Welcome to the July edition of Cutting Edge: the monthly newsletter for marketers who use Braze!   Welcome to the July edition of Cutting Edge: the monthly newsletter for marketers who use Braze! The FIFA World Cup final just wrapped — Spain vs. Argentina. And whether you were watching for Messi, the halftime entertainment, or just for the love of the game, one thing was obvious: the teams that made it to the final didn't get there on talent alone. Messi is the greatest player of all time, Lamine Yamal is a 19-year-old prodigy. But even they need the right team around them — the right system, the right ball played, a game plan that holds up when the pressure is highest. CRM marketing works the same way. The tools are more capable than they've ever been. But capability without the right foundation behind it doesn't produce results. Are your channels working together or running independently? Is your team spending time on strategy, or stuck in execution? Do you have what's underneath in place to actually get the most out of your stack? This month, we're covering what it takes to build a program that performs — from a new messaging channel worth adding to your starting lineup, to the Braze updates that make execution faster and cleaner, to resources that help you close the gap between what your stack can do and what you're actually getting out of it. ⚽ 🏆 🇪🇸 What we're talking about this month: 📱 Upping your messaging strategy with RCS 📌 Braze tips & tricks 🛠️ The most relevant updates from Braze’s recent releases 🪡 Resources you can use to hone your craft STITCH IN TIME RCS is worth the investment. Here's what it actually means for your mobile program. Most brands are underinvesting in mobile messaging. Some have SMS running in the background — shipping confirmations, the occasional promo blast. A few are running real lifecycle programs. The majority are somewhere in between, sitting on a channel with more potential than they're using. That changed when iOS 18 brought Apple into the RCS standard. RCS — Rich Communication Services — isn't a new app. It lives in the same native messaging app your customers already have on their phones. No download, no redirect. But what it can do is completely different from SMS. With SMS, customers get a five-digit short code and plain text. With RCS, they see your brand name, logo, and a carrier-verified trust badge before they've read a single word. The message can carry high-res images, video, or a document directly in the thread — not behind a link. Instead of typing a reply, they tap a pre-populated button. And for the first time, you get actual read data — not just delivery confirmation. The addressable audience is now the majority of your list. Anyone on a device that doesn't support RCS yet gets an automatic SMS fallback through Braze. One send. Full coverage. The brands that will see the biggest lift from RCS are the ones that already have a disciplined SMS program — clear value in every message, frequency that respects the relationship, explicit opt-in, and a sender identity customers recognize. RCS amplifies what's already there. If your SMS program is solid, you're ready for what comes next. Get the full breakdown > The Marketer’s Introduction to RCS — and What to Get Right Before You Get There - Cat Mears Marketing Strategist & probably has multiple foster pets right now PIN IT Braze tips & tricks 📌 Validate and troubleshoot events faster with event history Gone are the days of chasing down engineering or pulling manual data exports to validate whether an event fired correctly or troubleshoot a support issue. Braze's new Event History tab gives you instant visibility into a user's last 100 custom events and purchases directly from the user profile. Whether you're validating a new integration or digging into why a customer didn't enter a Canvas, it's an easy way to confirm events like Product Viewed, Add to Cart, or Purchase fired as expected, empowering CRM teams to troubleshoot directly in Braze and keep campaigns moving without involving engineering. - Rachel Gilliam Client Partner & owner of a French Bulldog who understands her commands in French PATCHWORK Decoding Braze product updates 🛠️ Unified BrazeAI™ assistants in BrazeAI Operator™ Braze has consolidated all of its scattered generative AI helpers into a single, unified experience within the BrazeAI Operator™. Instead of separate tools for Liquid generation, copywriting, HTML email templates, image creation, content QA, or data transformation, every marketer‑facing AI assistant now routes through Operator. The legacy buttons still exist across the dashboard, but each one now opens the Operator pane with a pre‑scoped prompt tailored to the task you’re performing—giving you one consistent AI interface no matter where you start. Why it matters: This unification removes friction, reduces