Personalization at scale: What it is, how it works, and why it matters

You know your customers aren’t all the same, so why treat them like they are? Personalization helps your brand stand out and build meaningful connections with your customers—but how do you do that for all of your customers?

In this guide, we’ll break down how to personalize your messaging at scale, why it works, and how marketers are making it happen across channels, touchpoints, and whole customer journeys.

Contents

• What is personalization at scale?
• Why is personalization important?
• Getting started with personalization
• Cross-channel personalization
• The power of customer personalization
• Scaling for success: Real-world examples of personalization
• The challenges of personalization
• Scale with Braze
• Personalization at scale FAQs

What is personalization at scale?

Personalization at scale is the practice of brands using real-time customer data and dynamic personalization tools to deliver relevant, valuable experiences to their customers.

Most of us have received an email from a brand that uses our first name or perhaps a message on our birthday with a special treat, but it’s so much more than this. It’s connecting the dots between behavior, preferences, context, and more to create tailored experiences for each of your customers.

Personalization at scale blends data, technology, and strategy to adapt messaging and content in real time. Think dynamic emails with product suggestions based on recent views, push notifications triggered and customized by behavior, or even unique journeys that adapt as customer interactions change.

This level of personalization goes beyond segmentation. It brings together your data to form a holistic view of each customer—whether they’re known, new, or anonymous—so you can engage them with relevant content across mobile apps, websites, email, SMS, and more. Done right, it helps businesses move from one-size-fits-all to 1:1 at scale.

Why is personalization at scale important?

When messaging adapts in real time based on behavior, preferences, and context, it creates experiences that feel natural and relevant as customers change and interact with your brand.

It’s not always easy. Unifying and coordinating live data, including zero-party and first-party data, as well as content logic and cross-channel delivery, can be resource-heavy without the right infrastructure. But with the right systems in place, like a connected tech stack and a journey orchestration tool built for speed, marketing teams can move faster and work smarter.

Tools like Braze help bring everything together in one interface, so marketers can create responsive journeys, automate decisioning and launch personalized campaigns that strengthen relationships with each customer.

The potential?

• Better engagement from more relevant experiences
• Stronger conversion rates at key moments
• More insight into what’s working and what’s not

Getting started with personalization

Scaling your personalization efforts means working smarter with data and tools that can support your efforts. It’s creating a system that can adapt and grow with your customer base to increase engagement and customer satisfaction. Here’s how you can build at-scale personalization into your marketing strategy.

Start with unified customer data

If disconnected systems means you can access or activate the data you need, personalization becomes guesswork. To build a personalization strategy, create a single customer view that combines purchase history, product interactions, messaging behavior, preferences, etc—whatever makes sense for your customers. Once you have a 360 user view in place, lets you move from channel-specific campaigns to cohesive, customer-centric experiences.

Activate with the right tools

Once your data is in one place, you need tools that can activate it across your marketing campaigns and channels. Did they browse but not buy? Abandon a cart? Respond to a promotion? Each touchpoint can be part of a broader, seamless experience, and the tools are the right nuts and bolts to help maximize the power of personalization.

With Braze, you can create messaging and build journeys that adapt in real time, based on how customers engage. For example, dynamic personalization tools like Braze Connected Content makes it possible for brands to customize their cross-channel campaigns with personalized information from the company's own internal servers, as well as from third-party APIs.

Let AI do the heavy lifting

AI and machine learning help you scale by making smart decisions at speed. Automatically recommend the content or products that’s most likely to resonate with a customer, optimize channel or timing, and create personalized journeys with AI-driven insights.

Cross-channel personalization

Customers don’t think in channels, they think in moments. They might open your app in the morning, browse your site at lunch, and read your email in the evening. When those touchpoints feel connected, the experience flows. When they don’t, it stalls.

Cross-channel personalization coordinates content, timing, and context across email, push, SMS, in-app messages, and more—so messages feel like a natural next step, not a disconnected nudge. It is about moving from siloed campaigns to truly unified journeys. Whether you’re guiding new users to value or re-engaging a long-time customer, messages should feel like part of the same conversation.

The power of customer personalization

The true power of personalization is that it shapes how customers experience your brand. It can help deepen relationships and create long-term value, but that’s not all.

