Key insights from Grow with Braze Auckland 2025

To explore the evolving landscape of customer engagement, Braze brought together 117 attendees—including marketing leaders, digital innovators, customer experience experts, and technology partners—at Grow with Braze Auckland 2025. The afternoon was filled with valuable conversations, practical case studies, and forward-looking strategies.

Ashley Crane, Director of Customer Success at Braze, and Jaye Vernon, Area VP of ANZ at Braze, kicked things off with insights from their roles in helping brands drive success with Braze and build long-term relationships with customers. Jaye specifically highlighted our growth in ANZ, which has been underpinned by strong partnerships and a commitment to local support. With a team of over 60 in the region and a brand new data center launched in Australia, Jaye emphasized one thing: Tech is only as powerful as the people behind it.

Let’s take a look at some of the other key takeaways from the event.

Reading between the clicks: The power of digital body language

A consistent thread throughout the afternoon was the concept of digital body language—the subtle cues customers give through interactions across channels. With consumers spending less time than ever on brand touchpoints, it’s often what they don’t say that matters.

“Even small talk—if you listen closely—can lead to meaningful conversations,” Jaye explained. “That’s what digital body language is all about.”

The 2025 Global Customer Engagement Review revealed that 85% of surveyed marketers are concerned their messages aren’t resonating emotionally. This can often be caused by a fragmented tech stack and a lack of a comprehensive strategy. To solve for these problems, Jaye highlighted the need to unify channels and tailor content to fit each customer’s context, with AI acting as a copilot, not a replacement.

A look into the future: Braze product innovations

Attendees also got a sneak peek at the Braze product roadmap. From zero-copy orchestration that allows real-time data triggers without duplicating data to AI-powered message optimization, the product updates focused on scalability and ease of use.

Highlights included:

• Smarter segments designed to automatically identify high-value audiences.
• New pre-built report and dashboard templates for common use cases, including segment performance and workspace reporting
• Interactive email components, such as scratch cards and countdown timers, designed to drive engagement.
• Project Catalyst, an AI agent that will allow you to generate personalized campaigns and experiment based on marketer-defined goals.

With 133 features released in 2024 and more to come in 2025, Braze reinforced its commitment to innovation across data, orchestration, channels, and infrastructure.

Customer spotlight: Sharesies and the power of trust

Sarah Phillips, Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Sharesies, discussed how the team built long-term trust with nearly 800,000 customers across New Zealand and Australia. Through three carefully executed campaigns, they demonstrated how email, in-app messaging, and push notifications can go beyond transactional nudges to create moments of clarity and confidence.

One highlight was a cross-sell campaign encouraging customers to open savings accounts. By adding investor stories as social proof, the team doubled their conversion rate. In another experiment, personalized emails targeted users showing signs of churn, delivering a 30% uplift in engagement.

“It’s not just what you say, but where and to whom you say it,” Sarah noted.

Customer spotlight: Trade Me and the joy of gamification

Shelley Smith, Head of Marketing at Trade Me Property, shared a story about turning recession-era apathy into joyful obsession. The team’s “Hunt for the Hundy” campaign challenged their customers to find a hidden property listing each day to win $100,000. Orchestrated across push, in-app messaging, and email, the campaign became a national sensation.

With 2.3 million entries, 1.5 million incremental sessions, and a 10% YoY uplift in monthly users, it was the most successful promotion in Trade Me history.

“We didn’t just engage users, we reactivated those who hadn’t visited in months,” Shelley said. The campaign’s success lay in its simplicity, low barrier to entry, and smart use of Braze to deliver nudges, urgency, and delight.

Cross-channel champions: A panel with the experts

The day wrapped with a panel discussion featuring marketing leaders from Restaurant Brands NZ, realestate.co.nz, and Live Nation. Each panelist offered a different lens on customer engagement, from driving ticket sales to managing CRM at scale.

Key takeaways included:

• Use first-party data to uncover surprising insights.
• Invest in tools that allow marketers to act on data without the need for more tech resources.
• Break silos between marketing, product, and analytics to deliver unified experiences.

Growth starts with listening

Grow With Braze Auckland 2025 wasn’t just a showcase of success stories, it was a powerful reminder that growth, in all its forms, stems from connection. As drinks and canapés flowed, one message lingered: true connection starts with understanding and really paying attention to your customers. Whether through data, experimentation, or simply recognizing when it’s best to hold back, the brands that will succeed in 2025 are those that approach engagement as a two-way conversation, not a one-way broadcast.

Forward-Looking Statements

This blog 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 the performance of and expected benefits from Braze and its products and features. 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 the Braze Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal quarter ended January 31, 2025, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 31, 2025, and the other public filings of Braze with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this blog post represent the views of Braze only as of the date of this blog post, and Braze assumes no obligation, and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.