Custom events

This article describes custom events and properties, segmentation, their usage, Canvas entry properties, where to view relevant analytics, and more. To learn more about events in Braze, refer to Events.

Overview

Custom events are actions taken by, or updates about, your users. They’re best suited for tracking high-value user interactions within your application. Logging a custom event can trigger any number and type of follow-up campaigns, and enables the listed segmentation filters on the recency and frequency of that event.

Use cases

Some common custom event use cases include:

• Trigger a campaign or Canvas based on a custom event using action-based delivery.
• Segment users by how many times they performed a custom event, when the last time the event occurred, etc.
• Use dashboard custom event analytics to view an aggregate of how often each event occurred
• Find additional analytics using funnel and retention reports.
• Leverage persistent entry properties to use metadata from your customer event for personalization in your Canvas steps.
• Generate more sophisticated analytics with Currents.
• Set up Canvas exception events to define when users should not advance to the next step of your Canvas.

Managing custom events

To create and manage custom events in the dashboard, go to Data Settings > Custom Events.

From this page, you can view, manage, or blocklist existing custom events, or create a new one. If you block a custom event, no data will be collected regarding that event, existing data will be unavailable unless reactivated, and blocklisted events will not show up in filters or graphs.

Logging custom events

Custom events require additional setup. The following lists the methods across various platforms that are used to log custom events. Within these pages, you will also be able to find documentation on how to add properties and quantities to your custom events.

Expand for documentation by platform

• Android and FireOS
• iOS
• Web
• React Native
• Unity
• Xamarin
• Roku

Custom event storage

All data stored on the User Profile, including custom event metadata (first/last occurrence, total count, and X in Y over 30 days), is retained indefinitely as long as each profile is active.

Segmentation filters

The following table shows the filters available for segmenting users by custom events.

Segmentation Options	Dropdown Filter	Input Options
Check if the custom event has occurred more than X number of times	MORE THAN	NUMBER
Check if the custom event has occurred less than X number of times	LESS THAN	NUMBER
Check if the custom event has occurred exactly X number of times	EXACTLY	NUMBER
Check if the custom event last occurred after X date	AFTER	TIME
Check if the custom event last occurred before X date	BEFORE	TIME
Check if the custom event last occurred more than X days ago	MORE THAN	NUMBER OF DAYS AGO (Positive Number)
Check if the custom event last occurred less than X days ago	LESS THAN	NUMBER OF DAYS AGO (Positive Number)
Check if the custom event occurred more than X (Max = 50) number of times	MORE THAN	in the past Y Days (Y = 1,3,7,14,21,30)
Check if the custom event occurred less than X (Max = 50) number of times	LESS THAN	in the past Y Days (Y = 1,3,7,14,21,30)
Check if the custom event occurred exactly X (Max = 50) number of times	EXACTLY	in the past Y Days (Y = 1,3,7,14,21,30)

Analytics

Braze notes the number of times these events have occurred as well as the last time they were performed by each user for segmentation. You can view these analytics at Analytics > Custom Events Report.

On the Custom Events Report page in the dashboard, you can view in aggregate how often each custom event occurs, as well as by segment over time for more detailed analysis. This is particularly useful to view how your campaigns have affected custom event activity by looking at the gray lines Braze overlays on the time series to indicate the last time a campaign was sent.

You can also use Filters to breakdown your custom events by hour, monthly average users (MAU), segments, or KPI formulas.

Custom events analytics not showing?

Segments created with custom event data cannot show previous historic data from before they were created.

Custom event properties

Custom event properties are custom event metadata or attributes that describe a specific occurrence of an event. These properties can then be used for further qualifying trigger conditions, increasing personalization in messaging, tracking conversions, and generating more sophisticated analytics through raw data export.

Custom event properties are not stored on the Braze profile and therefore do not consume data points (see Data points below for exceptions).

Expected format

The properties values should be an object where the keys are the property names and the values are the property values. Property names must be non-empty strings less than or equal to 255 characters, with no leading dollar signs ($).

