October Marketer of the Month
Our October Marketer of the Month is Sophia Jin from Seated! Sophia leads Seated’s CRM strategy as Associate Director, CRM Marketing. We’re excited to recognize Sophia for her work spearheading an exceptional team as a Braze champion and consistently helping others in the Braze Bonfire Community. Congratulations, Sophia!October Marketer of the Month
Our October Marketer of the Month is Michelle Forde, Senior Marketing Manager at Hachette Book Group! 🎉 With over a decade of experience in the publishing industry, Michelle has been instrumental in leading Hachette's consumer email marketing program and audience acquisitions. Her passion for books and innovative marketing strategies have driven successful campaigns, including her exciting plans for Cyber Week and the holiday season. Join us in celebrating shelloquent achievements! 🌟 Check out her blog post here.July Marketer of the Month
Join us in congratulating ConorIrvine as our July Marketer of the Month! As a CRM Automations Specialist at DICE, Conor has been instrumental in transforming fan experiences. His dedication to building strong customer relationships and his passion for collaborative problem-solving truly embody the spirit of the Braze Bonfire community. Congratulations Conor! Read more about his career journey here.January Marketer of the Month
Celebrating our January Marketer of the Month, Voula Dimitrak, Product Owner, Braze at Sky! Voula's innovative use of marketing technology, especially her successful implementation of Braze Connected Content, has led to a significant boost in subscriber retention and viewership at Sky. Her dedication to personalization and real-time engagement truly sets her apart. Discover more about vouladimitrak's remarkable contributions in the blog post here. Congratulations, Voula! 🏆August Marketer of the Month
We're excited to announce that our August Marketer of the Month is ilana-fromm , Director of Marketing, Lifecycle and Email at Little Spoon. Her efforts in developing a streamlined lifecycle marketing strategy and her focus on customer retention have been instrumental in shaping the future of Little Spoon. Please join us in celebrating Ilana's achievements and dedication to innovation in customer engagement! Read more of her career journey here.March Marketer of the Month
Our March Marketer of the Month is Roshni Patel, Senior Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Talkspace! We’re excited to honor Roshni’s contributions as an exceptional teammate at Talkspace as a Braze power user. From the beginning of onboarding with Braze, Roshni has been essential to her team’s success with the platform, solidifying herself as a resource for all things lifecycle marketing thanks to her deep familiarity with the ins and outs of the Braze. Congratulations, Roshni!Get to know our 2025 Torchie Awards finalists
The competition for the Torchie Awards was fierce this year, and our finalists represent the top tier in a field crowded with creativity. Let’s dive into the stories of our finalists for four categories: Bonfire Community Leader of the Year, Rising Marketing Star, Marketing Leader of the Year and Braze for Impact. Bonfire Community Leader of the Year This award recognizes a community member who stands out for helping other Braze users. We are continually impressed by the passion, dedication, and collaboration in the Braze Bonfire community. You all really look out for each other, and bring a spirit of innovation and desire to grow in everything you do. Let’s meet our finalists! Allan Heo, Founder & CEO at For Now Marketing Allan, a 2024 runner-up for Bonfire Community Leader of the Year, is a dedicated Braze professional who empowers the marketing community. As a Badge, Discussion, and Solutions Leader, he's a prolific contributor to the discussion boards, sharing educational resources and guides daily. Daphné Leblanc, Director of Lifecycle Marketing & CRM at Spark Networks As a Bonfire Marketer of the Month and a tenured Braze user, Daphné empowers her peers on their journey with Braze. During her popular Ask Me Anything session on Bonfire, she shared tactical ways to center personalization in a core lifecycle marketing strategy and expanded on trends from the 2025 Customer Engagement Review. Lior Peleg, Co-Owner at HippoCampus Tech LTD Lior is on a mission to create tools and content useful to all Braze users—and as a member of Braze Bonfire, he doesn't gatekeep! He's an active contributor to the discussion boards, sharing his expertise and valuable resources for the community to leverage. Manoj Kumar, Technical Lead at Digitas This is the second year in a row that Manoj has been a finalist for the Bonfire Community Leader of the Year, for good reason! Manoj consistently contributes to Bonfire, and is leader in Badges, Solutions, and Discussions. Whether he’s troubleshooting a bit of Liquid on someone’s post or helping them to understand how to push the boundaries of Canvas, Manoj is always willing to share his expertise. Ted Scott, Sr. Solution Architect, Braze at Cognizant A long time Braze expert, Ted is extremely active on the Bonfire Community, both in answering questions and helping fellow community members out with problems big and small. He’s also passionate about the ever expanding Braze ecosystem of careers, and helps to boost and amplify roles posted on the Bonfire Job Board. Rising Marketing Star This award recognizes exceptional new users of the Braze platform who show great promise and use