Forge 2020 Recap: Why (Real) Time Is Money

$1.6 trillion—that's what's at stake when customers switch from one solution to another due to poor service and missing functionality. Conversely, companies that earn $1 billion a year see an average uptick of $700 million per year within three years of investing in enhancing customer experience.

It's no surprise that many marketing technology offerings are positioning themselves as leaders in customer engagement. However, few of these vendors share any metrics showcasing the quantifiable impact they have on their customers' bottom line. That's a red flag, especially as marketers get more savvy about quantifying the value of their own effort to their executives and as the marketing technology space continues to get more crowded and competitive.

Time is money, so the saying goes. But we know for both customers and the brands that want to best engage them, real-time is money. As we've written about, the difference between milliseconds and hours—or real-time customer engagement versus out-of-date marketing—can make a massive difference. Alerts about low banking account balances are helpful only if they're sent before a fee kicks in. Notifications about new job openings go a lot further if they're delivered before the position has 200+ applicants. Reminders to book an appointment, rate an item, or check out the latest episode are only meaningful if you haven't already booked the appointment, rated the item, or watched the show.

Messages that might otherwise be powerful can be rendered meaningless if they're sent at the wrong time—or simply too late. About 80% of marketers agree that real-time customer analytics matter when it comes to supporting customer experiences.

Proof That Braze Delivers Real ROI

At Braze, we understand that it's not enough to simply tout the value of customer engagement, our customers and partners need to be able to demonstrate—and quantify—the value they bring to their companies through customer engagement.

That's why we commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact (TEI) study to determine the return on investment of Braze for customers, and to help current and prospective customers understand the benefits of teaming up with us. To conduct this assessment, Forrester interviewed four current Braze customers, who, prior to partnering with Braze, had an approach to customer engagement that relied on one marketing channel or siloed marketing systems to conduct multi-channel outreach. Forrester found that Braze customers experience a return on investment of 840% over three years using our platform.

Since partnering with Braze, these same customers have been able to add meaningful customer touchpoints and manage these different channels all within one comprehensive solution, leveraging real-time orchestration. They've also been able to improve their personalization efforts, deliver more relevant outreach, send their messages at the right time via the right channels, and deploy multivariate testing to iterate and optimize. As a result, these brands have seen their customer lifetime value (CLTV) increase by over $12 million, a 3X boost in the value of messages and 50% reduction in churn. By breaking boundaries across organizational, geographic, and channel lines, brands can ensure all aspects work together in a suite symphony to create meaningful, relevant consumer experiences.

Here are some of the key quantified benefits of partnering with Braze that Forrester identified:

• Lifting customer lifetime value over $12 million
• Reducing customer churn by 50%
• Increasing the value of messages by 3X through improved open rates and conversions
• Reducing employee time spent on solution integrations and maintenance and campaign creation by 1,200 hours and 2,200 annually, respectively
• Achieving cost savings of $150,000 by consolidating systems

Some of the key ways Braze customers achieve these gains is through our real-time customer engagement capabilities, including the following features:

• Braze Currents, our continuous data-streaming tool that helps customers like Deliveroo access, analyze, and act on their first-party Braze data in real time.
• Braze Canvas, the platform’s customer journey management tool, that empowers brands like Fishbrain to build dynamic, relevant journeys that leverage real-time personalization and messaging triggers across every channel Braze supports.
• The Braze Intelligent Suite, which allows Braze customers like Fiverr to easily optimize each campaign and journey for the right time, channel choice, and variant.
• Connected Content allows brands like Canva to customize their cross-channel campaigns with personalized information from their company's own internal servers and third-party APIs.

Additionally, Braze customers can take advantage of extended flexibility and capabilities through our partnerships with best-in-breed solutions. For example, Payomatic—New York’s largest provider of check cashing and financial services—leveraged our partnership with Snowflake to create a cloud-based, 360-degree view of their customers based on data about what customers do in stores, within their app, and through payment networks. This data-driven approach led to a 33% increase in direct deposit adoption in their app and an 11% lift in mobile app engagement.

Effective Customer Engagement Is Real Time

From Delivery Hero and HappyFresh to HBO Max and IBM, the world's leading brands have realized that effective customer engagement runs on real time. At this year’s Forge 2020, our sixth annual user conference, leaders from these top brands and more shared how they delivered outstanding business results by putting customers first. To experience those discussions, visit forge.braze.com between now and October 20 and watch the entire event—or a few choice sessions—on demand.