Wondery uses Braze Content Cards™ to boost audience engagement and raise awareness of Wondery+, their premium listening service

Wondery creates premium audio and video content that transforms stories into immersive experiences. With award-winning original series ranging from true crime, business, entertainment, sports, and more, Wondery is recognized for its emotionally-engaging, Hollywood-style approach to storytelling that keeps audiences at the edge of their seats.

Customer engagement is central to Wondery's success. By focusing on delivering the most relevant content and messaging to each customer, they’re able to improve audience retention and create sustainable relationships that grow revenue.

A better platform for deeper engagement

Wondery’s direct relationship with audiences shape everything from their content strategy to their marketing approach. They turned to Braze to expand their direct-to-consumer strategy, especially through their mobile app.

Prior to Braze, Wondery relied on basic email marketing tools which limited their messaging capabilities and audience engagement options. They needed a sophisticated customer engagement platform that could support their rapid growth from podcast network into a multi-channel audio and video entertainment company with a dedicated mobile experience.

Wondery chose Braze for “its robust cross-channel capabilities, advanced personalization features, mobile-first approach, and proven success in the media industry.” They considered these “essential” elements for delivering the seamless, tailored experiences their consumer expected.

Additionally, they rely on Braze tech partner Amplitude, which serves as a critical component in their data and analytics ecosystem. This direct integration with Braze allows them to:

• Import behavioral data and user insights from Amplitude into Braze to inform messaging strategies
• Send campaign and messaging performance data from Braze to Amplitude for holistic analytics and user behavior analysis
• Create unified user profiles by combining engagement data from both platforms

The bi-directional data flow between Braze and Amplitude has enabled Wondery to better understand their customers’ engagement patterns in order to make more informed decisions about their content and messaging strategies.

The power of Braze Content Cards™

Through strategic audience communications, Wondery is able to drive discovery of new shows, maintain consistent engagement with existing content, and create seamless pathways to their premium services. To encourage even deeper engagement via their app, Wondery launched a custom integration of Braze Content Cards™, allowing them to showcase new content and campaigns through visually engaging cards featuring series artwork and clear calls-to-action.

By leveraging the Braze platforms’s flexible key-value pair support, they seamlessly integrated Content Cards into their existing design systems, enabling customized placement and styling across the app experience.

As a result, Wondery has strengthened its ability to surface relevant content recommendations directly within the app—driving increased content discovery, deeper audience engagement, and greater awareness of the value of Wondery+—all without disrupting the user journey. Content Cards have since become “an essential tool in our product, analytics, and marketing strategy.”

“The evolution of our Content Cards strategy is a great example of successful collaboration in action. Through regular brainstorming sessions and working meetings with our product team, we've continuously refined our approach to improve both strategy and user experience. This ongoing collaboration has created opportunities that benefit multiple teams—from identifying new use cases to optimizing existing ones. What started as a marketing initiative has grown into a truly cross-functional effort that enhances both our marketing capabilities and the overall product experience.”

Blad Norman

Global Head of Marketing and Communications, Wondery

Overall, it took Wondery six weeks to implement Content Cards—four weeks for development and two weeks for QA and testing. They were able to ensure the channel was robust and aligned with their user experience standards before launch.

Here’s how they did it

Wondery’s Content Cards execution process typically follows five steps:

1. Content planning and asset creation. This step consists of identifying series or content to promote and determining where to display it in the app, then creating assets with the proper visual CTAs and specifications.

2. Campaign setup in Braze. The team creates a new campaign, uploads creative assets, then sets up key-pair values for proper card styling, placement, and links. They also schedule the duration and expiration time for publication. Wondery creates Content Cards in Canvas when they want to orchestrate multi-step journeys alongside other messaging channels.

3. Audience targeting: Using pre-defined audience segments, they target users based on campaign intent.

4. Testing and QA: They test the campaign on different devices to verify proper rendering and placement, as well as ensure deep links are working correctly.

5. Launch and monitor: The campaign goes live, and Wondery monitors user engagement and conversion rates.

“Content Cards have become a key part of our in-app marketing approach, empowering our team to move quickly, experiment more freely, and better understand audience behavior through ongoing optimization.”

Blad Norman

Global Head of Marketing and Communications, Wondery

Wondery’s results: Higher engagement and conversion

Content Cards proved highly effective in its first year, demonstrating unique strengths even with their measured rollout approach. Unlike more fleeting channels like push notifications, Content Cards enable app users to revisit the same content multiple times in a seamless, non-interruptive way, contributing to sustained engagement.

This distinctive approach yielded impressive results:

• Higher conversions: Compared to other CRM channels, Content Cards drove a 6% higher conversion rate for Wondery+ sign-ups.
• Stronger content engagement: Users who engaged with Content Cards listened to 64% more unique episodes per week than non-engagers, significantly boosting content discovery and consumption.
• Repeat interaction: With the unique ability to support repeated engagement, total click-through rates rose by 152% compared to unique CTRs—indicating users’ desire to revisit the same content.

According to Wondery, Content Cards have expanded their marketing surface area and empowered the CRM team to independently create and deploy engaging assets without relying on additional engineering support. This has allowed them to “move quickly, experiment freely, and utilize diverse tools to enhance the overall app experience.”

Additionally, Content Cards have unlocked new opportunities for targeted promotion—driving deeper user engagement, increasing content consumption, and heightening awareness of their premium subscription offerings.

Key takeaways

1. Don’t be afraid to adopt and innovate with new channels. By launching Content Cards, Wondery is able to enhance the user experience, increase content consumption, and promote their premium listening service—all key business objectives.

2. Empower teams with the right tools. With Content Cards, the marketing team can now independently create and deploy campaigns without relying on engineering resources—fueling greater creativity, agility, and experimentation.

3. Collaborate with technical teams to get their buy-in. Proactively work with your Product team to highlight the value of personalized, persistent messaging within your product. The long-term return on investment from increased engagement, conversions, and customer satisfaction can outweigh any short-term drawbacks.

FEATURED TOPICS