How Braze’s Canvas Flow Simplifies Complex Customer Journeys

Building customer journeys is no less challenging than building customer relationships. You’re not alone if you’re wrestling with the complexities inherent in either. In our 12 years of experience as digital marketers, we have seen the best brands wrestle with journey building. A time comes when you almost want to give up! 

But we have come a long way, and today there are tools to help you get the best out of your swiftly-changing customer data. 

One such tool is Braze’s Canvas Flow, an automation platform that offers a dynamic, flexible approach to customer journeys. 

Let’s explore how this tool can revolutionize customer journeys.

Understanding the Structure of Canvas

Building A Customer Journey

Building Canvases

Canvas Components 

Canvas Analytics 

Canvas Best Practices

Understanding the structure of Canvas

Canvas is an integrated platform that enables marketers to design campaigns with multiple messages, functioning like a visual workflow tool to create structured user journeys.

A user journey represents the path an individual follows within Canvas, shaping their interaction with the campaign.

The Canvas builder acts as the foundation for setting up your campaign, covering essential steps like naming the Canvas, assigning teams, and configuring initial settings. It allows you to define how users enter and navigate the journey by customizing entry timing, audience targeting, and message delivery preferences.

In Canvas, a variant represents a distinct route that a user can take during their journey. You can create up to eight different variants, plus a control group, and assign specific audience segments to each variant. 

A step within Canvas serves as a decision-making point in your marketing strategy, operating on an “if this, then that” basis. By utilizing various Canvas components, you can construct these steps to shape the user’s journey.

Building a customer journey

To design personalized message journeys in Canvas, consider the five W’s:

• What: Define the purpose of your Canvas by naming it and clarifying its objective.
  
• Why: Set clear goals by identifying conversion events to measure success.
  
• When: Determine the timing and triggers for your Canvas, choosing between scheduled deliveries or action-based triggers.
  
• Who: Select your target audience using predefined segments and apply filters for precise targeting.
  
• Where: Choose the most effective messaging channels, such as email, push notifications, in-app messages, Content Cards, SMS/MMS, or webhooks, to reach your users.

By addressing these aspects, you can create a tailored and effective user journey within Canvas.

Using Braze templates

Enhance your marketing efforts with Braze’s Canvas templates, designed to simplify the creation of impactful user journeys and engage customers at pivotal points. These ready-made templates address various scenarios, including:

• Abandoned Cart: Re-engage users who have left items in their shopping carts.
  
• Back In Stock: Notify customers when previously unavailable products are available again.
  
• Email Sign-Up with Double Opt-In: Ensure compliance and user verification through a two-step email subscription process.
  
• Feature Adoption: Encourage users to explore and utilize new features within your application.
  
• Lapsed User: Win back users who haven’t engaged with your platform recently.
  
• Onboarding: Guide new users through a seamless introduction to your services.
  
• Onboarding with Preferences Survey: Customize the onboarding experience by gathering user preferences upfront.
  
• Post-Purchase Feedback: Collect valuable insights from customers after a purchase to inform future improvements.

These templates are pre-built and ready to deploy, allowing you to efficiently implement effective customer engagement strategies.

Building Canvases

Braze’s Canvas Flow enables marketers to swiftly design and deploy intricate customer journeys. Its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface facilitates seamless collaboration, allowing teams to construct dynamic, cross-channel campaigns that enhance customer engagement.

Canvas Components

1. Action Paths in Canvas help segment users based on their interactions, ensuring personalized journeys. With Action Paths, you can:
   

• Define user routes based on engagement or custom events.
  
• Hold users for a set period to determine their next step based on their activity during that time.

Creating an Action Path

To add an Action Path, insert a component into your Canvas by dragging it from the sidebar or selecting the plus button within a step.

Configuring Action Settings

In Action Settings, set the Evaluation Window, which determines how long users remain in the step before progressing. The default window is one day, but you can adjust it from seconds to weeks, with a maximum limit of 31 days.

You can also enable Ranked Order to prioritize user advancement. By default, ranking is off, meaning users who trigger an event move forward immediately. If no action is taken, they proceed through the Everyone Else group at the end of the evaluation period.

2. Audience Paths in Canvas

Audience Paths enable large-scale user segmentation, allowing you to direct users through different journey branches based on specific criteria.

What You Can Do with Audience Paths:

• Route users through distinct paths based on audience filters.
  
• Prioritize audience groups to ensure messages reach the right users.
  
