How DraftKings Customizes Their Messaging With Liquid Personalization From Braze

When marketers research how they can increase engagement, one tactic repeatedly pops up—personalization. In today’s data-driven, responsive marketing landscape, connecting to consumers with personalized content should be a no-brainer for marketing, growth, and engagement teams. Today’s customers expect relevant, meaningful experiences from the brands they patronize and, according to a survey of 650 marketing campaigns, 72% of consumers revealed that generic messaging had a negative effect on how they viewed a company.

What does it look like when you get personalization right? Well, DraftKings, a long-time customer of Braze, incorporates individualized content into their emails, push notifications and in-app messages—all using the Braze platform. A sports tech company, DraftKings hosts daily fantasy competitions and sporting betting. Veronica Hamel, Senior Director of Marketing at DraftKings, sat down with Braze to discuss how her team creates successful marketing campaigns using user-specific information.

How DraftKings Exemplifies Brand Humanity Through Personalization

Consumers are human and expect human experiences when they interact with your brand. “Brand humanity, to me,” Hamel said, “means thinking about your customer first, and really being human in everything that you do. So instead of thinking about the revenue that a campaign is going to drive, thinking more about what types of campaigns, or what things are going to be most relevant to a specific user, that drives that same revenue, but in a more human way.”

How does DraftKings apply their brand humanity in practice? By running highly-personalized campaigns, such as season recaps for each sport followed by a given user. For example, at the beginning of each pro football season, Hamel and her team sends each DraftKings user a personalized recap of all of their statistics from the season before. These statistics include how many lineups a user entered in the last season, how many points they received in their Highest Scoring Lineup, and who their Best Value Player was, along with how many points said player acquired. This hyper-personalized information is automatically injected into these recap emails using Liquid personalization powered by Braze.

Liquid Personalization—Taking Message Customization to the Next Level

By incorporating Liquid into marketing campaigns, marketers are able to insert user-specific information such as a user’s name, gender, location (by city, country, and even time zone), language, and more. Braze clients report a 199% increase in open rates for mobile push notifications and a 28% lift in open rates for emails when utilizing Liquid personalization.

Hamel describes Liquid content as “one of the biggest features” of Braze that DraftKings utilizes. With Liquid, DraftKings is able to efficiently export consumer data from their database and insert the necessary data into personalized content that’s sent across multiple channels, including email and push, support more effective—and more human—experiences.

Build Better Marketing Campaigns With Personalized Content

When you individualize content for every user in every campaign you send, you’re not just increasing the impact of your messages—you’re demonstrating that you know and value your customers’ preferences, supporting stronger long-term connections with your audience. To learn more about message personalization and how it can support your overall marketing efforts, check out our personalization guide.