Getting Started with Braze: Your First Campaign

Marketers pick Braze to reach people across channels with data behind every send. Email, push, in-app messages, SMS, Content Cards, Banners, and more. You get segmentation, automation off user behavior, A/B testing, and reporting in one place.

If you’re new to it, your first campaign can feel like a lot. It isn’t. Think of it as a recipe. Gather the ingredients, set the timer, then check the result and adjust.

One thing to settle before you start: a Braze Campaign sends a single message. A Canvas runs a multi-step journey. If your idea has a follow-up two days later, build a Canvas instead. For everything else, a campaign is the right shape. More on how campaigns are put together in campaign basics.

Braze Integrated Data Sources

A campaign is only as good as the profiles behind it.

Make sure Braze is connected to the systems your audience data lives in. CRM records, transactional data, a warehouse table. You can load data through the REST API, through Cloud Data Ingestion from Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Databricks, or Microsoft Fabric, or through a technology partner integration.

Then there’s the Braze SDK. It collects app and site behavior into a single user profile and it’s what makes push, in-app messages, Content Cards, and Banners work at all. It’s also what lets you trigger off real actions like an abandoned cart or a browsed product.

Let’s Get All the Details: What, When, Who, Why, Where

Before you touch the dashboard, answer these. It takes ten minutes and saves an hour of rework.

What is this campaign called? Name it so that someone reading the list in six months knows what you were trying to help the user do.

When do people enter? Braze gives you three ways: a scheduled date and time, an action they take, or an API call. See schedule your campaign.

Who are you reaching? Start from an existing segment and refine it with filters inside the campaign.

Why does it exist? Pick at least one conversion event. Without one you can report on sends, not results.

Where will you reach them? Choose the channel that fits the moment, not the channel you’re most comfortable building.

How to Build Your Campaign

Log in and confirm you’re in the right workspace. That last part trips up people who work across brands or regions.

From there, either use Quick Links on the dashboard home or open Messaging > Campaigns in the left nav.

Then select Create campaign in the top right. Pick a single channel or multi-channel, and you’ll land on the five-step setup.

Step 1: Compose Messages

Name the campaign, add a description, and add tags. Tags feel like busywork until the day you need to filter reporting by program, so add them.

The example here uses email. Compose your message with a template, an uploaded HTML file, or a blank canvas.

Two tips from doing this a lot. Stick to one editing experience per email campaign rather than switching between the HTML and drag-and-drop editors. And if you plan to run variants, build the first message completely, then use Copy from Variant so you’re not rebuilding structure three times.

Personalization is where campaigns earn their keep. Pull in user attributes, event properties, or catalog data so the message reflects what that person actually did. If you’re stuck on copy, BrazeAI’s Operator can draft a version in the dashboard for you to edit.

Then fill in sending info from the Edit Sending Info link: from name and address, reply-to, BCC, subject, and preheader. Preview and send yourself a test. Read it on a phone.

Step 2: Schedule Delivery

Choose scheduled, action-based, or API-triggered, and the options change to match.

For time-based sends you’ll set the moment (on launch, at a designated time, or Intelligent Timing so each user gets it when they’re most likely to engage), the frequency, and whether to send in the user’s local time zone.

Under delivery controls, decide whether people can become re-eligible and how long Braze should wait before they are. Frequency capping is on by default. Open the view link and look at the actual rules before you launch, because a cap set by another team can quietly hold your message back.

Step 3: Target Audiences

Pick one or more segments, then add filter groups to narrow further. Braze’s create a segment guide covers filter group logic, which is worth reading once properly rather than guessing at AND versus OR.

Step 4: Assign Conversions

You can define up to four conversion events per campaign. The first one you add is the primary, and it does more work than people expect. It decides the winning variant in multivariate campaigns, sets the window for revenue attribution, and feeds Variant Selection when you let Braze shift traffic toward the better performer. Braze renamed that feature from Intelligent Selection, so older internal docs may still use the old name.

Choose the event type, the apps or sites it applies to, and a conversion deadline. The deadline is the longest gap you’ll count between entry and conversion, so match it to how your buying cycle actually behaves.

Step 5: Review Summary

The summary tab shows reach, messages, delivery settings, audience, and conversions in one view. Read the reach number with a skeptical eye. If it’s wildly higher or lower than you expected, the problem is in step 3, not here.

Then select Launch Campaign and confirm.

Continuous Optimization

Marketing isn’t set and forget. Open campaign analytics for real-time delivery, engagement, conversion, and revenue metrics on the campaign details page. For anything comparative, like performance over time or across programs, use Report Builder.

If one segment clearly prefers one variant, use that in the next build. Small, repeated adjustments beat one big redesign per year.

Your first campaign will be simple, and that’s the point. Ship it, learn from it, then go find the harder things Braze can do.

Working on your first Braze build, or inheriting one that someone else set up? Let us know what you’re trying to get out the door. More on our Braze work.

Revised September 19, 2026. Originally published March 31, 2025. Updated for Braze’s current dashboard navigation and documentation structure, the Intelligent Selection to Variant Selection rename, and current BrazeAI features.