Why Content Cards Are Important for Your Cross-Channel Strategy

Content Cards are a persistent in-product messaging channel your company can use to activate, monetize, and retain customers in the moment while they’re visiting your app or website. Brands often use Content Cards to create notification centers or app inboxes that act as a central feed of updates that are most important to customers. Braze research and case studies have found that Content Cards are highly effective at boosting sales, loyalty enrollment, sessions, and average user lifetimes.

For the latest insights on the power—and importance—of Content Cards, let’s turn to the results of our 2024 Global Customer Engagement Review. As part of this research, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the interactions of 9 billion users with nearly 1,000 customers that use the Braze customer engagement platform to see how different customer engagement channels affect customer activation, monetization, and retention.

Ahead, we’ll share the highlights of what we learned about the impact of Content Cards on customer engagement KPIs like sessions per user, buyer rate, and average user lifetimes. As you’ll see, the data paints a clear picture of just why Content Cards are so important.

3 Reasons Why Content Cards Are Important

1. Content Cards boost customer engagement

Content Card campaigns can drive engagement on apps and websites through use cases that include free trial updates, onboarding notifications, and prompts for users to update preferences or invite friends and family. In fact, our analysis finds Content Cards increase sessions per user by 2.2X compared to campaigns sent via other channels and by more than 31X compared with no marketing outreach at all.

(Be sure to check out the Braze Content Cards Inspiration Guide for examples of effective customer activation, monetization, and retention campaigns you can set up using Content Cards.)

2. Content Cards increase monetization KPIs

The ideal vehicle for a range of monetization campaigns, from subscription renewal reminders to personalized product recommendations, Content Cards nudge customers to complete transactions right while they’re actively engaging. The results of our study indicate that these types of campaigns have a 38% uplift in buyer rates compared to campaigns sent via other channels and a nearly 19X uplift in buyer rates compared to customers who receive no marketing outreach at all.

3. Content Cards increase user lifetimes

Most brands are able to unlock greater levels of success when they’re able to encourage customers to stick around over time. Content Cards are an effective strategy for doing just that—having been shown to increase user lifetimes by 86% compared to other customer engagement channels, and by 12.45X compared to no marketing outreach at all.

Winning Cross-Channel Combinations Featuring Content Cards That Increase Customer Activation, Monetization, and Retention

As an in-product channel, Content Cards get important information in front of customers right when they’re poised to take action on a brand’s website or app. Our research studies have found that doubling down on in-product messaging by adding in-app messages to the mix has an even stronger impact on engagement. According to our most recent Global Customer Engagement Review, pairing the two can amplify critical monetization KPIs like purchases per user, buyer rates, and repeat buyer rates.

That said, because these two in-product channels can’t pull customers back to digital platforms when they’re not actively engaging, adding out-of-product channels, like mobile push notifications, is an advantage for boosting sessions, rolling retention, and user lifetimes.

How to Maximize Content Cards with a Cross-Channel Engagement Strategy

Check out our new guide The Cross-Channel Marketing Difference for more insights on how different channel combinations impact engagement, monetization, and retention, and how to optimize your customer engagement results channel by channel.