June 2025 Bonfire Marketer of the Month: Picklebet’s Elliott Bell

Each month, Braze selects one individual as our Marketer of the Month in order to celebrate the exceptional work being done by members of our Braze Bonfire community. Whether it's providing support for their fellow marketers or going above and beyond by sharing their innovative ideas and strategies, these individuals are making essential contributions to their companies, their users, and the customer engagement space as a whole.

This month, we’re recognizing Elliott Bell, Head of Engagement at Picklebet. Founded in Australia in 2020, Picklebet is a racing, sports, and esports betting entertainment company focused on building a betting and entertainment experience for tomorrow’s customer. We spoke to Elliott about leveraging Braze, Picklebet’s customer strategy, and what they are focused on this year. Let’s dive in.

Tell us about your background and the role you’re in now.

I’ve worked in CRM and customer engagement for over seven years now, mostly across mobile-first businesses in the sports, entertainment, and wagering space. I’m currently leading the engagement team at Picklebet, a rapidly-growing company in the sports betting space based in Australia.

We implemented Braze in 2022, and it’s been central to how we engage with our customers. It gives us the flexibility to move fast and experiment, which has made a big difference for a small team like ours.

What is your favorite part of your job?

It has to be working in the sports industry, right? My other favorite part is working with an incredibly smart team to build great customer experiences while leveraging cutting-edge technology.

Being VC-backed means we’ve got to be super efficient. There’s no room for big mistakes, so we’re always thinking critically about where we spend time and what we prioritize. That mindset is baked into the culture. It can be challenging, but it really sharpens your thinking. You learn to back your decisions, move fast, and focus on what actually matters.

Similar to most industries, there’s seasonality involved, whether that’s the launch of football season, basketball finals, big horse races, etc. But there’s always an element of surprise we can’t prepare for, like when an underdog knocks out the previous champions, weather conditions shift, or teams make last-minute changes.

How do you prioritize your goals for your customer engagement strategy?

One of the great things about Braze is that it lets us build solutions that contribute to a range of business goals. Our early focus was on improving sign-up rates and reducing acquisition costs, while also finding ways to drive retention and reduce churn through more personalized customer experiences.We also use Braze to support other teams in the business, like helping our customer support team deliver more proactive support. The Braze platform has also played a big role in how we approach sustainability and player protection—we now tailor messaging to encourage the use of responsible gambling tools and settings.

Prioritization has always come down to impact, ease of execution, and how quickly we can test and learn. Strategy without execution doesn’t deliver value. Early on, that meant focusing on things we could execute with minimal development support but still deliver real value. That approach helped us move fast, show clear impact, and, ultimately, unlock more resources to scale what works.

What does your day-to-day look like?

We’ve structured the team around Braze. It’s at the core of how we run lifecycle marketing and customer engagement. We’re in Braze daily, using it to power everything from email, SMS, and push notifications to in-app messages and Braze Content Cards™. That includes all of our transactional, marketing, and promotional communications, the banners across our app and site, and a wide range of personalized promotions. Customers receive the same experience onsite as they do through our direct marketing communications.

One part of the team focuses on the sporting calendar, moving quickly to get campaigns out within minutes when big news drops. The other side looks after our automated journeys and Canvases, making sure they’re driving the right metrics and delivering a seamless experience from onboarding through to re-engagement.

What’s an exciting campaign you worked on this year?

It has to be the weekly personalized offers we deliver to our customers. We’ve built the technology and integrations that allow us to target a specific segment of users, apply personalized promotions via a webhook, and evaluate eligibility directly in Braze using a range of customer-level data points and Liquid logic.

Once the audience and offers are set, we don’t have to build out multiple variations. We send one campaign and use Connected Content to personalize all the different versions dynamically. Whether it’s email, push, or in-app, the experience is tailored to each user without duplicating work.

Then, when the user lands in the app, that same personalized experience is mirrored across key pages and assets. We’ve powered this through Content Cards using the same Connected Content logic, so there’s consistency from message to platform.

Interested in collaborating to build the future of customer engagement? Join a collective of experts to forge connections, share ideas, and accelerate your career at the Braze Bonfire Community.