technology to support stronger customer relationships. While they might be new to customer engagement or to Braze, they are no stranger to success! Here’s a peek into their stories. Divyanshu Pandey, Associate, CRM at Chegg Divyanshu, an exceptional early-career marketing technologist, earned four Braze certifications in one year and created automation scripts and validation checklists that have saved hours of manual work and become best practices across teams. Ellie Ledwith, Sports Content Deputy Manager at bet365 Ellie played a critical role in her company's transition to Braze from outdated tools, leading the effort to create a complex and dynamic email footer system and training over 100 staff members. Lindsey Spillman, CRM Specialist at Wendy’s In just over a year, Lindsey transformed the CRM program at Wendy’s, increasing campaigns from 15 to over 50 unique touchpoints per month and achieving a 66% increase in loyalty sales year-over-year. Maxim Radoczy, Lifecycle Marketing Lead, Engagement at Canva Despite a lack of direct management experience, Maxim launched Canva’s first "Next Best Action" model, which delivered a 55% uplift in engagement, and is now leading an initiative that incorporates predictive models and generative AI. Nicholas Baltovski, Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Venmo Nicholas went from no experience in lifecycle marketing to leading some of Venmo's most impactful programs, delivering millions in incremental profit and getting promoted twice in two years. Marketing Leader of the Year This award honors marketing executives who demonstrate excellence in leadership and customer engagement. They’re taking their team to new heights and their strategy to the next level, and have the results to prove it. See for yourself! Jason Feldman, Senior Director, Customer Experience at BEES US Jason championed the adoption of Braze to digitize operations across 26 countries, using advanced solutions like a dynamic email template that saves over 125 hours per month. Josh Hanson, Associate Director - Growth Marketing at Optus Sport Josh transformed the company's lifecycle marketing from a fragmented function into a strategic, data-driven engine, leading to a 50% increase in offers converted via Braze and a 5% increase in minutes watched. Maria Bonello, Subscriber Engagement Director at MGM+ As a solo marketer, Maria built MGM+'s customer engagement program from the ground up, engineering a robust automation system using Connected Content and APIs to deliver real-time, dynamic messaging at scale. Melissa Neikirk, Director of Lifecycle at Remitly Melissa's empathetic and experimental approach to lifecycle marketing led to a 400x increase in daily email click-through rates and the creation of a digitized, full-year customer journey map that has been instrumental for cross-functional teams. Pedro Solís Cámara, Head of Growth at RappiCard As Head of Growth, Pedro created a unified vision that integrated growth, engagement, and financial performance, leading to a 40% increase in portfolio value and a 70% improvement in retention. Braze for Impact This award recognizes companies that have used the power of Braze to create positive social change within their communities. In addition to being recognized at our flagship event Forge, the winner of this award will also be able to direct a $10,000 grant from the Braze for Social Impact Fund to the charity of their choice. Boys and Girls Club of America Boys and Girls Club of America completely reimagined their internal and external communications with Braze, helping them improve their CEO email open rate by 5% and drive a 61% increase in email revenue from critical fundraising campaigns. iFood iFood used Braze to engage delivery drivers in two social impact initiatives: "My High School Diploma," a program aimed at completing high school and enabling drivers to enter higher education, and "Decola," which is an online course platform. This platform offers learning options for iFood's internal topics, as well as entrepreneurship, financial education, workplace safety, delivery safety, motorcycle maintenance, among others. Over the past year, iFood engaged more than 370,000 delivery drivers in the education initiative, with the educational platform on the app recording over 1 million course completions. Braze was instrumental in providing strategic, segmented, and automated communications, saving iFood's team time while enabling deeper and smarter data and strategy analysis. Venmo Venmo’s Small Business Grant initiative used Braze to generate over 150 million impressions, driving incremental business sign-ups and 50,000 grant applications to support small businesses from historically excluded communities. Volo Sports Through Canvas flows, Volo introduced new players to its charitable arm, the Volo Kids Foundation, driving a 41% volunteer recruitment rate and helping provide free youth sports programs to over 70,000 kids. Ready to see who takes home the Torchie? Join us at Forge to celebrate all the finalists, learn from the best in the industry, and cast your vote for the People's Choice for Creative Excellence and the People’s Choice for Campaign of the Year. Whether you're a long-time member of the community or just getting started, Forge is where you’ll gain the insight, inspiration, and support to stand out by using your creativity in new ways.September Marketer of the Month
