectively.

Some of that may be just a lack of strategy around data collection, but another critical factor is that marketers may lack the tools they need to wrap their arms around the data at their disposal. To help our customers fill that gap, Braze has partnered with Snowflake, the leading data cloud company to create a beta version of an advanced analytics engine capable of illuminating new customer engagement opportunities and driving future optimization. This tool, Braze Instant Insights (BII), allows brands to leverage data and insights in real-time to personalize their cross-channel campaigns with Braze effectively. Read on to learn more about the powerful new feature and what it means for marketers.

What are Braze Instant Insights?

At its core, BII makes it easier for our customers to use their Braze campaign and marketing data in a unified way across the full spectrum of workspaces and regions.

Built on top of Braze and Snowflake and taking advantage of Streamlit, a low-code tool that makes it easy to turn data into highly visual web applications, BII makes it possible for Braze to provide ready-for-use Python applications that can be downloaded right from the Snowflake user interface without any extra work. That simplifies getting the data you need and leveraging it to improve your marketing outcomes.

How did we build Braze Instant Insights?

When we set out to build this new analytics engine, we knew that our customers already had many ways to view and understand their data. Some were focused on the dashboards and reports that are native to the Braze platform; others took advantage of a variety of different analytics tools and visualization solutions to get a better understanding of the data at their disposal and what it meant for their customer engagement efforts.

To make our approach valuable to the full spectrum of Braze users, we knew we needed to find a streamlined way to connect the delivery method for Braze analytics data to whatever data-sharing tools that brands were using and ensure that we could surface actionable results that marketers could use in the moment to drive better results. We also wanted to give marketers the flexibility to customize their analyses by porting in their own data sources if they wanted to.

To do all that, we turned to Snowflake. Braze has many ways for marketers to access their data—from CSV downloads and API endpoints to advanced methods like Currents Connectors—but for this new beta feature, we decided to take advantage of Snowflake Reader Accounts, which make it possible for all Braze customers to receive their data from our platform via Snowflake, even if they’re not a Snowflake customer. And because Streamlit applications can be created both in connection with Reader Accounts and on brands’ Snowflake instances, we knew that we could create a single tool that would allow both customers and non-customers of Snowflake to leverage that technology to visualize and assess the data they needed.

Braze then leveraged our Cloud Data Ingestion (CDI) feature, which supports direct, pre-built connections between Braze and Snowflake (and other data warehouses), to allow our customers to easily plug the insights that were generated through the Streamlit apps and flow them back into the Braze platform. By taking those insights and converting them into custom attributes and events within Braze, we allow marketers to take swift action on their findings and to optimize the campaigns they send via our platform.

How can Braze Insight Insights drive value for marketers?

Thanks to the ongoing, real-time connections between Braze and Snowflake, customers can now take advantage of the beta version of BII to seamlessly deploy advanced analytics—think Attribution or Reach analyses—via ready-made Streamlit apps. Doing so can significantly reduce the work and sophistication needed to dig into data in Braze and other key marketing information to find insights and identify potential customer engagement issues, and makes it possible to act in real time on these findings within Braze.

While this beta version of BII is very flexible and capable of supporting a range of different analysis and use cases, some potential questions that marketers could answer (and then act on) via Braze include:

• What campaign types are having the greatest positive influence on my company’s revenue?
• What sort of retention impact does your marketing program have on the average customer?
• What factors make customers more likely to churn?

Once you have the answers to these sorts of questions within Braze, acting on them is easy. For instance, if you learn that excessive message volume is correlated with higher churn risk among new customers, you can swiftly leverage Braze frequency caps to ensure that the number of messages they’re sent stays out of the danger zone. What actions you’ll want to take will depend on the results you identify but the flexibility and scope of the Braze platform makes it possible to carry out a variety of different messaging strategies, optimizations, and adjustments, supporting smarter, more impactful marketing going forward.

Final Thoughts

With the introduction of the beta version of Braze Instant Insights, brands now have access to a powerful, flexible analytics engine that’s capable of simplifying workflows and making it easier—and faster—for brands to understand and act on the information they have on hand.

Forward-Looking Statements This post contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited to, statements regarding anticipated product performance. These forward-looking statements are based on the current assumptions, expectations and beliefs of Braze, and are subject to substantial risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Further information on potential factors that could affect Braze results are included in Braze’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2023, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 31, 2023, and the other public filings of Braze with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this post represent the views of Braze only as of the date of this presentation, and Braze assumes no obligation, and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.