Braze Unveils New AI, Data, and Orchestration Product Innovation at Forge 2024

Business Wire 24-Sep-2024 9:00 AM

• New BrazeAI™ agent, codenamed Project Catalyst, will deliver 1:1 customer engagement by rapidly creating, testing, and optimizing thousands of experience variations

• Additional Canvas template and BrazeAI™ assistant features help marketers more easily get started and deliver sophisticated customer experiences

• Enhancements to the Braze Data Platform further make it easier to unify and activate customer data, including new Cloud Data Ingestion integrations with AWS S3 and Microsoft Azure, zero-copy data, automated identity resolution, and enhanced analytics

• Expanded channels to include LINE and RCS Business, and new WhatsApp features such as dynamic images, click tracking, and commerce support

Forge 2024—Braze (NASDAQ:BRZE), the leading customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging™, today unveiled new product innovations designed to help marketers craft and optimize one-to-one personalized experiences at its annual customer conference, Forge 2024.

With 10+ years of continued innovation in AI, Braze offers a range of BrazeAI™ features to help marketers experiment and create customer experiences more quickly and effectively. The company's newest innovation, codenamed Project Catalyst (Beta planned for H1FY26), is an agent that brings together investments across the BrazeAI™ spectrum to help marketers craft and uncover the best experience for each individual consumer.

How Project Catalyst works: marketers provide high-level guidelines for journeys, content, items and incentives, and specify a target audience and goal. The agent then generates hundreds of variants for each component of that experience—the subject line, the tone of the message, the various offers available, the channel mix, the best timing, and more. It combines the best of each component to create an individual, unique experience for each and every consumer.

Marketers using Project Catalyst benefit from Braze's tightly integrated tech stack, combining its rich data integrations, real-time stream processor, and cross-channel architecture to create relevant experiences across a range of digital touchpoints. In addition, marketers can combine capabilities across Project Catalyst and Braze Canvas, a no-code journey orchestration solution, to bring together handcrafted experiences with machine-crafted scale.

"Consumers have more brand choices than ever before. They demand highly memorable and relevant experiences that are personalized to them, and the brands that meet that challenge by being absolutely engaging will win consumer attention, advocacy, and dollars," said Jon Hyman, Cofounder and CTO of Braze. "Our latest innovations further improve marketers' abilities to use first-party data and an ever-evolving set of channels to create more valuable customer experiences. As a result of building up years of maturity in our data science and AI models, Braze powers experimentation at a true one-to-one scale, which drives measurable value for both the consumer and the brand."

Additional innovations in orchestration and BrazeAI™ offer inspiration, ease of use, and tools to deliver sophisticated use cases efficiently

Braze also announced two new assistant features, BrazeAI™ Liquid Assistant (generally available) and Message Template Assistant (early access planned for Q3FY25), extending the power of generative AI beyond copy and image creation. These features help marketers create advanced logic for personalization as well as sophisticated message templates, all with a simple plain text prompt.

In addition, marketers can now more easily explore new ways to test and implement solutions in Braze Canvas, its no-code journey orchestration solution. Canvas Templates (generally available) provide customers with a new library of pre-built use cases—like onboarding, abandoned cart or intent, feature adoption, lapsing users, and more—that help customers get inspired and quickly get started.

"Braze Canvas Templates have truly transformed the way we work at Overstock," said Nicole Ruffner, Campaign Automation Manager at Beyond, Inc. "Their straightforward setup and editing capabilities have simplified and significantly streamlined our processes. By eliminating the need to start each email from scratch, our team can now dedicate more time to other projects. These templates have been a game-changer, boosting our team's efficiency and accuracy."

Great experiences start with deep understanding: Enhancements to the Braze Data Platform further make it easier to unify and activate customer data

The Braze Data Platform provides brands with the tools they need to unify, activate, and distribute their data, so marketers can deliver meaningful customer engagement without relying heavily on technical teams. Braze announced new Cloud Data Ingestion (CDI) integrations, which unify various data sources within Braze, for AWS S3 (generally available) and Microsoft Azure (early access planned for Q4FY25). Additionally, with CDI Segments, available now for all Braze Alloys data warehouse partners, marketers can build audiences with zero-copy data by creating new segments with their warehouse data. Finally, new automated Identity Resolution capabilities (early access planned for Q4FY25) help marketers maintain accurate customer profiles as consumers engage brands across a variety of digital touchpoints to deliver relevant experiences to each customer.

Braze also announced innovations to help marketers easily access insights that inform customer engagement strategies, both natively in Braze reporting and analytics' dashboards as well as in third-party business intelligence tools. Available in early access later this year, Braze will have new custom dashboard and reporting options that make insights flexible, easier, and more actionable for customer engagement strategies, including both new out-of-the-box and customizable dashboards, and real-time insights.

New global channels, including LINE and RCS Business, and expanded features in WhatsApp help brands connect at relevant touchpoints

As the surface area of customer engagement expands, Braze remains at the forefront of cross-channel innovation, expanding to new global offerings, and a richer feature set to key messaging experiences.

Braze announced a variety of channel updates, including support for new digital touchpoints such as LINE (planned to be generally available Q3FY25), the most popular messaging app in Japan that's also widely used in Thailand, Taiwan, and Indonesia. Braze also previewed enhancements to WhatsApp, including dynamic images, click tracking, and commerce support (scheduled to roll out later this year and into FY26). Mobile messaging with support for RCS Business Messaging (Beta planned for later this year) will help brands stay at the forefront of mobile innovation, with additional content types scheduled in FY26.

Learn more:

• New Canvas and BrazeAI^TM Features here

• Braze Data Platform enhancements and more here

• New channels and other new features here

• More information on Forge or to register for Forge Digital here

• Check out the 2024 Torchie winners here

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited to, statements regarding the performance of, expected benefits from and anticipated release dates of Braze's products and features, including, without limitation, Project Catalyst and other BrazeAI features, enhancements to the Braze Data Platform and expanded channel offerings. These forward-looking statements are based on the current assumptions, expectations and beliefs of Braze, and are subject to substantial risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Further information on potential factors that could affect Braze results are included in Braze's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2024, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on September 6, 2024, and the other public filings of Braze with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the views of Braze only as of the date of this press release, and Braze assumes no obligation, and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

About Braze

Braze is the leading customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging.™ Braze allows any marketer to collect and take action on any amount of data from any source, so they can creatively engage with customers in real time, across channels from one platform. From cross-channel messaging and journey orchestration to Al-powered experimentation and optimization, Braze enables companies to build and maintain absolutely engaging relationships with their customers that foster growth and loyalty. The company has been recognized as a 2024 U.S. News Best Technology Companies to Work For, is a 2023 UK Best Workplace for Women by Great Place to Work, and was named a Leader by Gartner® in the 2023 Magic Quadrant™ for Multichannel Marketing Hubs and in The Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Marketing Hubs, Q1 2023. Braze is headquartered in New York with 10+ offices across North America, Europe, and APAC. Learn more at braze.com.

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