4 Common Braze Campaign Issues, & How to Overcome Them

Looking for a team who can handle a mammoth like Braze? You’ve come to the right place! 

Our team at Mavlers successfully helped over 100 e-commerce businesses in 2023 maximize their use of Braze for email marketing. By leveraging Braze’s robust platform, we crafted personalized and highly engaging email campaigns that delivered significant results. We’re proud to report that our Braze-powered strategies generated massive ROI for our clients, driving an impressive 50% growth in revenue.

In today’s post, you’ll get an inside look into what a client’s first month with our dedicated Braze experts looks like.  

Notwithstanding the sophistication of Braze, many users find it challenging to leverage the platform to the hilt. 

Some of it may be due to the complexity of a new platform. In Braze, it could be the lack of multi-channel journey management, limited segment customization, complex data export tables, less-than-ideal direct integrations, etc. 

However, most of the time, lack of preparedness outweighs the complexity issue. From data integration to data management to campaign woes to collaboration inertia—these are some of the recurrent hindrances to CRM platform utilization. 

As a Braze marketing agency, we’ve seen both sides of the issue. We can sympathize with the challenges of navigating the platform, especially for first-timer users. And having run over 2,000 campaigns and automations in Braze, we can help you get better prepared to use the platform. 

Today’s post confronts these challenges, while seeking to posit helpful solutions. So, let’s get started, from the top.

1. Data integration challenges

2. Data management challenges

3. Personalization (Liquid) challenges

4. Collaborative challenges

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1. Data integration challenges 

Data integration is not just connecting the dots, although most marketers seem to look at it that way. 

Rather, the process calls for a strategic investment. 

As far as Braze is concerned, integrating the platform into your existing data files and event streams is complex. You can’t divorce Braze marketing challenges from their genesis in data. 

And lack of strategy would only add more preventable hours to an already time-consuming process. 

Failure to recognize the need for strategizing has often led to:

• Incorrect data mapping, which leads to business decisions being made on the basis of inaccurate data
  
• The platform not being able to handle data volume spikes
  
• API rate limit breaches, obstructing data transfers
  
• Exposure of sensitive customer data, thanks to inadequate security measures in place

All this, and more not listed, would affect your campaigns. “For example, not having the right data points from your app or other data sources in Braze from the start can negatively impact the ability to segment audiences, accordingly, trigger certain actions, and so on,” points out Aremie MacDonald, a Braze consultant. 

The way out? Having a strategy-first mindset. 

To the end, consider the best practices below: 

• Determine your business goals, the scope of integration, and the KPIs you’re going to measure.
  
• Identify what systems need to be integrated into Braze, from customer service software to automation platforms to ERP software. Also, identify which data elements you’d integrate.
  
• Determine the right, most sustainable integration method, such as point-to-point integrations or even a PaaS solution.
  
• Take a phased approach to the integration process; this is to minimize risk and make the transition more efficient.
  
• Once integration is complete, monitor it regularly, optimize it for performance, and make timely tweaks.

2. Data management challenges

Braze cannot be leveraged to its fullest potential without proper data hygiene practices in place. 

It is directly responsible for most of your Braze campaign errors.

But that’s just one aspect of the problem. As pointed out by April Mullen, former senior director of content strategy at Braze, two of the biggest challenges when it comes to data management are:

• Excess data: Companies are collecting excess data, without knowing how to use them effectively later.
  
• Capability gaps: The domain disconnect between marketing teams and data scientists creates an operational stasis. 

Closing the capability gap can be a long process, especially if the disconnect is emotional as well as intellectual. 

But you should, at the least, start with acknowledging the gap. 

Validate each other’s domain expertise and limitations; remind yourselves of your shared interests; and be flexible about drop-offs. While transparent domain differentiation is important, be willing to stretch the dividing lines where possible. 

Now, coming to the problem of data redundancy. 

Collecting lots of customer data may seem necessary as a starting point. To that extent, it may be legitimate. However, over time, flushing out bad or unnecessary data becomes equally, if not more important, failure of which results in a data overload crisis.

A concrete approach to data collection involves knowing exactly what data you need, its potential use cases, the metrics you want to prioritize, and your objectives.

As far as data hygiene is concerned, do regular data audits, create a data retention policy, and utilize real-time data syncing. 

3. Personalization (Liquid) challenges

If you’re chiefly a marketer and new to programming languages, learning Liquid may seem hard. 

Liquid is a templating language, and Braze relies heavily on it to create dynamic, highly personalized campaigns. 

Keeping that in mind, we recommend that you invest some time in learning the language. Start with simple personalization tags and sending test campaigns. On the other hand, you can also consider hiring a dedicated Liquid expert. Incidentally, we have expertise in crafting modular and interactive email templates tailored for Braze, utilizing Braze’s Liquid Templating language.

Anticipating and troubleshooting Braze campaigns successfully requires expert takeover. 

4. Collaborative challenges

One of the most significant challenges with Braze is “overcoming the perception of Braze as a marketing-only tool and not having the right internal buy-in,” MacDonald attests. 

As Braze specialists, this isn’t something we have faced when it comes to collaborative issues. 

The idea that a CRM is for marketers only, seems to be pointing to a foundational crisis – a lack of understanding the purpose of a CRM platform in the first place. We’d go further: it indicates zero appreciation of marketing in the twenty-first century. 

However, if you’re facing such a crisis, too, consider:

• Revisiting your tech stack integration objectives; re-initiate leadoff conversations with the stakeholders
  
• Pushing for more buy-in by encouraging multiple teams, from sales to data to analytics to customer support, to experiment with Braze; include it in the performance KPIs
  
• Incorporating mult-channel marketing into your services
  
• Training discrete teams to leverage Braze to its full extent. 

This isn’t so much a collaborative issue as a tragic misalignment of the first principles.

But acknowledging it is the first step to reversing the situation.

Try Mavlers to Succeed in Braze! 

Mavers is a Braze Solutions partner, demonstrating our deep expertise within the platform and the value we consistently drive for our customers. From platform evaluation to achieving expert status on Braze, we partner with marketers every step of the way—driving value and helping you do work you’re proud of.We’ll make your journey in Braze seamless through our six-tier marketing framework. Let’s talk!