• Avoid random assignments when users qualify for multiple groups.
  
• Target users precisely, even at scale.
  
• Create up to eight audience groups per component (two default and six additional). For deeper segmentation, multiple Audience Path steps can be linked.

How to Create an Audience Path:

• Add a step to your Canvas.
  
• Drag and drop the Audience Paths component from the sidebar or click Add at the bottom of a step.
  
• The default setup includes two groups: Group 1 and Everybody Else (which captures users who don’t fit other defined segments).
  
• Once set up, each audience group follows its own branch. You can further refine segmentation with additional Audience Path steps or continue with standard Canvas steps.

3. In Braze’s Canvas, the Decision Split component enables you to create personalized, real-time user experiences by branching paths based on specific criteria. Here’s how to set it up:

• Add the Component: Within your Canvas workflow, insert a new step. Drag and drop the Decision Split component from the sidebar, or click the plus button at the bottom of an existing step and select “Decision Split.”
  
• Define the Criteria: Determine the condition that will divide users into different paths. This involves setting up a true or false query using segments or filters to evaluate user attributes or behaviors. You need to apply at least one segment or filter, but using both is optional.
  

By implementing a Decision Split, you can direct users down distinct paths based on whether they meet the specified conditions, enhancing the relevance and effectiveness of your messaging.

4. In Braze’s Canvas, the Delay component enables you to pause the user journey at a specific point, ensuring messages are delivered at optimal times. Here’s how to implement it:

• Insert the Component: Within your Canvas workflow, add a new step. Drag and drop the Delay component from the sidebar, or click the plus button at the bottom of an existing step and select “Delay.”
  
• Configure the Delay Settings: Decide how long you want to hold users in this step before they proceed. The maximum delay duration is 30 days.

Time Delay Options:

• After a Duration: Specify a delay lasting a set number of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks. For example, you can set a delay of four hours or one day.
  
• Until a Specific Date: Hold users in the step until a particular date and time.
  
• Until a Specific Day of the Week: Delay users until a chosen day of the week at a specified time.

Important Considerations:

• A Delay component can only connect to one subsequent step.
  
• If you add a Delay component at the end of your Canvas without any following steps, users who reach this point will automatically exit the Canvas, even if the delay period hasn’t concluded.
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By strategically placing Delay components, you can control the timing of your messages, enhancing user engagement and ensuring communications are received at the most effective moments.

5. Experiment Paths enable you to test multiple Canvas journeys and compare their performance, including against a control group, at any point along the user experience. By using this component, you can track and analyze which path produces the best results.

When you add an Experiment Path step, users will be randomly assigned to various paths or a control group, based on the percentages you define. This allows you to test different message variations or journeys to see which works most effectively.

Best Uses for Experiment Paths:

• Delivery Timing: Test how different message delivery timings affect user engagement. For example, compare the performance of messages sent with varying delays, based on user actions or using intelligent timing.
  
• Cadence: Evaluate the impact of different messaging schedules.
  You can also test messaging frequency, like sending two win-back messages within a week versus one.
  
• Message Copy: Similar to A/B testing, test alternative message versions to see which generates more conversions.
  
• Channel Combinations: Assess how different combinations of communication channels impact user responses. For instance, compare sending only an email versus an email paired with a push notification.

6. Message Steps in Canvas allow you to insert a standalone message wherever needed in your user journey.

Creating a Message:

1. Add a new step to your Canvas.
   
2. Drag the Message component from the sidebar or click the plus button at the bottom of an existing step and choose Message.

Edit delivery settings

The Message component also offers several delivery options, such as Intelligent Delivery, Quiet Hours overrides, and Delivery Validation.

• Intelligent Timing: This feature helps optimize the timing of your message. If there’s insufficient profile data, a fallback option can be used to select the best possible time. We recommend enabling both Intelligent Timing and Rate Limiting for better control over delivery timing, especially in cases where there are delays before the message is sent.
  
• Quiet Hours Override: You can override the Quiet Hours setting to ensure messages are sent at the desired time.
  
• Delivery Validation: This ensures that users meet specific criteria when the message is sent. This is important when using Quiet Hours, Intelligent Timing, or Rate Limiting. If a user doesn’t meet the criteria, they’ll exit the Canvas step.

7. The User Update component in Braze’s Canvas enables you to modify user attributes, events, and purchases directly within the Canvas workflow, eliminating the need for sensitive information like API keys.

