Perspective on Salesforce vs. Braze
At Massive Rocket, we’ve witnessed firsthand the challenges businesses face when trying to optimize their customer engagement strategies. Prior to starting Massive Rocket, Our CEO, Thierry, spent four years immersed in the complexities of Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s mobile engagement capabilities for global brands. This experience revealed the platform’s limitations and the significant costs associated with trying to make it perform effectively.
| Migrating from Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) to Braze |
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| This article discusses why businesses are migrating from Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) to Braze for customer engagement. It highlights Braze’s intuitive user interface, future-proof architecture, and real-time capabilities across all channels, emphasizing its ease of use and adaptability. The article outlines the typical Braze migration process, from discovery and auditing to campaign launch and optimization, and introduces Massive Rocket’s Salesforce to Braze connector for streamlined data synchronization. It also touches on the importance of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) for Braze implementations, contrasting the shortcomings of Salesforce’s CDP with the benefits of a composable approach. Read more: Migrating from Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) to Braze |
This firsthand knowledge fueled our commitment to finding better solutions. Since our inception, we’ve delivered over 200 Braze implementations for rapidly growing, high-scale, global B2C brands, proving that Braze consistently delivers on its promises and empowers businesses to achieve exceptional results. We believe a composable marketing technology stack is the future of customer engagement.
The Rise of the Composable Marketing Technology Stack
The traditional all-in-one marketing platform approach is becoming less and less effective in today’s dynamic digital landscape. The composable approach, where businesses select best-of-breed tools for each specific marketing function, is gaining significant traction. This strategy offers several key advantages.
Composable stacks offer best-of-breed functionality. Instead of being constrained by the limitations of a single platform, businesses can choose the absolute best tool for each specific need, whether it’s email, SMS, analytics, or personalization. This leads to higher quality customer experiences and more effective campaigns. They also provide greater flexibility and agility.
As your needs evolve or new technologies emerge, you can easily swap out or upgrade individual components without disrupting your entire system. This allows you to adapt quickly to market trends and shifting customer behavior.
Scalability is another important advantage. You can start with the essential tools and add more as your business grows, avoiding unnecessary costs for features you don’t currently need.
A composable approach also reduces vendor lock-in.You’re not reliant on a single provider, giving you the freedom to choose the best solutions from various vendors and avoid being forced into expensive upgrades or unwanted features.
Finally, composable stacks foster innovation and competitive differentiation. You can experiment with new tools and technologies without disrupting your entire system, enabling a culture of continuous improvement and keeping you ahead of the curve.
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud AppExchange = Not All-in-one.
The existence of Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s extensive app store, the AppExchange, speaks volumes. It highlights the fact that Salesforce Marketing Cloud doesn’t do everything. It’s is not an All-in-one platform.
Their positioning might be “Yes, we do it,” but the reality is often “We can do it with a partner.” This is essentially a form of composable stack, but with limitations. Components are restricted by the architecture of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, leading to slower time to market and less flexibility.
Why Composable Stacks Are Preferred for Modern Customer Engagement
Composable stacks are often preferred for customer engagement because they facilitate a customer-centric approach. Best-of-breed tools allow for deeper personalization and more engaging experiences across all touchpoints. Modern composable stacks also often include a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to unify data from various sources, providing a holistic view of the customer.
Furthermore, specialized tools deliver a faster time to value. Compared to traditional platforms, which often require longer implementation times and less forward-thinking agency partners, composable stacks translate to lower costs and better customer experiences.
The Changing Landscape of Consumer Behavior (Gen Z)
Consumer behavior has undergone a radical transformation, driven in large part by the emergence of Gen Z as a dominant consumer force. This generation, digital natives from birth, exhibits distinct characteristics that challenge traditional marketing approaches. Their attention spans are notoriously shorter, demanding concise and engaging content that cuts through the noise. They are also highly active across a multitude of channels, seamlessly switching between platforms and expecting brands to keep pace with their multi-faceted engagement. This constant connectivity and channel-hopping results in an explosion of data, with Gen Z generating significantly more information about their preferences, behaviors, and interactions than previous generations. Crucially, they also have higher expectations. They demand personalized experiences, instant gratification, and seamless interactions across every touchpoint. They are not willing to tolerate delays or generic messaging. This impatience translates to a rejection of platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Salesforce Interaction Studio, which often struggle to process and act upon data quickly enough to meet Gen Z’s real-time expectations. These platforms, often built on older architectures, can’t keep up with the demand for immediate responses and personalized interactions.