cognitive load, and makes Braze’s AI capabilities feel like one cohesive system rather than a patchwork of tools. Marketers get faster, more reliable assistance without changing their workflows, and teams benefit from more predictable outputs, shared context, and a single place to refine or govern AI usage. In short, Operator becomes the central AI “brain” inside Braze—streamlining execution, improving quality, and making everyday tasks easier and more efficient for CRM teams. Agent Console enhancements Braze has expanded the Agent Console with a set of workflow‑level enhancements that make agents easier to configure, manage, and maintain. Marketers can now spin up pre‑set use cases directly from Operator, duplicate existing agents, save drafts mid‑creation, define fallback values for Canvas agents, enforce required inputs for Catalog agents, and selectively re‑run agents only for empty cells in an agentic column. Together, these updates give teams more control and flexibility when building and maintaining agentic logic. Why it matters: These enhancements reduce operational friction and make agent management far more resilient. Drafting and duplication speed up experimentation, required inputs and fallback values prevent broken journeys, and targeted re‑runs eliminate unnecessary compute while keeping data clean. For CRM teams, this means faster setup, safer execution, and more reliable agent outputs—ultimately improving personalization quality and reducing the maintenance burden as agent usage scales. User deletion Braze has introduced a more structured, permission‑based system for deleting user profiles—whether individually or in bulk via segments. Admins (or users with the appropriate permissions) can permanently delete profiles, view deletion records, and manage large‑scale segment deletions with guardrails like a 7‑day waiting period, job limits, required confirmations, and the ability to cancel pending deletions. The update also adds operational safeguards such as automatic “Pending Deletion” filters and clearer visibility into deletion status. Why it matters: This update strengthens data hygiene, compliance, and operational safety across CRM programs. Teams can confidently remove outdated, duplicate, or legally required‑to‑delete profiles without risking accidental loss or workflow disruption. The waiting period, confirmation flow, and cancellation options reduce the chance of irreversible mistakes, while bulk deletion support (up to 10M profiles) helps brands maintain a clean, compliant database at scale. Ultimately, it gives marketers and data teams more control, transparency, and protection when managing sensitive user data. - Carla Romaine Solution Consultant & visitor of 10 national parks UPCOMING EVENTS Webinar - Real marketing use cases with Databricks Most marketing teams think of Databricks as something the data team owns. This webinar makes the case that it's one of the most underutilized tools in your marketing stack — and shows you exactly what it looks like when that changes. We're walking through five real use cases across retail, c-store, streaming, and healthcare: what teams built, how they got data and marketing aligned, and the revenue impact that followed. If you've been curious about what Databricks can actually do for your CRM program, this is the practical starting point. Register for our webinar > HONE YOUR CRAFT Our top resources this month 🪡 How to implement BrazeAI™ capabilities – from driving quick wins to driving outcomes. Braze has more AI capability than most marketing teams know what to do with. The problem isn't access — it's knowing where to start and in what order. This post walks through the full BrazeAI™ stack, from the Intelligence Suite to Braze AI Decisioning Studio™, and lays out the sequence that actually works: what to activate first, what each layer requires, and what you're leaving on the table by skipping it. Read more > 6 critical steps marketers must take before implementing BrazeAI Decisioning Studio™. BrazeAI Decisioning Studio™ gives you what most CRM teams have been chasing for years — real personalization, at scale, without the manual work. But it's not a plug-and-play solution. The brands that get results from it are the ones that did the foundation work first. We break down exactly what that looks like: six things to get right before you go live, and an honest read on whether your team is actually ready. Read more > 📚 What we're reading/watching 225: The fall of CRM gravity (The dungeon of martech architecture, part 1) - Humans of Martech Taco Bell gives away emotional-support tacos as World Cup nerves run high - Marketing Dive LOOSE ENDS This month's VIP (very important pet) 🐾 Catch up on past editions of Cutting Edge > Stitch, 830 Massachusetts Ave Floor 3, Suite 9, Indianapolis, IN 46204, USA Unsubscribe Manage Preferences