Braze, journeys in the app and out of it.

Who Braze is

Braze is a customer engagement platform headquartered in New York. It was founded in 2011 as Appboy, took the name Braze in 2017, and has been listed on Nasdaq, as BRZE, since November 2021. Its journeys are built in Canvas, a visual builder that joins messages, delays and decision splits into one path for each customer. The messages go out by push, email, SMS, WhatsApp, in-app message and Content Card, among other channels, and webhooks call other systems along the way.

Each customer has a profile with their attributes, custom events and subscription states, fed by Braze's REST API and by its own SDKs, including one for Flutter, the toolkit our mobile apps are built with. Currents, its event stream, passes engagement events such as sends, opens and unsubscribes on to cloud storage, analytics tools or an endpoint you run. Accounts can be hosted in the EU, and Braze holds an ISO 27001 certificate and has completed a SOC 2 Type 2 examination covering security and availability. Its journeys react to what customers do in your apps, which is why it is one of the customer engagement connectors of our analytics and monitoring module.

What it does in your platform

• Analytics & monitoring

  Runs Canvas journeys for customers who opted in, such as onboarding, the first use of a new card or a return after a quiet spell. They reach customers by push, email, SMS, WhatsApp, in-app message or Content Card, and start from the same events the analytics tools receive. Receipts, one-time codes and security alerts stay with the notifications module.

How the connection works

In the apps, braze_plugin, the Flutter SDK that Braze publishes on pub.dev, starts only after the customer agrees. On the server, the platform sends events through Braze's /users/track endpoint and deletion requests through /users/delete, with a REST API key that never leaves the server.

1. The customer chooses push and email

   In the app, the customer agrees to product tips by push and email. Only then does the app start Braze's SDK and identify them, and the platform records in Braze which channels they opted into.

2. Braze knows them by a random ID

   Their external ID in Braze is the platform's random ID, never a name, email or phone number, and Braze itself recommends random IDs over guessable ones such as an email address. Braze receives only the contact details for the channels they chose, here an email address and a push token, plus the attributes on the tracking plan. Card numbers, account numbers, document images and passwords never go to it. Each request from the app carries a token signed by the platform's server, so no one can send data in another customer's name.

3. The card is issued

   When the platform issues the customer's card, its server sends a card-issued event to Braze through /users/track. Screen views and taps on the tracking plan come from the app's SDK, but events like this one come from the server, so they match the platform's records.

4. A Canvas begins

   The event starts a Canvas. Five days later a Decision Split checks for a card payment, and if there is none, an in-app message with tips on paying by card waits for the customer's next visit to the app. A push follows two days later if nothing changes, outside the quiet hours and within the frequency caps your team sets.

5. The customer pays by card

   When the server reports the first card payment, the customer leaves the Canvas through its exit criteria, and Braze counts the payment as a conversion for the Canvas, so your team can see which journeys work.

6. Their choices come back

   If the customer unsubscribes through an email link or Braze's preference centre, Currents posts the change to the platform, which updates the choice it keeps. If they withdraw consent in the app, the app wipes Braze's data from the phone and turns the SDK off, the server stops sending, and the platform deletes their Braze profile.

Next to other providers

Braze works from the same tracking plan as the module's product analytics connectors, Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog and Google Analytics for Firebase: they show your team where customers stall, and a Canvas follows up. If the plan includes them, Currents can also pass message sends, opens and clicks on to Mixpanel, Amplitude or Segment. The notifications module stays in charge of receipts, one-time codes and security alerts, so a customer who turns journeys off still gets every message they need.

Braze is one of the module's customer engagement connectors, next to Customer.io and CleverTap. Consent choices, the tracking plan and the platform IDs live in your platform, so moving between them later swaps a connector and leaves your apps' screens and your records as they are. Canvases are the part that stays behind: they are built in Braze, and would be built again in the new tool.

When Braze fits best

How we get you live

• The contract

  We help you get your Braze account and contract in place, with Braze's data processing addendum, the channels you plan to use and Currents, which brings unsubscribes back to your platform.

• The data

  We open the account on one of Braze's EU instances, which Braze hosts on AWS in the Frankfurt area, and point the apps and the platform at its EU endpoints. Braze has no single action that moves a workspace's data to another instance, so we settle this first. With your team we agree the tracking plan and the subscription groups customers can join. Automatic push opt-in is switched off, the SDK sends only the device properties the plan allows, and Braze's deletion settings are set to remove event properties along with a deleted profile.

• The keys

  The REST API key stays in your platform's secrets, limited to the endpoints the platform calls and to your servers' IP addresses. So does the private key that signs SDK Authentication tokens, and Braze is set to reject app requests without a valid token. The apps carry only the SDK API key, which Braze designs to be public: it can send data and fetch in-app messages, but cannot export data or send messages. A Currents post without the bearer token the platform expects is rejected.

• A full test run

  Each Canvas runs first in a separate test workspace with its own keys and no real customer data, as Braze recommends, on your team's phones and test addresses. Braze's Test Canvas previews, step by step, the path a test user takes, and the Canvas is then copied to your live workspace before your first real customer.