While the phaseout of third-party cookies has created big challenges for marketers, it’s also opened up opportunities to experiment with new and creative strategies. First-party data is the key to personalized, relevant campaigns that resonate with consumers—provided the campaigns make the most of the data that marketers are racing to collect.

At Braze, we’ve been closely watching the shift towards first-party data, and building solutions to help marketers quickly create impactful and personalized strategies. This thinking is behind the launch of Braze for Commerce, a set of new capabilities with personalization at its core.

Getting to Know Your Customers

If you’re one of the 90% of retail and eCommerce brands that plans to increase marketing budgets following privacy changes on data use, you’ll want the best return on your investment—which means wowing customers with highly engaging buying experiences. When engagement is high, shoppers turn into buyers and are more loyal to brands, as Braze customer Pressed has discovered.

“As an omni-channel retail brand, customer communication and digital presence is critical to both growth and retention,” says Georgia Price, Director of Digital and CRM at Pressed. “Braze has played a key role in our customer engagement strategies as we’ve seen a 10% increase in engagement and almost 40% increase in open rates year over year since onboarding with Braze.”

As Pressed has found, personalization is critical, but it needs to be matched with relevancy: The right campaigns at the right moment.

Toward this end, Braze for Commerce also includes new tools for understanding shoppers—like capturing customer preference data with Braze Surveys and SMS click tracking for improved retargeting. This combination of personalization and customer preferences allows for a more curated experience based upon proactively collected customer data. Plus, capabilities like segment extensions and the Braze Predictive Suite make it easier than ever to target the right customers in granular, impactful ways.

Braze for Commerce also includes enhanced solutions for unifying customer journeys, such as the Braze Audience Sync, which brings together owned and paid channels. Brands can save on ad spend, since Facebook, Instagram, and Google ad campaigns can be immediately turned off the moment a shopper converts elsewhere.

To make the most of their personalization efforts, brands need ways to surface the right information where and when they need it—and to do so in effective, scalable ways. With Braze Catalogs, marketers can now store product information right in Braze for use in any one of their campaigns or customer journeys across channels, then pair customers with the most relevant products and offers. And by using Braze Content Blocks, marketers can quickly build personalized campaigns with easy drag-and-drop tools and reuse relevant, personalized modules in future outreach.

To make syncing of customer data easier for brands that use Shopify, we’ve launch a Braze Shopify integration. The integration allows merchants to sync customer and purchase data with a simple click, no coding required. The synced data helps merchants use their first-party data to upsell and cross-sell products, recover abandoned carts, and win back lapsed customers, amplifying the impact of the information at their disposal.

“Retail brands must reimagine traditional shopping experiences,” says Kevin Wang, Senior VP of Product at Braze. “Our portfolio of retail and eCommerce solutions helps retailers unlock the full potential of their first-party data, delivering contextually relevant experiences that empower shoppers to quickly find and buy what they need, when they need it, from wherever they are.”

Final Thoughts

Interested in learning more about how brands can create meaningful and relevant experiences for every shopper? Register to attend our “Grow Loyalty. Grow Sales.” webinar on April 6 and get exclusive insights and guidance from Braze and Pressed’s Georgia Price.