Creating a Content Card
This article covers how to create a Content Card in Braze when you build campaigns and Canvases. Here, we’ll walk you through choosing a messaging type, composing your card, and scheduling your message delivery.
Step 1: Choose where to build your message
Not sure whether your message should be sent with a campaign or a Canvas? Campaigns are better for single, simple messaging campaigns (such as informing users about a new product with a single message), while Canvases are better for multi-step user journeys (such as sending tailored product suggestions based on user behavior over time).
- Go to Messaging > Campaigns and select Create Campaign.
- Select Content Cards or, for campaigns targeting multiple channels, select Multichannel.
- Name your campaign something clear and meaningful.
- Add teams and tags as needed.
- Tags make your campaigns easier to find and build reports out of. For example, when using the Report Builder, you can filter by the relevant tags.
- Add and name as many variants as you like for your campaign. You can choose different platforms, message types, and layouts for each of your added variants. For more on variants, refer to Multivariate and A/B testing.
If all of the messages in your campaign are going to be similar or have the same content, compose your message before adding additional variants. You can then select Copy from Variant from the Add Variant dropdown.
- Create your Canvas using the Canvas composer.
- After setting up your Canvas, add a Message step in the Canvas builder. Name your step something clear and meaningful.
- Select Content Cards as your messaging channel.
- Choose when Braze calculates audience eligibility and personalization for the Content Card. This can be at step entry or at first impression (recommended). Steps containing Content Cards can be scheduled or action-based.
- Choose whether to remove Content Cards when users complete a purchase or perform a custom event.
- Set an expiration for the Content Card (time in feed). This can be after a duration of time or at a specific time.
- Filter your audience, or the recipients, for this step as necessary in the Delivery Settings. You can further refine your audience by specifying segments and adding additional filters. Audience options will be checked after the delay, at the time messages are sent.
- Choose any other messaging channels that you want to pair with your message.
Step 2: Specify your message types
Select one of three essential Content Card types: Classic, Captioned Image, and Image Only.
To learn more about the expected behavior and look of each type, refer to Creative Details, or check out the links in the following table. These Content Card types are accepted by both mobile apps and web applications.
| Message Type | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Classic |  |
The Classic Card has a simple layout with a bolded title, message text, and an optional image that sits to the left of the title and text. It’s best to use a square image or icon with the Classic Card. |
| Captioned Image |  |
The Captioned Image Card showcases your content with copy and an attention-grabbing image. |
| Image Only |  |
The Image Only Card commands attention with space for images, GIFs, and other creative non-text content. |
Step 3: Compose a Content Card
You can edit all aspects of your message’s content and behavior in the Compose tab of the message editor.
The content here varies based on the Card Type chosen in the previous step, but may include any of the following options:
Language
Select Add Languages to add your desired languages from the provided list. This will insert Liquid into your message. We recommend selecting your languages before writing your content so you can fill in your text where it belongs in the Liquid. For our full list of available languages you can use, refer to Languages supported.
Creating right-to-left messages
The final appearance of right-to-left messages depends largely on how service providers render them. For best practices on crafting right-to-left messages that display as accurately as possible, refer to Creating right-to-left messages.
Title and message
Write anything you want. There are no limits, but the faster you can get your message across and get your customer clicking, the better! We recommend clear and concise titles and message content. Note that these fields aren’t provided for Image Only Cards.
Image
Add an image to your Content Card by selecting Add Image or providing an image URL. Selecting Add Image opens the Media Library, where you can select a previously uploaded image or add a new one. Each message type and platform may have its own suggested proportions and requirements, so be sure to check what those are before commissioning or making an image from scratch! Keep in mind that Content Card message fields are limited to 2 KB in total size.
Pin to top
A pinned card will display at the top of a user’s feed and can’t be dismissed by the user. If more than one card in a user’s feed is pinned, the pinned cards will display in chronological order. After a card has been sent, you can’t retroactively update its pinned option. Changing this option after a campaign has been sent will only affect future sends.
