Ripley Raethel-Scott
It’s no secret that Braze is on an absolute tear when it comes to shipping features. We recently got a look at the roadmap for the year and while we can’t share anything not yet released - we know you’ll be blown away with some of the new features.
What we can breakdown though, are the latest updates to Braze.
The full release docs are here - though we’ve dropped our thoughts on a few highlights below:
Feature Highlights
This is the big one - we’ve been waiting for it for a while but it’s finally here (in early access). IP Warming has been forever the scary black-box of a Martech transformation. It can be hard to plan and manage and there’s no concrete winning formula. With Automated IP Warming, all you need to do, is give Braze a handful of templates, along with a target volume and Braze will automatically select how and when to engage with your users to ensure the best deliverability for your new IP. You can also pause and pickup where you left off - critical for fast-moving, flexible businesses. Best of all, you can see your progress entirely within the dedicated Braze dashboard.
We haven’t seen this in action yet - but this is a very, very long desired and awaited feature. We’ll let you know if it lives up to the hype.
5+ New Partner Integrations
Audience Sync now natively integrates with LinkedIn - for all of the B2B players out there, or for the B2C players with advanced targeting. New connectors with the likes of Tealium, Oracle CrowdTwist and Fullstory help to unify your data across all of your platforms and seamlessly generate omnichannel experiences.
New Media Library APIs
This is an entirely new section within the Braze API having not been able to do anything via API for the media library… until now . We’ve got the brand new POST for media_libary/create allowing users to programmatically upload assets like externally hosted content URLs, images and pdfs. While we’re not that excited about this endpoint in isolation, we are excited about what it signposts.
A create endpoint also implies an update endpoint, and, also a GET for list and details would be nice. This would enable you to then programmatically manage your entire media library via API and update existing collateral without needing to delete and then re-upload. While we’re here - delete would probably naturally come thereafter.
This might be the first signs of Braze working their way out of the corner they backed themselves into by not referencing the filename in the URL path they generate.
Catalog lookups for media library references...your days are numbered. 🧐
Machine Opens
The last one we think is worth talking about is Machine Opens. Every major ESP already does this and we’re glad to see Braze has caught up. What this means is that you can now choose to show which portion of your email opens are real, and which were handled automatically by clients (looking at you iOS 😔 ). You should absolutely be doing this. It might raise a few remarks the first time you show the deflated numbers, but it’s only going to make your reporting more accurate.
Closing
We didn’t touch on January’s features - but there were some heavy hitters in there too, like dynamic BCC and also some pretty robust additions to currents. Braze ships feature notes like this about once a month, and it’s so refreshing to see features YOU vote for get implemented. Gone are the days of quarterly releases for the legacy monoliths which only ever address security bugs (or re-name the platform for the 50th time ⛈).
The pace Braze is shipping at isn't slowing down, and neither should you. We'll be back next month breaking down what's new - and more importantly, what you should actually care about. In the meantime, if you're wrestling with any of these features or trying to figure out how they fit into your stack, let's talk.