It drives stronger customer engagement

Relevant experiences help spark action. When a customer receives a message that speaks to their habits, preferences, and context, it’s more likely they’ll engage. Personalized customer experiences—whether through dynamic content, tailored messaging, delivery time personalization, or AI-powered recommendations—create a sense of connection that generic marketing can’t replicate.

It helps build loyalty (and keep it)

Consumers who are messaged effectively are often more likely to return. Personalization can play a key role in reducing churn, increasing repeat purchases, and strengthening brand affinity—especially when supported by lifecycle marketing and cross-channel strategies that meet customers where they are in their journey.

It unlocks measurable business impact

Brands that adopt a customer personalization strategy often see an uplift in metrics that matter. For example, personalization can lead to a 10-20% increase in revenue, on average.

Scaling for success: Real-world personalization examples

Let’s take a closer look at how some Braze customers are using personalizing their marketing efforts at scale to connect with their audience across different channels, lifecycle stages, and business models.

Dutch Bros personalize the pour and increase ROI by 230%

Dutch Bros is a drive-thru coffee company on a mission to serve up high-quality drinks with a side of good vibes. With a growing customer base and a culture rooted in connection, Dutch Bros wanted to bring their warm, people-first approach into their buyers' digital experiences.

The challenge

Dutch Bros set out to scale personalized messaging and create more consistent, consumer-first experiences. The team wanted to simplify their tech stack so they could better fuel connection and consistency with the company’s loyal fanbase.

The Strategy

With Braze, Dutch Bros launched a personalized messaging strategy that delivered relevant, 1:1 content across SMS, email, push, and in-app—at scale and with consistency. Using the Braze platform’s integration with Segment, they fed a wide variety of data and data sources from their CDP into Braze, where it could manage offers, understand its customers better, and drive insightful analytics.

The Wins

By consolidating tools and scaling smarter, Dutch Bros saw a 230% increase in ROI from CRM campaigns and 31% cost savings across their tech stack. With Braze powering more personalized, real-time engagement, the team drove stronger retention, higher engagement, and a more efficient path to growth.

Equinox flexes its data muscles and boosts engagement with tailored content

Equinox is a luxury fitness brand known for world-class training, design-driven gyms and an all-in commitment to high-performance lifestyles.

The challenge

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced Equinox to temporarily close its physical locations, the brand faced the challenge of replicating its premium in-club experience within its digital platforms.

Club check-ins and class bookings were the primary uses of the Equinox app, resulting in limited awareness and engagement with the on-demand content. The aim was to make the app better for members by adding new features and improving value.

The strategy

Equinox leveraged Braze Content Cards™ and Connected Content to transform their app's homepage into a personalized and dynamic interface. By integrating these tools, the team could tailor content recommendations based on individual member behaviors and preferences.

This approach allowed for the promotion of on-demand classes and articles, creating a more engaging digital experience and environment.

The wins

Implementing this personalized strategy led to a 150% increase in members engaging both in-club and online during September 2022. Test campaigns conducted in July and September also resulted in a 21% boost in engagement compared to the control group from August to September.

The Life360° customized engagement loop that drove a 105% lift in annual trials

Life360 helps families stay safe and connected, offering real-time location tracking and emergency assistance.

The challenge

With over 55 million monthly active users, Life360 sought to deepen user engagement by delivering more personalized experiences. However, achieving this level of personalization at scale posed challenges in terms of resource allocation and operational efficiency.

The strategy

Life360 turned to Braze to launch a dynamic, cross-channel "Year in Review" campaign. They utilized Connected Content to send approximately 20 million unique in-app messages tailored to each subscribers’ preferences and activities by pulling in information via API.

They also employed Liquid code to award creative badges based on consumers’ personal highlights, enhancing engagement through personalized content. The marketing team delivered the campaign across email, in-app messages, push notifications, and Braze Content Cards™, creating a cohesive and personalized experience.

The wins

Life360’s “Year in Review” campaign drove a 105% lift in annual trials, a 15x boost in social shares and a 20% increase in personalized experiences year over year. By using Braze to deliver relevant content across push, in-app, email and using Content Cards, they created a full 360° engagement strategy that they could scale.