On-click behavior
When your customer clicks on a presented link in the card, your link can either lead them deeper into your app or to another site. If you choose an on-click behavior for your Content Card, remember to update your Link Text accordingly.
The following actions are available for Content Card links:
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Redirect to Web URL | Open a non-native web page. |
| Deep Link into App | Deep link into an existing screen in your app. |
| Log Custom Event | Choose a custom event to trigger. Can be used to display another Content Card or trigger additional messaging. |
| Log Custom Attribute | Choose a custom attribute to set for the current user. |
The Log Custom Event and Log Custom Attribute options require the following SDK version compatibility:
Step 4: Configure additional settings (optional)
You can use key-value pairs to create categories for your Cards, create multiple Content Card feeds, and customize how cards are sorted.
To add key-value pairs to your message, go to the Settings tab and select Add New Pair.
Step 5: Build the remainder of your campaign or Canvas
Build the remainder of your campaign. Continue to the next sections for additional details on how to best use our tools to build Content Cards.
Choose a delivery schedule or trigger
Content Cards can be delivered based on a scheduled time, an action, or an API trigger. For more, refer to Scheduling your campaign.
You can also set the campaign’s duration and Quiet Hours and determine the Content Card’s expiration. Set a specific expiration date or the days until a Card expires, up to 30 days. All variants have identical expiration dates.
Frequency capping doesn’t apply to Content Cards.
Scheduled delivery
For Content Card campaigns with scheduled delivery, you can choose when Braze evaluates audience eligibility and personalization for new Content Card campaigns by specifying when the card is created. For more, refer to card creation.
Choose users to target
Next, target users by choosing segments or filters to narrow down your audience. You’ll automatically be given a snapshot of what that approximate segment population looks like right now. Keep in mind that exact segment membership is always calculated just before the message is sent.
Choose conversion events
Braze allows you to track how often users perform specific actions, conversion events, after receiving a campaign. You have the option of allowing up to a 30-day window during which a conversion will be counted if the user takes the specified action.
If you haven’t done so already, complete the remaining sections of your Canvas component. For further details on how build out the rest of your Canvas, implement multivariate testing and Intelligent Selection, and more, refer to the Build your Canvas step of our Canvas documentation.
Step 6: Review and deploy
After you’ve finished building the last of your campaign or Canvas, review its details, test it, then send it when you’re ready.
After a Content Card is launched, it can’t be edited. It can only be stopped from sending to new users and removed from users’ feeds. Refer to Updating sent cards to understand how you can approach this scenario.
Next, check out Content Card reporting to learn how you can access the results of your Content Card campaigns.
Things to know
Size limitations for Content Cards
The size of a Content Card payload can be up to a 2 KB after Liquid rendering. This includes the Title, Message, Image URL, Link Text, Link URL(s), and Key-Value Pairs (names and values). However, this limit does not include the size of the image—only the length of the image URL.
Messages larger than 2 KB will not be sent. During test sends, Content Cards that exceed 2 KB can still be delivered and displayed properly.
Number of cards in feed
Each user can have up to 250 non-expired Content Cards in their feed at any given time. When this limit is exceeded, Braze will stop returning the oldest cards, even if they are unread. Dismissed cards also count toward this limit, meaning a high number of dismissed cards can reduce the space available for new ones.
Sending behavior
After Content Cards have been sent, they sit waiting in an “inbox” ready to be delivered to the user (similar to what happens for emails). After content is pulled into the Content Card (at the time of display), it cannot be changed during its lifespan. This applies even if you’re calling an API through Connected Content, and the data from the endpoint changes. This data won’t get updated. It can only be stopped from sending to new users and removed from users’ feeds. If you modify a campaign, only future cards that are sent will have the update.
If you need to remove old cards, you must first stop the campaign. To stop a campaign, open your Content Card campaign and select Stop Campaign. Stopping the campaign will prompt you to decide how to handle users who have already received your card.
If you want to remove the Content Card from your users’ feeds, select Remove card from feed. The card will then be hidden by the SDK on the next sync.
