Originally launched to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots, a seminal moment in the history of the American LGBTQ+ community, Pride has evolved over time into a month-long celebration of the power and presence of a marginalized community. Marked annually in the United States in June, it typically involves an array of parades, marches, parties, and other social gatherings.

Of course, like many other aspects of life that involve the word “social,” Pride 2020 was heavily impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Faced with a time of isolation and uncertainty, how could an important event like Pride carry on? LGBTQ+ social network Grindr had a solution. With the help of artists, entertainers, activists, and educators, the company launched a campaign called Pride Perseveres, offering daily activities, fundraisers, performances, and more in a safe, online environment.

The problem they faced was how to provide their users with a dynamic calendar of Pride Perseveres events without a huge lift on the development side. The unexpected onset of the pandemic meant that the available time to craft a custom solution was short. Fortunately, Grindr already had the right tool in its messaging toolbox: Braze Content Cards.

Content Cards: Power in Persistence

Messaging channels like web push and in-app messaging have their strengths when it comes to providing users with up-to-the-minute updates, but they’re also somewhat transitory. The experience of accidentally swiping away from a promotional message almost out of habit, then realizing you didn’t mean to do that, is a pretty common one in today’s fast-paced mobile world. Content Cards solve that issue by providing the opportunity to highlight persistent content within a brand’s app or web experience without interrupting customers’ normal browsing behavior.

Content Cards are also deeply flexible, allowing brands to serve dynamic, rich content that can incorporate personalization features like Connected Content. Their power on this front is twofold. First, their customizability makes it easy to fully tailor the look of feeds and cards to match their appearance to the app or website within which they exist. Second, they’re capable of delivering a variety of content types targeted to an individual user’s preferences and behaviors.

Grindr’s Content Card Calendar Brings Pride Home

Grindr wanted to put its Pride Perseveres schedule front and center, but given the tight turnaround time, the development, testing, and rollout involved in crafting an entirely new user interface (UI) for its mobile app and web presence made the idea of full client updates impractical. So, instead, they turned to Content Cards, which had already been implemented as a content delivery tool. By customizing Content Cards to dynamically target and deliver events to users, Grindr was able to essentially power what looked like an innovative new UI, but without the back-end lift it would have taken to deploy client updates. What’s more, Content Cards’ flexibility allowed this calendar to accommodate everything from live performances to merchandise sales, tackling a variety of customer and brand needs within the same platform.

As a result, the Pride Perseveres campaign demonstrated Grindr’s responsiveness to their user base’s needs in a time of anxiety, creating a high-profile promotion that helped the Grindr audience celebrate Pride safely from home. With performances, panels, educational lectures, and calls to activism, Pride Perseveres offered a deeply communal experience and showcased why Grindr has become the largest and most popular social app for the LGBTQ+ community.

Grindr’s Results: Increase in DAU and User Engagement

None of this was lost on Grindr’s audience. Up to 34% of daily active users (DAU) engaged with Pride Perseveres content, and the app experienced a lift in DAU that helped mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic on the brand’s business. What’s more, response to the promotion was very positive, with 65% of users who interacted with the Content Cards-fueled UI expressing a positive view of the campaign, and user feedback comments reflecting an appreciation for the way in which it made them feel less alone and prouder than they otherwise might have been.

“Braze allowed us to create a flexible and high-impact campaign that we were able to roll out on an extremely tight timeline to meet the continually evolving needs of our users in response to the global pandemic,” said Alex Black, Head of Marketing, Grindr. “Thanks to our partners at Braze, we were able to help our users stay connected during a time of unprecedented isolation and celebrate Pride safely from home.”

Final Thoughts

In a year when the global social and commercial situation is in flux, the ability to respond flexibly to changes in customer behavior‚ voluntary or involuntary—is key. By making creative use of Content Cards to nimbly pivot a typically offline event to the virtual space, Grindr showcased the benefit of both innovative ideas and possessing the right tools to execute on them, and helped its community keep Pride alive in a difficult time.

For more on how Content Cards can be put to use as part of a fully cross-channel strategy, be sure to check out the Braze guide to Brilliant Experiences, Channel By Channel.