Introduction to Braze Feature Flags: What They Are and How to Use Them

Whether it’s what they receive in their inbox or how they interact with an app, consumers want brand experiences to feel connected and tailored specifically to them. Yet despite this clear demand, cohesive customer journeys can be difficult to create, especially when silos separate the teams and tools that contribute to the app or website experience. And that's where Feature Flags can come into play.

With Feature Flags, teams can better personalize experiences in their digital platforms, through better cross-functional coordination, faster product innovation, and more agile experimentation. Let’s take a closer look.

What Are Braze Feature Flags?

Feature Flags enable teams to toggle specific features on and off for specific audiences, without deploying extra code or submitting an update to an app store. They provide the flexibility to test different versions of a new feature, which helps users get the best possible experience and brands get higher returns on their product investments. For example, you can turn on a new feature for a test audience, gather insights and feedback, make changes based on those insights, and then roll it out for everyone when it’s ready.

Product and marketing teams also use Feature Flags to coordinate feature releases with cross-channel messaging that drives feature adoption and awareness.

How to Use Feature Flags

For marketers, Feature Flags can be leveraged in several different ways to create more cohesive campaigns, drive engagement, and foster loyalty. When Feature Flags are part of a coordinated customer journey, marketers can seamlessly align their customer messaging campaigns with relevant content in the app or web. Think sending a Thanksgiving email campaign, and at the same time using a Feature Flag to turn on a special Thanksgiving homepage for only your US customers. You can use audience segmentation filters and campaign triggers to turn on premium features or unique experiences for users who take defined high-value actions, which could look like enabling a secret level for users who complete a month-long gaming streak. The possibilities are endless.

Feature Flags can help marketing teams work more efficiently with their product and growth counterparts to test and launch new features, because they can share the first-party data and journey orchestration tools in Braze. For example, instead of asking the product team to pull a static list of users who have access to a beta feature, marketers can use Feature Flag filters in Braze to quickly and accurately target those users with relevant messaging.

By uniting Feature Flags with customer messaging, coordinated feature launches that once required multiple teams and systems can be orchestrated all within Braze, saving time and ensuring accuracy. Immobiliare.it, an EU-based real estate platform, was able to reduce launch and promotion time by 50% during the release of its “night mode” feature.

Final Thoughts

Braze Feature Flags are versatile and easy to use, giving marketers the power to deliver personalized experiences in their products at scale. Whether you're aiming to create cohesive campaigns, boost customer loyalty, or improve internal productivity, Feature Flags are a valuable tool in your marketing arsenal.

Learn more about how you use Feature Flags to deliver in-product personalization here.