Best practices for winning submissions
A strong submission tells a complete story: the challenge or opportunity you identified, the strategy you used to address it, and the results you drove. Back it up with clear examples and evidence, including specific metrics, outcomes, and business impact that make a compelling case for why your team deserves to win.
Things to keep in mind:
- Be specific. Don't try to document everything your company does in Braze. Focus on what's most relevant to your submission. Judges want depth, not breadth.
- Follow the blueprint framework. Structure your narrative around three sections:
- The challenge: What problem or opportunity were you working against? Provide context on your products, customer segments, and channels.
- The build: Walk through your approach step by step. Highlight the Braze features, AI tools, and specific functionalities that were central to your work.
- The impact: What did you achieve? Be concrete about outcomes.
- Define impact both quantitatively and qualitatively. Strong submissions go beyond surface-level metrics. Think about campaign-level results like time saved and customer sentiment alongside broader business outcomes like revenue growth, conversions, and retention.
- Show your work. Include screenshots of the Canvas flows you built, the messages your customers received, and dashboards that illustrate your results. If a screenshot needs context, add it. The judges want to understand the mechanics behind your work, but they're also looking for a compelling story, so don't let the data speak without a narrative around it.
Previous winners and finalists
ClassPass was the Creative Excellence Award winner in 2025 for their Best of ClassPass campaign. Their submission was extremely detailed and demonstrated both the inspiration behind the campaign and how they executed to go beyond the basics. They included a number of gifs, videos, screenshots, and features in their social campaigns to reiterate the way their brand showed up across multiple channels. They extensively detailed how they creatively leveraged Braze platform features and external tools to achieve success, along with metrics to support their investment in creativity.
Mint Mobile won the Creative Excellence Award in 2024 for their Mint Mobile Shake campaign in partnership with Jack in the Box. Their submission included a full presentation deck of all creative assets, the Braze features used to execute their partnership, and the business impact of the campaign.
ABC News took home Campaign of the Year in 2024 for their Elections Onboarding campaign. Their submission told the story of the customized onboarding, complete with screenshots of the campaign, the Braze dashboard, and described how they pushed the boundaries of new features. The results shared went beyond clicks and opens and focused on down-funnel impact beyond election night.
REA Group left Forge 2025 with a Collaborative Team of the Year award in hand thanks to their submission which demonstrated excellence in breaking down silos and success through collaboration. Using the problem, solution, impact framework they mapped how cross-functional teams worked together to build backend architecture, enable Braze channels, and deliver multi-channel marketing journeys.
Pedro Solís Cámara from RappiCard was the 2025 recipient of Marketing Leader of the Year. The nomination included an exhaustive list of examples and evidence of how Pedro transformed the marketing organization into a business driver, built a culture of experimentation and excellence, and included metrics for measurable, sustained growth across the organization.
Merkle was the recipient of the 2025 Service Partner of the Year award (now known as Delivery Partner of the Year). The submission included specific details about their deepened investment to grow Braze adoption and innovation, including their certifications, impact for various named customers, and underscored their strategic alignment and commitment.
Need more inspiration?
Take a look at past winners and check out all finalists from last year.