7 Signs Your Braze Strategy Needs an Upgrade

1. You’re running campaigns, not lifecycle programs

Braze is designed for event-driven engagement, not batch-and-blast marketing. If your primary lever is campaigns, you’re bypassing the platform’s core strength.

In the majority of instances, here’s how both the approaches stack up against each other.

	Typical setups	Mature setups
Core strategy	Batch-and-blast campaigns	Event-driven, behavior-based engagement
Trigger	None (scheduled send)	Product Viewed OR Category Browsed
Audience	All active users	Users who viewed but didn’t purchase within 2 hours
Execution	One-time campaign	Canvas-based journey
Personalization	Minimal or static	Dynamic personalization using Catalogs
Promotional content	Generic offers	Product-specific details, pricing, availability
Channel strategy	Email only	Multi-channel orchestration

Lifecycle marketing relies on owned channels where you can engage with customers repeatedly at little to no incremental cost. If you don’t cash in on those channels, you’re losing out.

2. Your Canvas setups are linear

Let’s rehash what Canvas is. It is essentially a customer journey tool in Braze.

If you’re setting up linear Canvases, it could either mean you’re underestimating the significance of what you already know i.e. customer journeys are not linear; or, you’re running into technical friction, hence defaulting to stripped-down setups.

In either case, a linear, stripped-down setup typically looks like the following:

One entry, one path, and a one-size-fits-all experience for the entire list
Limited application of decision splits and exit criteria
Converted users continuing to receive pre-conversion communication

Canvas is built for dynamic decisioning. Here’s what a mature Canvas setup looks like.

	Logic/condition	Action
Entry	User signed up	Enters Canvas
Step 1	—	Send onboarding email
Decision splits	If profile completed	Move to activation journey
	If profile not completed	Send reminder via Push
Step 2	If purchase made	Exit Canvas immediately
	If no purchase made	Introduce incentive
Channel optimization	Based on user behavior & preference	Use Intelligent Channel to choose Email vs Push

3. You’re not using real-time event data properly

Like we explained, Braze is designed for event-driven engagement. That means Braze thrives on real-time streaming data. In spite of that, most setups are guilty of:

An over-reliance on scheduled data syncs
Not using custom events for triggers
Significantly delayed post-behavior communication

Now, why is leveraging real-time data properly absolutely critical?

Once again, it’s customer behavior, that’s why. Take cart abandonments. According to Baymard, here’s why customers abandon carts. This might not even be the full list!

Baymard abandoned checkout reasons survey

In light of these reasons, you need to think ahead of your customers. And speaking of these cart abandonments, nearly $260 billion worth of lost orders are recoverable.

With that in mind, here’s what a fully optimized cart abandonment execution in Braze looks like.

	Logic/condition	Action
Event	cart_updated with item properties	Captures cart activity with relevant data
Trigger timing	Within minutes of event	User enters Canvas quickly
Push notification (15 mins)	All users	“You left something behind”
Email (2 hrs)	All users	Send dynamic cart items using event properties
SMS (next day)	Only if cart value > threshold	Send reminder for high-intent users

In fact, you can also insert an advanced layer by using Currents to feed abandonment data into Snowflake; building predictive segments; and feeding back into Braze for prioritization.

Here’s how it looks like:

Use Braze Currents to stream real-time user events into Snowflake. In Snowflake, analyze this data to build predictive segments such as “high likelihood to purchase” or “low intent users” based on behavior patterns. Send these scores or segments back into Braze as custom attributes or events, and use them inside Canvas to prioritize messaging; for example, targeting high-intent users faster with no discount, while delaying or incentivizing lower-intent users.

It is particularly helpful when you need to interact with customers across multiple touchpoints. If you do omnichannel or cross-channel marketing, these should be default setups anyway.

4. You’re not using Catalogs or Connected Content for Braze personalization

Personalization in Braze can’t stay limited to basic Liquid usage or static content blocks. Key to advanced personalization is Catalogs and Connected Content.

For example, check out the following setup for personalization in Braze.