Our September Marketer of the Month is Tania Da Re, Global Digital Communications Manager at BEES! Tania embodies the Braze Bonfire community through her innovative personalization initiatives and creative use of data. Her work streamlines processes, reduces manual work, and creates targeted campaigns that truly showcase the power of Braze. Congratulations, Tania!November Marketer of the Month
Our November Marketer of theMonth is Guendalina Braga, CRM Automation Lead at BlaBlaCar! Guendalina has been at BlaBlaCar for 7 years and recently spoke at FORGE London on how they increased feature adoption by 400% via multichannel campaigns powered by Braze. Thank you for being a part of our community, Guendalina! Congratulations!2025 Torchie Awards: Our Final Categories + The People's Choice
We’re in the final days before Forge and the countdown to the Torchie Awards is on! For this post, we dive into three of categories that always see the most entries: Collaborative Team of the Year, Creative Excellence, and Campaign of the Year. The submissions for 2025 were next level, and because of that we’re introducing something new this year: The People’s Choice Award for two of our award categories, Creative Excellence and Campaign of the Year. More on that in a moment, but first, check out the accomplishments of our nominees for Collaborative Team of the Year. Collaborative Team of the Year This award celebrates teams that have successfully worked across different departments and disciplines to create best-in-class campaigns. Crunchyroll A global, cross-functional team of 13 worked together to create a deeply personalized messaging experience for over 12 million members, resulting in over 3 million unique impressions. HBO Max Max Rewind 2024 was a globally executed, end-of-year personalized recap campaign that felt like a "Spotify Wrapped" for Max subscribers. A cross-functional team delivered this best-in-class, interactive experience, with CRM Ops leading the technical innovation by building it entirely in Braze despite lacking native tooling. This resulted in a stunning success, with a well-above average participation rate in the US and major press coverage. Jump This fully remote cross-functional team leveraged Braze to build a proprietary platform that delivers highly personalized, real-time fan experiences for clients, resulting in smarter campaigns and stronger fan connections. REA Group REA Group’s cross-functional team collaborated to expand their Braze expertise from B2C to B2B, resulting in record monthly active members in their B2B Customer app “Ignite” and a strong personalization stack, ready to accelerate even further. Sephora Sephora partnered across six different teams to tackle a critical Braze reimplementation, reducing their custom events from over 20,000 to a manageable 30, which led to a 549% year-over-year increase in revenue from a key campaign. SoFi A small, ambitious group at SoFi collaborated to create the "Money Moves" campaign, a highly personalized email that provided members with an insightful review of their financial progress, creating a blueprint for future data-driven campaigns. Your Vote Matters: Let’s talk about the People's Choice Awards Make your voice heard this year at Forge! For the first time ever, the community will decide on an additional winner for the People's Choice Award in two of our top categories: Campaign of the Year and Creative Excellence (hint: the ones you just read about!). During Forge, from September 29-September 30, you’ll be able to cast a vote for your favorite, whether you’re attending Forge in Las Vegas or attending Forge Digital, and determine who takes home the Torchie. Your vote will honor the teams and campaigns that have truly set a new standard for customer engagement. The winners People’s Choice for Creative Excellence and the People’s Choice for Campaign of the Year will be announced on the final day of Forge. Let’s learn about the finalists! Creative Excellence This award honors teams that use the Braze platform to create innovative, original messaging and unique customer experiences. In addition to the Torchie Award from Braze, this category is also eligible for the People’s Choice Award. ClassPass: Best of ClassPass ClassPass's "Best of ClassPass" campaign evolved from a simple idea to a globally scaled, multi-channel creative experience. Using Braze's Canvas, the team mapped a dynamic user journey that included in-app modals for voting, push notifications, emails, and a custom microsite for announcing winners. The campaign saw a 120% increase in in-app voting participation year-over-year and surpassed engagement benchmarks. Braze's features, like Smartling integration and dynamic variables, were key to personalizing content across five languages, proving that creativity and technology can drive authentic connection. HBO Max: Pre-finale IAMs HBO Max's "Pre-finale Voting IAMs" campaign transformed in-app messaging into an interactive, story-driven experience. The team used Braze's Multi-Page IAMs to invite users to predict outcomes for popular shows like House of the Dragon and The White Lotus, then instantly recommend new content based on their choices. This agility, enabled by Braze, allowed the CRM team to own the creative process end-to-end without relying on engineering resources. The campaign saw a significant lift in viewership for featured titles and proved that interactivity can build deeper user investment and loyalty. McDonald's: Unbagged For its "Unbagged" campaign, McDonald's used Braze to turn owned channels into a leading creative force. The campaign, which was a