Welcome to the very first edition of Cutting Edge: the monthly newsletter for marketers who use Braze! Each month, we'll be sharing our knowledge to help you get the most out of Braze and beyond. Think of it as having the entire Stitch team in your pocket...err, inbox. What we're talking about this month: 🔮 Our Martech predictions for 2025 & what you should be focused on 📌 Braze tips & tricks 🛠️ The best 2024 Braze feature releases and why they matter 🪡 Resources you can use to hone your craft STITCH IN TIME Our predictions for 2025 (because everyone’s doing it) 🔮 New year, same challenges. Marketers continue to be tasked with constantly coming up with new ways to stay top-of-mind for customers, deliver brand experiences that drive loyalty, and ultimately: drive revenue growth. And on top of that, there is no exact “right” way to do it — meaning marketers are left to navigate a lot of gray area on top of executing what’s already in flight. The world of marketing often feels like you’ll never be caught up to where you want to be. The pressure to incorporate AI in meaningful ways has exasperated this feeling x10. So, how do we move through navigating the increasing complexity of marketing and the never-ending changes to adapt to? By changing the way marketing gets done. Here’s how we see that happening in 2025 and beyond: Marketing leaders will be more intentional about innovation It’s hard to think bigger when you’re stuck in the day-to-day of deploying campaigns. We’re starting to see marketing leaders intentionally set aside time throughout the year for cross-functional collaboration (think brand, CRM, digital, loyalty, IT/engineering, marketing ops, agency partners, etc. all in one room) — and use this connection point as a source of innovation, rather than leaning on one specific team or agency partner to be the source of the ‘big ideas.’ Our recommendation: Schedule quarterly offsites with your team for innovation and identify 1 - 2 team members to focus on driving innovative ideas throughout the year. Marketers will start operating like developers Out goes the campaign calendar; in comes the marketing sprints. Rather than planning out the entire year, marketers are transitioning into more of an agile sprint methodology to allow themselves to move faster, revisit their priorities, give better focus to fewer things at a time, and be more responsive to industry trends and new ideas. Recommendation: Implement an ongoing methodology (e.g., agile, waterfall) to initiate, evaluate, and optimize campaigns. Stop flying by the seat of your pants. CRM/MOps will take a bigger seat at the table Many of the marketers we work with find themselves near the ‘end’ of the campaign process. They receive their campaign brief/request from somewhere higher up in the campaign chain, which limits their ability to influence the overall strategy. However, the most innovative marketing teams we work with have flipped this on its head — leveraging data and technology to drive creative conversations. We’re also seeing more CRM/MOps teams be a part of early campaign ideation, ensuring that the big creative bets being made by the brand teams are being carried throughout the entire digital experience. Recommendation: Get in the habit of bringing analytics from past campaigns to the ideation table. Use that data to form an opinion on what works and what doesn't in terms of creative, messaging, and channel mix — and don't be afraid to speak up. Marketers will invest in tactical AI solutions Instead of wasting time & brainpower trying to design and implement the perfect AI strategy, just start. Think of AI in terms of automation, rather than revolution, and introduce new capabilities in low-risk, bite-sized chunks. Where can your campaign process be automated? Could you use an AI-decision platform, like OfferFit (which we’re seeing a lot of our clients evaluating or investing in), to automate A/B testing? Recommendation: Evaluate your end-to-end campaign process and identify areas for automation. For example, the lowest hanging fruit could be automating the transfer of information from your campaign management tool (e.g., Asana, ClickUp) to Braze. Integrate these two, and you're likely to save your team hours of manual work. - Bobby Tichy Chief Solutions Officer & Dachshund Wrangler PIN IT Braze tips & tricks 📌 Add Connected Content to your 2025 bucket list Connected Content is a powerful (and often underutilized) Braze feature that drives engagement with personalized, real-time messaging powered by dynamically pulling external data into campaigns. For example, a grocery store could use it to integrate a weather API to tailor messages based on local forecasts. When that winter storm rolled through most of the country earlier this month, a custom event could have been triggered to prompt customers to stock up on frequently purchased items. Customers located in areas not affected by the winter storm (Wisconsin?!) could have received a different, more relevant promotion. Without Connected Content, I would have ended up snowed in without my beloved hardboiled eggs. 🥚 - Rachel Gilliam Account Director & Hardboiled Egg Enthusiast PATCHWORK Decoding Braze Product Releases 🛠️ Best of Braze 2024 🏆 - Awards season is kicking off, and our expert panel of judges (our delivery team) are crowning their champions. Here are the features Braze released in 2024 that are bringing home the hardware: Canvas Templates - Improve your campaign processes by turning your commonly used Canvas flows into templates. Don't reinvent the wheel — build Canvases faster, with fewer errors. API dashboard - This user-friendly dashboard helps you understand your usage trends and troubleshoot any potential issues. Keep an eye on your connections to make sure your data is flowing as expected. Segment Builder 2.0 - This new experience makes complex segment building a lot easier for marketers. You can copy/paste your attribute/event selections in your segmentation criteria — this will make advanced segmentation much faster to build and update. Multi-page in-app messages - Use this to extend your use of in-app messages. How can you use it to drive app engagement? Multi-step onboarding flows? Welcome journeys? Gamification? AI Liquid Assistant - Harness the robots for good. Use this to 1) further enable your team on Braze by reducing any Liquid-induced language barriers and 2) speed up your campaign process.   HONE YOUR CRAFT Our top resources this month 🪡 Here are some things to add to your toolkit: 🏃 Hit the ground running New year, new headcount - Learn how to build a dream team that’s fast, flexible, and ready to tackle anything. New year’s resolution: build better relationships with IT/engineering - We’ve got practical tips to help you bridge the gap. A fresh start - Breaking up with your legacy marketing cloud in 2025? Here’s how to migrate from SFMC to Braze. 📚 What we're reading Martech predictions for 2025 - The Martech Weekly What’s Ahead for Marketing in 2025 - Kirsten Schlau   LOOSE ENDS This month's VIP (very important pet) 🐾 Stitch, 830 Massachusetts Ave Floor 3, Suite 9, Indianapolis, IN 46204, USA Unsubscribe Manage preferences