Taxfix crunches numbers and scales impact with personalization

Taxfix, a leading tax platform operating in Germany, Italy, and France, simplifies the tax filing process through an intuitive app and web interface. Consumers can complete their tax returns in approximately 22 minutes, answering only relevant questions to maximize their refunds.

The challenge

As Taxfix expanded into new markets, the company faced the need to enhance user activation and retention, gain deeper insights into their user base, automate messaging campaigns, reduce churn, and maximize conversions. Achieving these objectives required a robust consumer engagement platform capable of delivering personalized experiences at scale. ​

The strategy

Taxfix integrated Braze into their iOS, Android and web applications using the Braze SDKs. They used Segment to unify customer information and Snowflake, for real-time data sharing across cloud regions. By leveraging Braze Currents, Taxfix seamlessly moved data between Braze and other components of their tech stack. They also utilized Looker to visualize and analyze customer behaviors, enabling more informed engagement strategies. To personalize communications, Taxfix employed Liquid Personalization and Content Blocks, allowing for dynamic and consistent messaging across campaigns.

The wins

Implementing Braze led to a 15% increase in tax return submissions and a 25% rise in product feature upsells compared to those not receiving CRM campaigns. Message deliverability improved significantly, reaching an average of 99.8%, up from the previous 60-70% range. The ability to visualize and act on customer data within Braze resulted in a 50-70% time savings on data analysis. CRM managers also experienced a 50% reduction in time spent on tasks, allowing for more focus on strategic initiatives.

The challenges of personalization at scale

While the benefits are clear, scaling personalization across a growing customer base comes with a few challenges too. Here are the primary culprits to be aware of:

Too much data, not enough insight

Brands often collect more data than they can use effectively. The challenge lies in identifying what’s actually useful, connecting it across systems, and making it actionable.

Missed moments

Many teams still plan campaigns around seasons or general promotions. Real-time consumer personalization thrives on specific triggers—like browsing behavior, cart abandonment, or lifecycle stage—not broad calendar dates.

Siloed teams, siloed results

Personalization at scale works best when marketing, product, and tech teams collaborate. Without cross-functional alignment, efforts can stall in disconnected workflows or inconsistent experiences.

Fear of failure slows innovation

Agile testing and a willingness to experiment are key to personalization success. But some teams struggle to adopt a test-and-learn mindset, especially in traditional or highly regulated industries.

Tech overload (or underload)

Juggling too many point solutions, or not having the right infrastructure in place, can create friction. The key is choosing tools that connect easily, activate data in real time and support omnichannel execution.

Scale with Braze

Scaling personalization across channels, devices, and customer journeys doesn’t have to mean juggling a dozen tools or building a custom tech stack from scratch. With Braze, marketers can deliver real-time, relevant, and responsive experiences, all from a single platform.

We built Braze for the kind of personalization today's consumers expect: Fast, flexible, and deeply human. Whether you’re nudging a new user toward their first purchase, re-engaging a lapsed subscriber, or tailoring content based on real-time behavior, Braze gives you the tools to act in the moment—with context that matters.

What makes it different?

• Real-time customer data: Based on streaming data, Braze allows you to unify and action on your data—so you’re not just guessing what your audience wants. You’re responding to it as it happens.
• Cross-channel orchestration: Build journeys that move with your customers. From email to in-app to push and beyond, Braze helps you create experiences that feel consistent, connected, and seamless.
• Scalable testing and automation: With dynamic segmentation, AI-powered personalization, and no-code journey builders, your team can test, learn, and iterate, without waiting on devs or analysts.
• Proven results: Whether you’re an enterprise brand or a fast-growing disruptor, Braze helps you move faster and personalize smarter.

Personalization at scale FAQs

What does personalization at scale mean?

Personalization at scale is the process of delivering tailored, relevant experiences to large audiences using real-time data and automation.

What are the 4 Ds of personalization?

The 4 Ds of personalization are: Data, Decisioning, Delivery, and Design. They are a common guide on how to create and deliver personalized experiences.

What are the three levels of personalization?

The 3 levels of personalization are: Basic (name/location), segment-based (group traits) and individualized (real-time, 1:1 experiences).