personalized, data-driven "tarot card" reading based on each customer's ordering behavior, was executed through 29 million individualized email and push notification experiences. Using Braze's advanced segmentation and dynamic content, McDonald's crafted over 700 unique story variations. The campaign went beyond metrics, strengthening fandom and emotional loyalty, and set a new standard for what CRM can achieve as a creative and cultural driver. RappiCard: Rosca RappiCard's "Rosca" campaign creatively leveraged a traditional Mexican ritual to drive in-app engagement. Using a custom HTML in-app message built in Braze, users could "cut" a digital Rosca to reveal a randomized, real-time reward. Braze powered the entire end-to-end experience, from handling random prize logic with JavaScript to using webhooks to assign rewards instantly. This approach pushed beyond traditional campaigns by creating a joyful, interactive ritual that increased the likelihood of promotion usage and fostered a deeper emotional connection with users. SoFi: Money Moves SoFi's "Money Moves" campaign was a highly personalized email that provided members with a financial "receipt" of their progress. The idea was to use Braze to showcase aggregated, sensitive data in a transparent and engaging way. The campaign used 31 novel custom attributes and 149 lines of Liquid logic to create a unique receipt for each member. The success of this campaign, which included the use of a third-party partner to add gamified "badges," proved that Braze's personalization tools can build trust and confidence with members, leading to a highly-regarded and impactful marketing message. Campaign of the Year This award recognizes campaigns that show strategic leadership and technical skill to build stronger relationships with customers. In addition to the Torchie Award from Braze, this category is also eligible for the People’s Choice Award. HBO Max: Paris Summer Olympics For the Paris Summer Olympics, the HBO Max EMEA team faced the challenge of delivering over 2,000 real-time communications to 13 markets. They solved this with Braze by building an automated messaging engine using API-triggered Canvas Flows, Connected Content, and Liquid logic. This innovation, including AI automation for key moment alerts, saved over 1,300 hours of manual work and resulted in a high streaming rate of Olympic content, well above the benchmark. The campaign demonstrated a repeatable framework for future live events and significantly boosted engagement. Ibotta: Project Egg Ibotta's "Cheap Eggs Program" was a rapid, four-week campaign launched in response to rising egg prices. Using Braze, the team quickly deployed a universal offer via Content Cards and Push Notifications, reaching a wide audience and driving strong performance. The campaign generated 643 million impressions and led to 319,000 offer redemptions, with 85% of egg offer redeemers also engaging with other content. This agile, data-driven approach not only delivered a significant lift in business metrics but also generated strong earned media coverage and strengthened user trust. RappiCard: Legacy RappiCard's "Legacy" campaign was a gamified experience built with Braze to drive sustained user engagement and financial activity. The campaign used custom HTML in-app messages to create an interactive "level-up" journey where users completed goals to evolve an axolotl avatar and unlock rewards. This strategy, fully orchestrated with Braze Canvas and webhooks, led to significant behavioral uplifts, including a 337% increase in utility bill purchases and a 45% increase in physical card purchases. The campaign was fully automated, required no engineering resources, and established a new growth layer for the company. SoFi: Invest Milestones SoFi's "Invest Milestones" program was designed to engage members beyond onboarding by celebrating their financial progress in real time. The evergreen program, built with Braze, delivers behavior-based messaging triggered by actions like placing a first trade or reaching a portfolio value threshold. This personalized approach has driven over $60 million in net new deposits and achieved a deposit rate nearly four times higher than the benchmark. The program created a scalable framework that allows the marketing team to launch new moments quickly, reducing manual work and driving long-term financial growth for both members and the business. Wendy's: Fresh Picks - March Madness Wendy's "Fresh Picks" campaign leveraged Braze to create an interactive March Madness experience, allowing customers to make tournament predictions. Using Braze's in-app messaging and webhook functionality, they seamlessly integrated with their loyalty platform to award points for correct picks. This multi-channel approach drove over 10 million in-app impressions, attracting over 550,000 new digital accounts and resulting in 1.12 million national offer redemptions. The campaign streamlined operations and delivered significant business impact by turning a passive event into an active, rewarding experience. Good luck to all our finalists–see you at Forge! Join us at Forge to celebrate all the finalists, learn from the best in the industry, and cast your vote for the People's Choice Award. If you can’t meet us in Las Vegas, join us for Forge Digital! Whether you're a long-time member of the community or just getting started, Forge is where you’ll gain the insight, inspiration, and support to stand out by using your creativity in new ways. See you soon!