Property values can be any of the following data types:

Data Type	Description
Numbers	As either integers or floats
Booleans
Datetimes	Formatted as strings in ISO-8601 or yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss:SSSZ format. Not supported within arrays.
Strings	255 characters or fewer.
Arrays	Arrays cannot include datetimes.
Objects	Objects will be ingested as strings.
Nested objects	Objects that are inside of other objects. For more, see the section in this article on Nested objects.

Event property objects that contain array or object values can have an event property payload of up to 50 KB.

You can change the data type of your custom event property, but be aware of the impacts of changing data types after data has been collected.

Using custom event properties

Custom event properties can be used to qualify campaign triggers, track conversions, and personalize messaging.

Trigger messages

You can use custom event properties to further narrow your audience for a particular campaign or Canvas. For example, if you have an ecommerce application and want to send a message to a user when they abandon their cart, you could improve your target audience and allow for increased campaign personalization by adding a custom event property of cart value.

Nested custom event properties are also supported in Action-Based Delivery or conversion processing.

Personalize messages

You can also use custom event properties for personalization within the messaging template. Any campaign using action-based delivery with a trigger event can use custom event properties from that event for messaging personalization.

For example, if you have a gaming application and want to send a message to users who had completed a level, you could further personalize your message with a property for the time it took users to complete that level. In this example, the message is personalized for three different segments using conditional logic. The custom event property called time_spent can be included in the message by calling {{event_properties.${time_spent}}}.

Considerations with filters

• API calls: When making API calls and using the “is blank” filter, a custom event property is considered “blank” if excluded from the call. For example, if you were to include "event_property": "", then your users would be considered “not blank”.
• Integers: When filtering for a number custom event property and the number is very large, don’t use the “exactly” filter. If a number is too large, it may be rounded at a certain length, so your filter won’t work as expected.

Segmentation

Event property segmentation allows you to target users based not just on custom events taken but the properties associated with those events. This feature adds more filtering options when segmenting purchase and custom events.

Event properties for custom events are updated in real time for any segment that uses them. You can manage properties from the Data Settings > Custom Events page by clicking Manage Properties for your custom event. Custom event properties used in certain segment filters have a maximum look back history of 30 days.

These segmentation filters include:

• Has done custom event with property A with value B, X times in the last Y days.
• Has made any purchases with property A with value B, X times in the last Y days.
• Adds the ability to segment within 1, 3, 7, 14, 21, and 30 days.

Data is only logged for a given event property after it has been enabled by your customer success manager—event properties are only available from that date moving forward.

Data points

In regards to subscription usage, custom event properties enabled for segmentation with the following filters are all counted as separate data points in addition to the data point counted by the custom event itself:

• X Custom Event Property in Y Days
• X Purchase Property in Y Days

Canvas entry properties and event properties

You can leverage canvas_entry_properties and event_properties in your Canvas user journeys. Check out Canvas entry properties and event properties for more information and examples.

• canvas entry properties
• event properties

Nested objects

You can use nested objects—objects that are inside of another object—to send nested JSON data as properties of custom events and purchases. This nested data can be used for templating personalized information in messages, for triggering message sends, and for segmentation.

To learn more, refer to our dedicated article on Nested objects.

Custom event property storage

Custom event properties are designed to help you increase targeting precision and make messages feel even more personalized. Custom event properties can be stored within Braze in both the short and long term.

If you would like to segment on the values of event properties, you have two options:

1. Within 30 days: Braze support personnel can enable event property segmentation based on the frequency and recency of specific event property values within Braze Segments. If you’d like to leverage event properties within Segments, contact your Braze account executive or customer success manager. Note that this option will impact data usage.
   
   
2. Within and beyond 30 days: To cover both short-term and long-term event property segmentation, you can use Segment Extensions. This feature enables you to segment based on custom events and event properties tracked within the past two years. Note that this option will not impact data usage.

Contact your Braze customer success manager for recommendations on the best approach depending on your specific needs.