Welcome to Braze Bonfire
Whether you’ve been a part of Bonfire since launch in 2019 or you’re just joining us, we’re so glad you’re here. Braze Bonfire is now a one-stop shop of customer engagement resources - strategies, best practices, feedback, and professional opportunities. Below are a few resources to check out to help you better navigate the Braze Bonfire community. Getting Started 1. Introduce Yourself - We want to get to know you. Head over to the Connection Lounge and introduce yourself. Complete the below and help us get to know you better. Learn more about how you can intro yourself from our Welcome to the Connection Lounge post. 2. Start a discussion or ask a question in The Forum. The Forum is the place to ask and answer all of those questions and discussions about customer engagement strategy, executing campaigns in Braze, and technical solutions for using Braze. 3. Share a campaign you’ve worked on or been inspired by in Campaigns That Made You Look. We know you build incredible customer engagement campaigns on the regular. Share something you’ve built in Braze with the community in Campaigns That Made You Look. Whether it’s a screenshot of a push notification you got, an email campaign you built, a creative SMS your team worked on, you name it - we want to see it. Friendly reminder that you should never share sensitive or confidential information. When in doubt, err on the side of caution. 4. Looking to hire talent or to expand your team - let us know about it in The Job Board. Great talent is critical to executing great customer engagement strategies. If you have an opening on your team or simply want to search open opportunities, post about it in the Job Board. You’ll be prompted to provide a location, description, and salary range for the job you’re posting about. None of those are required but are suggested as a way to help both those seeking new opportunities as well as those filling positions to quickly understand where and what the opportunity is. Helpful documents to review as you get started: Community Guidelines Terms of Use Guide to Ranks FAQs Privacy Policy Why “bonfire,” you ask? To us, a bonfire is an invitation to gather together and share our stories. It serves as an informal yet intentional setting where we can learn, share, and grow together. The more people who contribute to a bonfire, the greater and the brighter it burns… so be sure to contribute and get involved! 🔥Tech for an Equitable Future Applications Open
Braze is excited to announce our new product grant program Tech for an Equitable Future—an expansion of the Tech for Black Founders program to other underrepresented groups. Tech for an Equitable Future aims to remove barriers for underrepresented founders by providing their companies 12 months of free access to the Braze platform and supporting services. This initiative—launched in 2020 to address findings that only 1% of founders backed by venture capital in the US are Black—now provides a total of 24 Black-led startups free access to the Braze platform. The expanded program will continue this effort with the inclusion of other underrepresented founders, including women founders, who garner just 2% of the capital invested in VC-backed startups in the US. With equity as one of the guiding social impact pillars at Braze, we are committed to the continued pursuit of equity and inclusion in the technology industries. Businesses accepted to the program can expect to accelerate their growth, increase their chances at receiving VC funding, and build successful businesses.Congratulations to the 2023 Torchie Awards winners
Congratulations to the Forge 2023 Torchie Awards Winners and Runner Ups! The annual Braze Torchie Awards is a celebration of the leading brands and marketers who are building the future of customer engagement. This year we’re pleased to recognize an exceptional class of award winners who are finding innovative ways to forge connections and strengthen relationships—one message at a time. We awarded eight total awards this year, six customer awards - Rising Marketing Star of the Year, Bonfire Community Leader, Marketing Leader of the Year, Creative Excellence Award, Collaborative Team of the Year, Campaign of the Year and two partner awards - Technology Partner of the Year and Solutions Partner of the Year. Customer Award Winners Rising Marketing Star of the Year Winner: Samara Halperin, Lifecycle Marketing Associate for Talkspace (Congratulations SamaraHalperin!) Bonfire Community Leader Winner: Kristijan Arsov, Lifecycle Marketing Manager for Lifesum (Congratulations Kristijan!) Marketing Leader of the Year Winner: Christine Miller, Senior Director, Global CRM Operations for Warner Bros. Discovery Creative Excellence Award Winner: Peacock Collaborative Team of the Year Winner: Grubhub Campaign of the Year Winner: Canva Partner Award Winners Technology Partner of the Year Winner: Census Solutions Partner of the Year Winner: Ogilvy To learn more about the winners and runner ups, check out the Torchie Awards Winners announcement HERE.Follow the neon lights to Forge 2024
Big news, Bonfirers: get ready to go all in on customer engagement. This September, Forge is back for 2024 in a dazzling new place: Las Vegas! With success stories from big, innovative brands, tricks of the trade from industry experts, and networking opportunities galore, you’re sure to hit the inspiration jackpot. Forge is also the place to get certified, trained, and expand how you can use Braze in your day-to-day work. Come for the business, but stay for the fun—it’s not called the city that never sleeps for nothin’. We’ll keep the party going with activations, celebrations, and a few well-deserved awards. Mark your calendar for September 23-25, 2024, and check back in for a Bonfire-exclusive chance to roll the dice and attend Forge on us!Announcing the 2025 Torchie Awards Finalists
Announcing the 2025 Torchie Awards Finalists Every year, Braze honors the marketers and brands redefining what’s possible in customer engagement. Whether you’ve launched a killer campaign, driven real impact, or led with creativity and heart, we want to celebrate you. This year, we received over 270 outstanding submissions across 11 categories, and one thing is clear: the Braze community is leading the way. Your creativity, passion, and incredible stories inspired us. The results were so close in every category that this year, we’re doing something new to bring you into the selection process. Your Vote Matters: The People's Choice Awards Get ready to make your voice heard at Forge! For the first time ever, the community will select an additional winner for the People's Choice Award in two of our top categories: Campaign of the Year and Creative Excellence. