Migrating to Braze: Key Considerations

There are many ways you can prepare ahead of time to ensure a smooth transition, when planning for a marketing automation platform (MAP) migration. From data cleansing, to hands-on training, and stakeholder expectation management, there are proactive steps you can take now to lay the foundation for what’s ahead.

Clean Your Data, Audit Your Data

Get out the Clorox Disinfecting Wipes, because now is the time to do a deep clean…of your data. You want to start off your migration on the right foot. You want your database to be as accurate and reliable as possible. The more confident you are in what you have to segment and trigger actions off of, the more confident you will be in using it to use all of the personalization Braze has to offer. This can range from data standardization, to uniformity, to picklist audits, to program reviews.

Not only should you start to brush up your essential fields, you should also audit all of your fields. Part of the initial Braze implementation exercises is to pick which data points you want to carry over. Get ahead of that now while time is on your side.

Ask yourself & your team the following…. Which data points do I utilize often? Which data points am I unsure of? Which data points do I need to have further conversations and reporting on? Which data points can we retire? The first and last question are typically the easier of the four to answer.

Pay special attention to the second and third questions. Those take the most time to answer due to the potential research involved. Start to have those conversations now though. Evaluate the pros and cons as a team. The discovery collaboration sessions will lead to follow up questions. You may need to forward these questions onto other resources and team members, which can take some time. Prepare ahead for your migration by starting to take on preliminary discovery work for your data point.

Team Education and Training

Learning how to wield a new MAP is a marathon, not a race. Start your marathon now with the learning & community resources Braze has to offer.

Braze offers dedicated Learning Paths for all types of marketers, including developers, sales representatives, and the day-to-day marketing automation power users. The Learning Paths offer self-paced training courses, designed to teach you all of the Braze features. They come in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, and Korean. Alternatively, Braze offers scheduled live trainings with an instructor.

Definitely check out Bonfire– the Braze Community. You’ll find group threads where you can connect with other Braze users, and even post questions for other users to offer their expertise and advice on. At Bonfire, you can discover business use cases posted by fellow Braze users, stay in the loop on the latest features, and any local Braze events happening in your area.

Braze has an excellent and thorough Resource Center. You’ll find helpful sections to guide you, including visuals, through Braze’s various features. Also, the Resource Center provides case studies and examples to get you started and consider as you start to use the tool, plus videos showing how other brands are using Braze to take their marketing strategy to the next level.

Take the time to have your team review these resources, whether it’s creating their Bonfire profiles, starting a Learning path, or partaking in a webinar. Networking within the Braze community and familiarizing yourself with all of their helpful resources can proactively prepare you for the migration ahead.

Support From Key Stakeholders

Braze offers powerful tools for customer engagement personalization, but do all of your main stakeholders understand the potential the Braze tools have to offer? From sales, to IT, to leadership, it’s important to educate your company on all of the benefits Braze has to offer and how it can help each of them meet their team business goals.

Start to map out how you envision each of the teams and stakeholders could utilize all of the advantages of Braze. Consider the following… which product features are each team most interested in? Which product features do the team members not know about yet? If different than the first question- are there other product features you foresee that can help the team out? This will help illuminate the gaps where you see a potential for more education on the Braze platform for the various teams.

Does all of the teams have a unified vision? Put together a list of one to two main expectations from each team member for what Braze can do for them, and what the company’s one to two main expectations are. This will give you a bird’s eye view of where everyone is with their understanding of Braze and if it leads to the company’s larger understanding. Is everyone aligned? If not, what conversations can we have now to align with each other’s expectations?

With the latest adoption of AI into marketing automation tools, does the team understand how Braze incorporates AI into the platform? From the AI Copywriting Assistant, to AI Image Generator, to AI Liquid Assistant, Braze makes it as easy as possible to get your content and message out the door and into the customer’s devices.

When you’re getting ready for a marketing automation platform (MAP) migration, there are a number of tasks you can do now and luckily, Relationship One is here to help!

Source link