June 2023 Bonfire Marketer of the Month: Blinkist’s Josephina Drust

Each month, Braze selects one individual as our Marketer of the Month in order to celebrate the exceptional work being done by members of our Braze Bonfire community. Whether it's providing support for their fellow marketers or going above and beyond by sharing their innovative ideas and strategies, these individuals are making essential contributions to their companies, their users, and the customer engagement space as a whole.

This month, we’re recognizing Josephina Drust, Senior CRM Lifecycle Manager at Blinkist, a bite-sized learning product that connects people with powerful ideas from leading authors and experts. Check out what Josephina had to say about lifecycle marketing, the Braze community, and her 9 years of experience.

How long have you been using Braze and at how many companies?

As a Senior CRM Lifecycle Manager, I have been using Braze since 2018 at two companies, GetYourGuide and Blinkist. At GetYourGuide, we implemented Braze to automate processes for B2B partners, focusing on email drip campaigns and promotional newsletters. This allowed us to create a more personalized experience for our partners and streamline their onboarding process.

When I joined Blinkist in 2021, I learned more about the Braze platform’s personalization features, including how we could leverage them to create bespoke and dynamic campaigns. With Braze, we could tailor our messaging to specific user segments and deliver more engaging content.

What company goals have you focused on first and how have you managed to prioritize?

With engagement and conversions as a main focus, automation and lifecycle marketing quickly became a driving force. The most impactful touchpoint often is quoted as new user onboarding and this was true for Blinkist as well. With some early wins from personalization and segmentation, we were able to focus on more foundational topics such as event-triggered product notifications, automation, and AI-driven content. We’ve also been able to focus on the CRM tech stack to increase the team’s efficiency and effectiveness.

How do you see Braze as a career accelerant?

Braze has become a powerful tool that helps our entire CRM team take our customer engagement to a new level. Working with Braze constantly challenges me to learn new things, expand my skill set, and deliver impactful campaigns. With every automation, the team becomes more efficient. I’m able to develop new strategies and test concepts with few dependencies on our Product and Engineering department.

In this sense, the automation we’ve built with Braze has allowed me to go faster and reduce complexity, leading to more impact!

What is one campaign or initiative you have worked on in your current role that you’re most proud of?

We’ve achieved significant improvements with our lifecycle marketing but the initiative that I’m most proud of has been the one that challenged me the most. Last summer, we wanted to test a reward program for our most engaged members. We came up with Blinkist Badges, which rewards users based on action-based messages and badge updates. The entire Badge system was built using the Braze dashboard, from triggering badges, storing information (on the user profile), and delivering the messages. I learned a lot about Braze, and have been able to build more efficient campaigns since.

The best part, even our engineers were surprised by the simplicity of solving such a complex problem—we’re seeing more buy-in for future projects as a result.

What has your experience been like working with the Braze team and community so far?

Needless to say, it has been amazing. What stands out the most is the dedication the Braze team has to your success. This translates into amazing technical and customer support—they guide you through the whole process, making sure that all company needs are fully achieved. The Braze community is a great source of inspiration and knowledge, too. Whenever we’re trying to solve a problem or test a new concept, we know we can count on the community for help!

Interested in collaborating to build the future of customer engagement? Join a collective of experts to forge connections, share ideas, and accelerate your career at the Braze Bonfire Community.