Jack Frier
Feature Highlights
Context Variables
March saw quite the addition. Context. Freaking. Variables. And the journey-level personalisation and data cleanliness they allow is incredible.
Quite simply, canvas journeys can now carry their own variables, set at entry or in a Context step, the values of said context variables can be hardcoded, pulled from entry properties, built with Liquid at runtime, or even chained off other context variables in the same step. They're scoped to the journey instance, not the user profile, so two journeys for the same user run in parallel with completely isolated context.
For example a third party accommodation booking service can fork off two hotel reservations for the same customer, each fork with their own check-in date, property name, and confirmation number. No profile pollution, no re-sending data per step, no custom attribute hacks that collapse the moment someone has two active bookings at once.
Zero-Copy CDI Syncs
Sticking with data and reporting, zero-copy CDI syncs just got a whole lot more useful. CDI now supports Canvas triggers as a data type, which means you can trigger Canvases directly from your warehouse or S3 and pass personalisation fields without writing anything to a Braze user profile.
This is very handy because not all data belongs on a customer profile. Some of it's too sensitive, some is only useful for a few seconds, and some genuinely has no reason to leave your warehouse. For example, banks can send sensitive data push notifications straight to customers: "Your account balance of $4,230 is below the recommended minimum." With a direct CDI sync, that number lives in your warehouse and is only ever seen by the customer. Cleaner profiles, less compliance headache, faster turnaround on transactional messaging. Braze profiles stay doing what they're meant to do: storing long-term user data for rich personalisation and engagement, not babysitting transient payloads.
Closing
The March and April updates data-wise have carried much of the same energy: precise personalisation, and no bloated profiles. Data goes where it needs to, does its job, and doesn't linger where it shouldn't.
On top of the above, there have been plenty more Braze product updates worth getting across, spanning AI, customer touchpoints, and partnerships. We're talking Braze Agents in the Agent Console, easy multi-language translations in your messaging, and plenty more.
We'll definitely be back breaking down what's new and what's worth thinking about when figuring out what works for your MarTech tool belt and best practice. And as always, if you need to chat around how to do so, reach out!