Pray.com’s prayer plans and content is how they help bring faith to millions of Christians around the world. Accordingly, the team was looking to grow their customer engagement strategy to better meet their mission and goals. They also wanted to better understand and focus on what was inspirational instead of promotional. So they turned to Braze.

A Nimble, Experimental Approach

After implementing Braze, the Pray.com marketing team developed a nimble and interactive approach. Testing is at the center of the strategy, with continual adjustments based on which messages, content, and channels deliver the best results. The end goal is steady and incremental progress over time, using small wins to optimize campaigns and learn which content means the most to members. You can see this approach at work in three separate initiatives:

1. Reminders: This is an important function of the Pray.com app, driving engagement with reminders delivered via push notification. To improve results, Pray.com began testing headline copy to test was more engaging for members. They also experimented with the timing of the message, finding that customizing delivery based on the member’s time zone consistently saw higher engagement.

2. New episode alerts: Pray.com used Canvas Flow, our customer journey orchestration tool, to better serve their members with the content they want. A popular function of the app is the ability to follow specific content creators, so the team created a unique flow to alert members when new podcasts from each content creator become available. Essentially, members enter a journey and flow through several check steps—like channel preference, which podcast they follow, etc.—to receive API-triggered push notifications directly fired by an upload via the RSS feed. In addition, Pray.com launches numerous A/B tests with different copy (podcast name vs. creator name, for example) to see which messages get more people listening.

3. Freemium-to-paid flows. This campaign targets members who have opted for a three-day free trial to Pray.com. To encourage the free members to switch to paid subscriptions, Pray.com uses mobile push messages to send a welcome series that features gated content, such as the popular “Bible in a Year” series. As members engage with more content, they are more likely to move from trial to subscriber. Subscribers are power users as well, so increasing subscriptions also reduces churn while driving more revenue.

As the Pray.com team expands their use of Braze features, they’re excited to experiment further with Liquid personalization and other dynamic personalization features, such as Braze Connected Content.

Pray.com’s Results: Reduced Churn, More Time and Tools for Creativity

By experimenting with different channels and content approaches, Pray.com was able to test content frequently and fine-tune its marketing messages, generating the incremental growth and building the community that met the company’s mission. This cross-channel approach drove a 21% increase in open rates, 12% increase in average weekly listens, and 14% increase in send-to-listen conversion.

Key Takeaways

1. Steady, well-managed growth can have huge payoffs over-time.

2. Marketers need solutions that keep them nimble and agile. When a market changes or new products and features are launched, marketers should be able to test messages and channels at the drop of a hat.