	Logic/input	Execution
Data sources	Catalogs	For pulling product recommendations
	Connected Content	For fetching external data such as pricing, inventory, etc.
Personalization	Last viewed category	Tailor product selection
	Purchase frequency	Adjust messaging relevance/intensity
	Average order value	Influence product range/pricing shown
Dynamic content logic	If user browsed “Running Shoes”	Show top 3 running products
	Else	Show best sellers

Within Catalogs, you can try Selections. These are dynamic subsets of a catalog filtered against user attributes. Let’s try to understand this with an example.

If your catalog has 22 products across shoes, t-shirts, and pants, you don’t need three separate selections. You create one Selection that reads the user’s favorite_retail_category attribute and returns only the matching items, randomized, up to a set limit. When the attribute changes from “Shoes” to “Pants,” the Selection then automatically surfaces a different subset.

Braze surfaces the filtered results as a Liquid array, making it simple to loop through items and populate product names, images, and pricing dynamically within a single email template.

5. Your data model isn’t designed for Braze

Flat profiles, overuse of custom attributes, absent event properties — all these are indications of an arrangement where your data is merely synced to Braze.

Braze’s capabilities are directly tied to the quality of the data architecture.

Consider the following setup. This enables better segmentation, dynamic personalization, and multi-product recommendations.

Event	Event properties
product_viewed	product_id; category; price; brand
checkout_started	cart_value; currency; item_count; product_ids (array); categories (array); discount_applied (true/false); checkout_step (e.g., shipping, payment)
order_completed	order_id; total_amount; currency; product_ids (array); categories (array); purchase_type (first-time / repeat); payment_method; discount_used; shipping_type

6. You’re using BrazeAI tactically, not strategically

As in all things AI, the urge is to use it without regard for anything else.

If our experience with simple, standalone AI tools has shown us that this approach doesn’t work, how much more of a waste of time is it when it comes to using AI in Braze!

With Braze’s more recent breakthroughs in AI, the temptation is stronger.

So when it comes to BrazeAI, we tell our clients to consider these things before upgrading:

Start with a single impactful use case. Focus all data, process mapping, and testing on the highest-impact task to limit disrupting your entire stack.
Document your current process first. Do not hand off decisions you don’t fully understand; mapping reveals where AI fits and where it doesn’t.
Exhaust your existing stack before buying. Confirm current tools can’t solve the problem to avoid unnecessary complexity and cost.
Prioritize execution over perfect planning. Work in short sprints and learn through iteration rather than delaying for a static roadmap.

7. You’re not using Content Cards

In our conversation last year with Allan Heo, he highlighted Content Cards as one of the most underutilized features in Braze. Marketing creates the strategy, engineering implements the SDK container, designers ensure brand consistency, and product manages edge cases and default states. Most teams underestimate this cross-functional lift. But once implemented, Content Cards give marketing teams product access; they can optimize creative without engineering tickets.

In light of that, teams need structure and clarity around how they work together:

Assign a single project owner to coordinate marketing, engineering, design, and product, keeping momentum and preventing handoff gaps.
Align teams early with a shared spec covering placement, design, logic, and edge cases to avoid mid-build surprises.
Start small. Launch a basic content card (single placement, simple design, limited logic), and iterate once roles and processes are clear.
Run a kickoff workshop. Bring teams together to map dependencies, timelines, and blockers, preventing delays caused by scattered communication.
Start with banners; they’re faster to launch, lighter on design and SDK, and help prove value before scaling to content cards.

Upgrade to Braze lifecycle marketing with Mavlers!

Customer acquisition has become very expensive. Paid channels are increasingly costly. CAC pay back periods are getting longer. As a result, retention matters more.

In addition, customers expect relevant, hyper-personalized experiences.

Lifecycle renews the focus on problem solving, customer success, and end-to-end experiences. Revenue, retention, loyalty, these are your strongest hedges today.

In light of this, it is time to upgrade your Braze usage to lifecycle-level maturity.

We can help you make that transition. Our 20-strong team of Braze experts have so far managed more than 2,000 campaigns/automations in Braze.

Are you underutilizing Braze? 7 signs you most probably are