Do you want your Content Cards to seem like they’re lasting longer than the 30-day max? One way to accomplish this is to do the following:
- Set the duration of the Content Card for 30 days.
- Set the campaign re-eligibility to 30 days.
- Set the campaign to trigger on “Session Start.”
Card removal events
Some Content Cards are only relevant until a user performs some action. For example, a card nudging users to activate their account shouldn’t be shown after the user completes that onboarding task.
Within a campaign or Canvas message, you can optionally add a Removal Event to specify which custom events or purchases should cause previously sent cards to be removed from that user’s feed, triggered by the SDK or REST API.
Cards will be removed on subsequent refreshes after Braze has processed the specified event.
You can specify multiple custom events and purchases that should remove a card from a user’s feed. When any of those actions are performed by the user, any existing cards sent by the campaign’s cards will be removed. Any future eligible cards will continue to be sent according to the message’s schedule.
Updating launched cards
Content Cards can’t be edited after they are sent. If you find you need to make changes to cards that have already been sent, consider using campaign re-eligibility as shown in the following options.
When a Content Card becomes re-eligible, it may be sent again when the original card is still in a user’s app. To avoid duplicate cards in a user’s app, you can turn off re-eligibility or extend the re-eligibility window so that users won’t be sent a new card until the original has expired.
Also note that Content Cards using at first impression use impression time to calculate re-eligibility. However, Content Cards created at campaign launch or Canvas step entry use whichever send time or impression time is latest.
Option 1: Duplicating the campaign
One approach is to archive the campaign and remove active cards from the feed. Then you can duplicate the campaign and launch it with updates so that any eligible users would receive the updated cards.
- If users should never be re-eligible for a Content Card, you can filter for users who haven’t received the previous version of the Content Card by setting the filter
Received Message from Campaignto the condition toHas Not. - If users who received the prior card should be re-eligible in X days, you can set the filter for
Last Received Message from specific campaignto more than X days ago ORReceived Message from Campaignwith theHas Notcondition.
Use case
Let’s say you’ve set a campaign to be triggered by a session start, and it has re-eligibility set to 30 days. A user received the campaign two days ago, and you want to change the copy. First, you’d archive the campaign and remove the cards from the feed. Second, you’d duplicate the campaign and re-launch with the new copy. If the user has another session, they’ll immediately receive the new card.
Impact
- Reporting: Each version of the card would have separate analytics.
- Existing Recipients: New and existing recipients would see the updated card at the next feed refresh if they are eligible.
We recommend this option for messages where you are showing the latest content in the card (such as home page banners), changes must be shown immediately, or when re-eligibility is turned off.
Option 2: Stop and relaunch
If a card has re-eligibility turned on, you could choose to:
- Stop your campaign.
- Remove active Content Cards from users’ feeds.
- Edit your campaign as needed.
- Restart your campaign.
With this approach, newly eligible users will get the new card, and previous recipients will get the new card when they’re re-eligible.
Use case
Let’s say you have a campaign that’s triggered by a session start and has re-eligibility set to 30 days. A user received the campaign two days ago, and you want to change the copy. First, stop the campaign and remove the card from the feed. Second, re-publish the campaign with the new copy. If the user has another session, they’ll receive the new card in 28 days.
Impact
- Reporting: One campaign will contain all reporting analytics for the card versions launched. Braze won’t differentiate between the versions launched.
- Existing recipients: Users who have already received the card would not receive the updated cards until they become re-eligible. If re-eligibility is turned off, they would never receive the new card.
We recommend using this option for unique messages in a notification center or message inbox (such as promotions), when it’s important for analytics to be unified, or when the timeliness of the message isn’t a concern (such as existing recipients can wait for the eligibility window before seeing the updated cards).
Keeping cards in users’ feeds
If desired, you could keep an active Content Card campaign in users’ feeds and not remove it. When the live campaign is edited, the previous unedited version of the campaign card will still be live, and only users who meet the criteria after the edits will see the new version. However, users already exposed to the campaign may see two versions of the card.
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