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing more about the finalists in these two categories, so you can get to know their stories and the impressive work they’ve done. At Forge, from September 29–September 30, you'll be able to cast your vote for your favorite, whether you're attending in Las Vegas or joining us for Forge Digital. Your vote will honor the teams and campaigns that have truly set a new standard for customer engagement. The People's Choice winners will be announced on the final day of Forge. Meet the 2025 Torchie Awards Finalists But first, it’s time to reveal all of the finalists for the 2025 Torchie Awards! Customer Awards Bonfire Community Leader of the Year This award recognizes an outstanding community member who is known for helping other Braze users in the Bonfire community. Our finalists are: Allan Heo (For Now Marketing) Daphné Leblanc (Spark Networks) Lior Peleg (HippoCampus Tech LTD) Manoj Kumar (Digitas) Ted Scott (Cognizant) Braze for Impact This award recognizes companies that have used Braze to create positive social change within their communities. The finalists are: Boys and Girls Club of America iFood Venmo Volo Sports Campaign of the Year This award recognizes campaigns that show strategic leadership and technical skill to build stronger relationships with customers. This year's finalists are: HBO Max: Paris Summer Olympics Ibotta: Project Egg RappiCard: Legacy SoFi: Invest Milestones Wendy's: Fresh Picks - March Madness Collaborative Team of the Year This award celebrates teams that have successfully worked across different departments and disciplines to create best-in-class campaigns. The finalists are: Crunchyroll HBO Max Jump REA Group Sephora SoFi Creative Excellence This award honors teams that use the Braze platform to create innovative, original messaging, and unique customer experiences. Our finalists for the year are: ClassPass: Best of ClassPass HBO Max: Pre-finale IAM McDonald's: Unbagged RappiCard: Rosca SoFi: Money Moves Marketing Leader of the Year This award honors marketing executives who demonstrate excellence in leadership and customer engagement. The finalists for 2025 are: Jason Feldman, Senior Director, Customer Experience at BEES US Josh Hanson, Associate Director - Growth Marketing at Optus Sport Maria Bonello, Subscriber Engagement Director at MGM+, Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios Melissa Neikirk, Director of Lifecycle at Remitly Pedro Solís Cámara, Head of Growth at RappiCard 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. The finalists are: Divyanshu Pandey, Associate, CRM at Chegg Ellie Ledwith, Sports Content Deputy Manager at bet365 Lindsey Spillman, Senior Specialist, CRM at Wendy's Maxim Radoczy, Lifecycle Marketing Lead, Engagement at Canva Nicholas Baltovski, Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Venmo Partner Awards Partner Campaign of the Year This category recognizes a partner who delivered a groundbreaking campaign with Braze and set new standards in creativity and customer engagement. The finalists are: AKQA, for KFC Australia Dwarf, for Spenn (Norwegian and Strawberry hotels) Publicis Groupe, for McDonald's US VML, for Pizza Hut Service Partner of the Year This award celebrates a service partner who significantly advanced their Braze practice through comprehensive training and innovation to markedly improve business outcomes. Our 2025 finalists are: Marketing Decisions Merkle Stitch VML Technology Partner of the Year This award goes to a technology/ISV partner that has enhanced Braze through key integrations and collaboration, benefiting our team and our customers. The finalists are: AWS Contentsquare Segment Snowflake Transformation Partner of the Year This award honors a partner whose innovative solutions have transformed a single client’s business and drastically enhanced their customer experience capabilities. Our finalists are: Deloitte Digital ANZ, for Foxtel Ragnarok, for Hand & Stone Stitch, for Taco Bell TELUS Digital, for White Castle 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 Award. 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.Braze Learning Supports Laid-Off Community with Free Certifications
Braze Learning has launched a support program to provide free certification exams to those that have been impacted by lay-offs and reductions in the tech sector. Braze Certification has pledged to provide 1000 free certification exams. Learn more here. Feel free to share with folks that you know have been impacted by layoffs. The Braze Bonfire community is here for you. Please reach out if you have any questions.Get to know Sage AI by Braze
Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have created new opportunities for brands to be more inventive, work more efficiently, and drive stronger ROI. And taking advantage of these capabilities in thoughtful ways gives companies an edge in competitive, crowded industries. So how can you and your team unlock the power of AI? Start with Sage AI by Braze. Sage AI by Braze lowers the barriers to exceptional customer engagement by making creativity, personalization, and experimentation easily accessible to all marketers. Sage AI by Braze is built into your existing workflows in Braze, so you can enhance your customer engagement campaigns with AI in a matter of moments. For example, did you know you can use generative AI features in Braze to instantly create message copy and custom images for your campaigns? Imagine how much time you can save by letting AI take on the heavy lifting of routine tasks. Plus, you can run more experiments by generating multiple campaign variants and using AI-powered testing and optimization features to quickly find the best performing version of a campaign. Sage AI by Braze powers generative AI copywriting and image generation features; predictive features in the Predictive Suite; and campaign optimization features like the Intelligence Suite, Personalized Variant, and Winning Paths in Canvas. Sage AI by Braze will soon power AI Recommendations, AI Content QA, and A/B Test Prediction. Braze has pioneered and continues to shape the future of AI-powered marketing. Learn more about Sage AI by Braze here.Re-certify with Braze
Is it time to re-certify with Braze? As our program celebrates its third anniversary, many of our certification badge holders will need to get re-certified to maintain their credentials. In order to re-certify, individuals must retake the full certification exam. Now that Braze Certifications are valid for three years, we want to ensure that all certified professionals have the most up to date information about our platform as our exams and Learning Paths continue to evolve. As part of our certified professionals community, you will receive an email from Braze Learning 90 days before your badge expires, which will include detailed information about the steps you will need to take to re-certify as well as a 50% off discount promo code to retake your exam. As always, if you have any questions, please reach out to the certification team at certification@braze.com.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!
