Marketing platforms keep getting more advanced, but at their core, integrations are still one of their biggest strengths. Just look at the martech landscape—back in 2011, there were only about 150 solutions. Fast forward to 2023, and that number has skyrocketed to over 11,000—a jaw-dropping 7000%+ jump!
Take ESPs, for example: when users compare platforms, the number of integrations available is often a major deciding factor. The more, the better.
Since Braze teamed up with Snowflake, the way businesses tap into customer data for marketing has taken a huge leap forward. At Mavlers, we have seen firsthand how this integration continues to help a number of our Braze clients with data integration.
Today, we’ll walk you through how to enable the Braze-Snowflake integration for smoother, smarter data sharing.
What is Snowflake?
Braze-Snowflake: 5 reasons why
Cloud Data Ingestion
Secure Data Sharing
Using CSV files
Using custom scripts
Through Hightouch
Wrapping up
What is Snowflake?
Founded in 2014, Snowflake is a cloud-based data platform that provides a unique architecture for data warehousing, data lakes, data engineering, data science, machine learning, and data applications. Snowflake is referred to as a “Data Cloud” because it enables organizations to unify, analyze, share, and monetize their data in a single, secure, and highly scalable environment.
Apart from data sharing, Snowflake has the following benefits:
- Near-zero management: Being a fully managed service, Snowflake automates many administrative tasks allowing users to focus on data analysis rather than infrastructure.
- Concurrency: Its multi-cluster architecture prevents resource contention, allowing many users and workloads to run concurrently with consistent performance.
- Snowpark: A set of libraries that allows developers to process non-SQL code directly within Snowflake, expanding its capabilities for data science and machine learning.
- Time-travel and fail-safe: These features allow users to access historical data, recover deleted or modified data, and ensure data integrity for auditing and disaster recovery.
When you bring together all these capabilities along with Braze’s powerful native features, you get a marketing toolkit that’s truly next level. This combination empowers marketers and users like you to unlock deeper insights, activate richer customer profiles, and deliver more relevant, data-driven campaigns with precision and scale.
Broadly, there are five ways to integrate the platforms:
- Cloud Data Ingestion
- Secure Data Sharing
- Using CSV files to share data
- Custom scripts
- Through Hightouch
Before we kick off with the Cloud Data Ingestion (CDI) method, let’s understand why such an integration actually matters.
Braze-Snowflake: 5 reasons why
Braze highlights the following benefits of the integration:
- Unify all business data to reinforce more holistic customer engagement.
- Enrich first-party data with third-party insights, including demographics, foot traffic, weather, and location.
- Empower collaboration between data and marketing teams by enabling predictive modeling and personalization.
- Create a two-way data flow by virtue of which Snowflake data enhances Braze strategies and Braze data deepens customer insights in Snowflake
Now, let’s turn to the first method of integrating the two.
Cloud Data Ingestion
Cloud data ingestion refers to the process of collecting, importing, and moving raw data from various sources into a cloud-based storage system or data warehouse. It’s a crucial first step in any modern data analytics or business intelligence initiative, as it makes data accessible and usable for further processing, analysis, and insights. This method syncs user attributes, events, and purchases from Snowflake to Braze for segmentation and personalization.
The method involves three steps:
1. Prepare a Snowflake environment
First, create a dedicated role and service user in Snowflake with the necessary permissions. Here’s the SQL for that.
USE ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN;
CREATE OR REPLACE ROLE braze_cdi_role;
CREATE OR REPLACE USER svc_braze_cdi
TYPE = SERVICE
DEFAULT_ROLE = braze_cdi_role;
GRANT ROLE braze_cdi_role TO ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN;
GRANT ROLE braze_cdi_role TO USER svc_braze_cdi;
CREATE OR REPLACE WAREHOUSE braze_cdi_wh
WITH WAREHOUSE_SIZE = 'XSMALL'; -- Adjust size based on sync needs
GRANT USAGE ON WAREHOUSE braze_cdi_wh TO ROLE braze_cdi_role;
This script is performing the initial setup for a secure and functional integration with Braze.
2. Configure Braze CDI integration
In the Braze dashboard:
- Navigate to Data Settings > Cloud Data Ingestion > Create New Data Sync.
- Select Snowflake Import; provide Snowflake account details and source table/view containing data to sync.
- Map Snowflake columns to Braze data types (attributes, events, purchases).
- Sync frequency and timezone.

3. Test and active sync
Validate connectivity using Braze’s test feature. Then start the sync and monitor via contact emails for errors.