Creating a User Update:

• Add the Component: Within your Canvas, insert a new step. Drag and drop the User Update component from the sidebar, or click the plus button at the bottom of an existing step and select User Update.
  
• Configure Updates: You have three options to manage user profile information:
  
  • Update Existing Attributes: Modify current user attributes by selecting the attribute name and entering the new value.
    
  • Add New Attributes: Introduce new attributes by specifying the attribute name and value.
    
  • Remove Attributes: Delete existing attributes by selecting the attribute name and choosing the option to remove.

8. Feature Flags in Braze’s Canvas enable you to test and validate new features by segmenting your audience and monitoring the impact of feature rollouts on conversions. By integrating Experiment Paths, you can further optimize these conversions by comparing different messages or paths to determine the most effective approach. Utilize the winning path as you progressively expand your feature rollout to a broader audience.

Creating a Feature Flag:

1. Add the Component: Within your Canvas, insert a new step. Drag and drop the Feature Flag component from the sidebar, or click the plus button at the bottom of an existing step and select Feature Flag.
   
2. Select the Feature Flag: From the dropdown menu, choose the feature flag you wish to implement. This list includes all feature flags that are not archived.
   

Important Considerations:

• Canvas Modifications: If a Canvas is stopped, archived, or a step is removed, any user who has previously entered that step will no longer receive the associated feature flag and its properties. However, these users will still be subject to the default rollout percentage and audience segmentation for that feature flag, as well as any other active Canvases. citeturn0search0
  
• Dynamic Property Updates: Properties within a Canvas step can be modified after launch, even after a user has passed through the step. Users will always receive the most current version of the feature flag, ensuring they benefit from real-time updates. citeturn0search0
  

Canvas Analytics

Canvas analytics provide a comprehensive view of how your user experiences align with your objectives.

At the top of the Canvas Details page, you’ll find key statistics:

• Messages Sent: Total number of messages dispatched within the Canvas.
  
• User Entries: Count of users who have entered the Canvas.
  
• Conversions: Number of users who completed the desired action, along with the overall conversion rate.
  
• Revenue: Total revenue generated by the Canvas.
  
• Audience Estimate: Projected total audience size.

This section offers a high-level overview to assess your Canvas’s performance against your goals.

Component Performance

Scrolling down the Canvas Details page reveals performance metrics for each component, including:

• User Progression: Number of users who entered, advanced to the next step, or exited the Canvas.
  
• Engagement Metrics: Impressions, unique recipients, conversion counts, and revenue generated.

Clicking on a component allows for a detailed breakdown, including channel-specific performance.

Variant Analysis:

At the bottom of the Canvas Details page, click “Analyze Variants” to open the Analyze Canvas modal, which includes:

• Analyze Variants: Performance breakdown by variant and control group.
  
• Canvas Funnel Report: Visual representation of user progression through the Canvas.
  
• Canvas Retention Report: Insights into user retention over time.

These tools help you understand the effectiveness of different variants and optimize your Canvas accordingly.

Canvas Best Practices

To maximize the effectiveness of Braze’s Canvas, consider the following best practices:

1. Define Your Objectives

• Clarify Goals: Determine what you aim to achieve with your Canvas.
• Identify Audience: Specify the users you intend to engage.
• Understand Purpose: Articulate the reason behind creating this Canvas.
  

2. Utilize Canvas Components

• Decision Splits: Segment users to create varied workflows.
  
• Delays: Incorporate pauses between steps to manage user progression.
  
• Standalone Messages: Place messages at strategic points within your Canvas flow.
  
• Multichannel Messaging: Engage users across various channels such as Email, Push, In-App, and SMS.
  

3. Test and Optimize User Journeys

• Control Groups: Implement control groups to assess the impact of your messaging.
  
• Step Naming: Assign clear names to each Canvas step for easy identification.
  
• Experiment Paths: Use the Experiment Paths component to randomly assign users to different paths, facilitating A/B testing.
  
• Diversify Paths: Combine Delay and Message steps to explore the most effective user journeys.
  
• Analytics Review: Regularly analyze Canvas analytics to evaluate the performance of each component.
  
• Post-Launch Edits: Make necessary adjustments to your Canvas after its initial launch to enhance performance.

Wrapping Up! 

As the digital marketing landscape continues to evolve, brands must stay ahead of the curve with innovative tools that provide a more personalized, efficient, and streamlined customer experience. Braze’s Canvas is one such tool. If all this seems too much information, and you need help with leveraging the tool, get in touch with our Braze experts right away!