2021 was a year marked by highs and lows. For most of us, hopes for a return to post-pandemic normalcy were overshadowed by continued uncertainty. But at the same time, 2021 saw the digital transformation ushered in by COVID-19 continue to grow, with more brands meeting the needs of the moment and continuously raising the bar when it comes to how they interact with their customers.

For today's brands, customer engagement has become a critical need, making it possible for them to achieve sustainable long-term growth, drive higher customer lifetime value (LTV), and reduce customer acquisition costs. And as we venture deeper into 2022, the time is right to capitalize on this progress and preserve the customer engagement gains made despite the challenges of the last two years. That's why the Braze Winter 2022 Product Release is focused on giving marketers new ways to measure their impact, improve and optimize their workflow, and foster more engaged audiences over the long haul.

Action On Real-Time Insights

Seasons and circumstances may change, but the importance of timely, accurate data doesn't. Marketers today need access to meaningful, real-time insights in order to effectively measure the impact of their customer engagement efforts and confidently make the adjustments needed to optimize customer outcomes and their business results. Thankfully, our new features make it easier for Braze customers to gather, share, and make sense of their data.

• Visualize data insights faster than ever with Charts in the Report Builder. It can be challenging for marketers to make sense of campaign performance at an aggregate level and visualize the key trends associated with their customer engagement efforts. The introduction of easy-to-digest, highly visual Charts within the Braze Report Builder feature, our go-to tool for custom and granular reporting, makes it possible for marketers to quickly gauge performance trends and spot interesting patterns as they emerge. With this new functionality you can select desired campaign metrics—from revenue to message sends, conversions to engagement, deliverability, and much more—to visualize and dig deeper into your revenue, conversion, and engagement data without ever leaving the Braze platform.

• Seamlessly share data with Snowflake Reader Accounts. Get all-in-one, turnkey access to your Braze data and simplify your typical time-consuming extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes. Marketers can act on all Braze event-level data, such as messaging and user behaviors, within their Snowflake Reader Account, streamlining time to insights and supporting increased data agility across these key pillars of their marketing technology stack.

• Enhance your email analytics with insight into iOS 15 Machine Opens. Apple's 2021 release of its Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) feature, which prefetches mail for opted-in users whether or not they've actually opened a given message, introduced significant new pain points for marketers in the form of inflated open rates and reduced visibility into the performance of their email campaigns. Thankfully, the Braze platform's new Machine Opens analytics features offers a solution—with this new tool, marketers can see the number of email opens carried out by Apple versus the number that are coming from actual users. If your brand uses email opens as a key decision-making metric, this feature makes it possible to more accurately assess how your emails stack up when it comes to this notable KPI.

Leverage Workflow Improvements

As we move deeper into the new year, many marketers are heads-down building out rich experiences for consumers who have come to expect cohesive, complementary hybrid experiences across online and in-person touch points. Accordingly, brands are increasingly looking for ways to improve efficiencies across their marketing programs, enabling an increased focus on these sorts of strategic initiatives, which can help to move the needle for their business in bigger ways. Braze is proud to support these efforts with a collection of tools designed to help marketers work smarter as they create engaging experiences capable of retaining their audiences.

• Easily test how your messages render with Inbox Vision for the Braze Drag & Drop Editor. With added support for the Braze platform’s email Drag & Drop Editor, marketers can now preview emails across any major web-based, mobile, or desktop email client and device to ensure that the messages they send are rendering correctly before they hit users’ inboxes. Think Android and iOS on mobile, Apple Mail and Outlook on desktop, and Gmail and Yahoo on the web—with this new functionality, you can send messages with confidence across the full range of email destinations.

• Streamline asset uploads and message optimization with our HTML IAM Editor with ZIP Uploader. Last year, we introduced an enhanced HTML editor to make it even easier to create brilliant in-app messages (IAMs) for your users. This year, we’re upgrading the drag-and-drop asset uploader to include ZIP files, so you can quickly create messages that your users love in just a few simple steps. You’ll be able to preview and interact with your message right away, supporting faster in-app message campaign creation and execution.

• Prompt users to share their email addresses with compelling, no-code Email Capture Forms. Braze is bringing another exciting enhancement to our in-app message composer—namely the native Email Capture Form, now available for easy use on both web and mobile. These Email Capture Forms give you a powerful tool for showcasing the value of receiving your emails and make it simpler than ever for interested users to share their email addresses. For optimal results, use your in-app message to highlight the benefits that users will see if they agree to subscribe to your email program.

• Prevent impersonation and secure your data with SDK Authentication. Brands can add an extra layer of security by enabling SDK Authentication for their apps. Braze SDK Authentication uses public/private key-pairs to authenticate SDK requests made by logged-in users. When this feature is enabled, it will reject requests from logged-in users with missing or invalid signatures, making it possible for brands to better protect against impersonation threats. Brands can choose whether to reject invalid requests outright, or track invalid requests on the Analytics page instead, based on their unique needs. As a general rule, Braze recommends enabling SDK authentication if your messaging contains any personal identifiable information (PII).

• Launch Japanese campaigns more efficiently with Braze Japanese Dashboard Localization. As part of the Braze platform's larger localization initiative, we're beginning the roll out of translated versions of the Braze dashboard, making it possible for regionally focused marketers to more efficiently create and launch exceptional customer engagement campaigns in their native languages. First up is our new Japanese dashboard, supporting targeted, personalized cross-channel customer engagement from Japanese companies and global brands alike.

Target The Right Audience

With today's consumers increasingly conditioned to expect highly relevant, individually tailored brand experiences, marketers need to ensure that they have the ability to consistently send valuable, personalized outreach at scale—and to optimize their investment by targeting the right audience for every message they send. To make that vision a reality, Braze continues to add fresh functionality to existing channels and features, giving marketers the tools they need to engage with customers in ways that speak to them as individuals.

• Determine the right audience for your premium channel with SMS Invalid Phone Number Detection. The Braze platform’s Invalid Phone Number Detection feature allows brands to automatically filter out invalid phone numbers and remove them from their text messaging campaigns, simplifying the process of determining the correct audience size and optimizing your overall marketing spend. To further amplify the impact of your SMS marketing, target that pool of users with opt-in and adoption campaigns via other Braze messaging channels like in-app messages or email.

Final Thoughts

Today's business environment is defined by uncertainty and emerging challenges—but as marketers continue to grapple with that uncertainty, capitalizing on proven customer engagement strategies and tools has become more important than ever before. To keep up with a fast-changing customer engagement landscape, brands need to embrace innovation and customer-centric approaches to marketing that leverage campaigns grounded in actionable metrics, efficient workflows, and engaged audiences.

For an up-to-the-minute look at how customer engagement is changing and how brands can effectively prepare, check out the 2022 Global Customer Engagement Review from Braze. This exclusive data report digs into key marketing trends and data-backed strategies for stronger business outcomes, with deep dives by region and industry. Download the full review here.