Secure Data Sharing
Snowflake’s Secure Data Sharing is a kind of live, zero-copy sharing mechanism. It’s like granting someone a view into your data without giving them a physical copy.
Unlike conventional data sharing methods where you might export data, create copies, or use ETL processes to move data, Snowflake shares access to the data, while the data remains in the provider’s account. Since the data never physically moves to the consumer’s account, it doesn’t consume any of their storage.
Without the need to set up complex ETL pipelines, copy files, or manage separate data stores for each consumer, providers can enable data sharing with a few simple commands or clicks within Snowflake. They simply grant access to specific objects (databases, schemas, tables, views) to designated consumer accounts.
So this method exposes Braze event data directly in Snowflake for analytics. Here are the steps:
- Go to Partner Integrations > Data Sharing.
- Enter Snowflake account details and locator (retrieved via SELECT CURRENT_ACCOUNT()).
- Specify cloud provider/region if using Cross-Region Replication (CRR).
- Select Create Datashare.
Within minutes, the share appears in Snowflake. As an admin, create a database from the share:
CREATE DATABASE braze_share FROM SHARE <share_name>;
Note: In Snowflake, a share is a dedicated object that packages everything necessary to distribute a database to other accounts. The provider selects which external accounts are permitted access by explicitly granting them rights to the share.
Once the share is accepted and a database is instantiated within the consumer account, its users can interact with the shared data objects seamlessly.
All sharing privileges and configurations remain fully governed by the provider.
Using CSV files
You can export insights from Braze and bring them into Snowflake for deeper analysis and activation.
Braze allows you to download data like Campaign and Canvas results, Segments, Revenue performance, News Feed activity, and Custom Events in CSV format. To export campaign-specific data, go to the Campaigns section in your Braze dashboard, select a campaign, and scroll to the performance graphs. There, you’ll find the option to export the data as a CSV file, which will be saved to your system.
Once your file is ready, you can load it into Snowflake.
For files under 50 MB, Snowflake’s Snowsight interface provides a straightforward upload process:
- Log in to Snowsight. Navigate to Data, then Databases, to select your desired database and schema where you want to load your data.
- Choose an existing table or create a new standard table.
- With your table selected, click “Load Data” and then choose “Upload a file” to drag and drop or browse for your CSV file.
- Specify the warehouse if prompted, click “Next”, and then select or customize your file format.
- Click “Next” one more time; monitor the upload progress as Snowsight inserts the data into your table.
- Once completed, you can “Query Data” to immediately start analyzing your new table.
If you’re handling larger files or multiple datasets, use SnowSQL to efficiently run queries and manage data imports at scale.
Using custom scripts
Another way to facilitate Braze-Snowflake data integration is to use Braze’s export APIs, which let you pull data like campaign results, user info, or revenue stats in JSON format.
Choose the right API endpoint, then make an HTTP GET request.
Once you’ve got the data, you’ll receive it as a JSON file.
From there, you can load it into Snowflake using either bulk loading or streaming, depending on what fits your workflow best.
In Snowflake, “bulk loading” and “streaming” refer to two distinct approaches for ingesting data, each optimized for different use cases regarding data volume, latency requirements, and cost.
Bulk loading, often done using the COPY INTO command, is designed for loading large volumes of data from staged files into Snowflake tables.
Snowflake offers two main methods for streaming data: Snowpipe (for file-based micro-batches) and Snowpipe Streaming (for direct row-based ingestion). Both aim for lower latency than traditional bulk loading.
Through Hightouch
Hightouch is a customer data platform (CDP). Hightouch empowers marketers to bridge Snowflake data with multiple marketing platforms, including Braze. Here are the steps for integrating Braze and Snowflake through Hightouch:
- Connect Hightouch to Snowflake. You need to input some basic account details. It’s a quick 3-step process.

- Next, connect Hightouch to Braze. Provide your API key to start syncing data right away.

- You can now create a data model or use an existing one.
- Choose your primary key.

- Create the sync by choosing your preferred columns and mapping them to the relevant Braze fields.

- Schedule your sync. Then, click Finish.

Wrapping up!
Integrating Braze and Snowflake offers marketers and data teams a powerful way to unify engagement data and analytics under one roof. So, whether you’re syncing user attributes through Cloud Data Ingestion, accessing real-time insights via Secure Data Sharing, uploading CSV exports for quick analysis, or setting up custom API-driven workflows, there’s a method suited to every technical setup and business goal.
The true value of the Braze-Snowflake integration lies in the ability to act on data faster and more intelligently.
Need help with Braze? Book a 30-min call with one of our Braze experts, and let’s get started.
Susmit Panda - Content Writer
A realist at heart and an idealist at head, Susmit is a content writer at Mavlers. He has been in the digital marketing industry for half a decade. When not writing, he can be seen squinting at his Kindle, awestruck.
Chintan Doshi - Reviewer
Chintan is the Head of Email & CRM at Mavlers. He loves email marketing and has been in the industry for 7+ years. His track record of email marketing success covers building email programs from scratch and using data-driven strategies to turn around underperforming accounts.
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