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Census

Census is the data integration platform that enables you to sync customer and product data from your cloud warehouse to the sales and marketing apps of your choice, all without ongoing help from your engineering department.

The Braze and Census integration allows you to dynamically import your Census product data into Braze to create targeted user segments. For example, after successfully testing and implementing the integration, Braze can create a user segment from the new data of ‘Users Active in the Last 30 Days’ to target specific users to ask them to test an upcoming beta feature.

Prerequisites

Requirement Description
Census account A Census account is required to take advantage of this partnership.
Braze REST API key A Braze REST API key with all user data permissions(except for users.delete) and segments.list permissions. The permissions set may change as Census adds support for more Braze objects, so you may either want to grant more permissions now or plan to update these permissions in the future.

This can be created within the Braze Dashboard > Developer Console > REST API Key > Create New API Key.
Braze REST endpoint Your REST endpoint URL. Your endpoint will depend on the Braze URL for your instance.
Data warehouse and data model Before beginning the integration, you must have a data warehouse set up in Census and define a model of the subset of data you want to sync to Braze. Visit Census documentation for a list of available data sources and guidance on model creation.

Integration

Step 1: Create Braze service connection

To integrate Census, in the Census platform, navigate to the Settings tab and select Add Service to create a new Braze service connection.

In the prompt that appears, name this connection, and provide your Braze endpoint URL and Braze REST API key.

Step 2: Create a Census sync

To sync customers to Braze, you must build a sync. Here, you will define where to sync data and how you would like fields mapped across the two platforms.

  1. Navigate to the Syncs tab and select Add Sync.
  2. In the prompt that appears, under Connection, select your desired data warehouse.
  3. Next, select the source. This is the data model built from your data warehouse data.
  4. Configure where the model will be synced to. Select Braze as the connection, and the supported object type to sync.
    In the "What do you want to sync" prompt, "Redshift" is selected as the connection, and "Golden Users - VIP" is set as the source. In the "Where do you want to sync data to?" prompt, "Braze" is selected as the connection, and "User" is set as the object.

  5. Make sure Update or Create is selected as a syncing rule.
  6. Next, for record matching purposes, choose your desired In the “How are source and destination records matched?” prompt, “External User ID” is set as “id”. for your Braze object type and associated model field.
    In the "Which fields should be updated?" prompt, "External User ID" is set as "id", "Email" is set as "email", "First Name" is set as "first_name", and "Last Name" is set as "last_name".

  7. Lastly, map the Census data fields to the equivalent Braze fields.
    Census mapping

  8. Confirm details and create the sync.

Once the sync is created, you will find the user data already in Braze. You can now create a Braze segment and add it to future Braze campaigns and Canvases to target these end-users.

Supported objects

Census currently supports syncing of the following Braze user and event objects:

Object name Identifiers
User External user ID
Event Event ID

Additionally, Census supports sending structured data to Braze:

  • User push tokens: To send push tokens, your data should be structured as an array of objects with 2-3 values: app_id, token, and an optional device_id.
  • Nested custom attributes: Both objects and arrays are supported. As of April 2022, this feature is still in early access. You may need to contact your Braze account manager for access.
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