Furthermore, the digital landscape itself is in constant flux. New channels, from emerging social media platforms to innovative communication technologies, are constantly appearing and evolving at a breakneck speed. These channels often operate in real-time, requiring marketers to be agile and responsive. Gen Z, always at the forefront of adopting new technologies, expects brands to be present and engaging on these emerging platforms from day one. Traditional marketing platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, with their complex integrations and slower processing speeds, are simply not designed to handle this level of dynamism. They struggle to adapt to the ever-changing channel landscape, leaving marketers unable to effectively reach and engage with Gen Z on their preferred platforms. This mismatch between platform capabilities and consumer behavior creates a significant challenge for businesses trying to connect with this crucial demographic. They need marketing technology that can not only keep up with the pace of change but also anticipate future trends and adapt accordingly. The ability to capture, analyze, and act on real-time data is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity for engaging with today’s consumers, especially the demanding and digitally savvy Gen Z.
A Look Under the Hood: The Evolution of Marketing Technology
Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s origins date back to 2000 with ExactTarget, well before the advent of the iPhone in 2007.
Braze, founded in 2011 as Appboy, was built from the ground up around real-time event streaming. ExactTarget’s acquisition by Salesforce in 2013 and its subsequent transformation into Salesforce Marketing Cloud highlights the challenge of adapting older technologies to modern needs.
So what? Because it’s creation pre-dates the iPhone, it’s architecture pre-dates the iPhone therefore Salesforce Marketing Cloud struggles to handle customer data in the way required by modern businesses. Customer expectations are so high that data agility has become critical.
Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Data Cloud
While Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s capabilities for modern customer engagement are increasingly being questioned, it’s important to acknowledge the continued relevance and strength of other components within the Salesforce ecosystem. Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Service Cloud maintain dominant market positions, serving as the backbone for many businesses’ sales and customer service operations. These platforms are deeply embedded in organizational workflows and processes, and their influence within the CRM landscape remains significant. Furthermore, Salesforce is actively pushing its Data Cloud as a central and essential component of its offerings.
Data Cloud aims to unify customer data from various sources, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and potentially even external systems, creating a more holistic view of the customer. Salesforce is clearly investing heavily in Data Cloud, positioning it as the key to unlocking personalized experiences and driving data-driven decision-making across its suite of products.
Braze + Salesforce: Yes, they connect!
Braze doesn’t aim to replace the entire Salesforce stack. Its focus is squarely on modern customer engagement, specifically upgrading the Salesforce Marketing Cloud component. Several effective methods exist for connecting Braze with the Salesforce ecosystem.
Connecting Braze and Salesforce
Massive Rocket has developed its own Salesforce Connector to facilitate seamless integration. Another option is to build a 360-degree customer view in a cloud data warehouse like Snowflake and manage two-way communication with Braze from there.
| Massive Rocket Unveils Braze to Salesforce Sales Cloud Connector |
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| Massive Rocket announces its Braze to Salesforce connector, addressing the growing need for seamless data synchronization between these platforms. Recognizing the increasing adoption of Braze for customer engagement in place of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the connector enables bi-directional data flow, ensuring data consistency and compliance. It facilitates historical data import, real-time updates, and offers robust monitoring and maintenance capabilities, allowing businesses to leverage the strengths of both Salesforce and Braze for a cohesive customer engagement strategy. This solution streamlines operations, enhances data accuracy, and optimizes personalized experiences across both platforms. Read more: https://insights.massiverocket.com/massive-rocket-unveils-braze-to-salesforce-connector/ |
This offers greater autonomy to CRM teams and allows Salesforce teams to continue their work as usual. CDPs like Tealium, mParticle, Segment, and Hightouch, along with reverse ETL tools, are designed to bridge the gap between Salesforce and modern marketing technology stacks.
The Power of the Cloud Data Warehouse
One of the benefits of SaaS is that end-users naturally gravitate towards the most logical work environment. While Salesforce continues to be a prominent force, data management has become democratized. Increasingly, businesses are building 360-degree customer views in their cloud data warehouses – Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, AWS, and Azure. This empowers data engineers to work efficiently in an environment optimized for data management, rather than being constrained by the complexities of Salesforce.
The rise of cloud data warehouses has profound implications for integrating a holistic 360-degree customer view into marketing and CRM platforms. For most businesses, this means the ability to seamlessly connect their comprehensive customer profile, housed within their data warehouse (like Snowflake, Databricks, or BigQuery), directly into both Salesforce and Braze.
This approach liberates businesses from the constraints of Salesforce’s inherent capabilities, allowing them to augment its functionality quickly and efficiently with Braze. By centralizing the 360-degree view in the data warehouse, companies avoid the complexities and high costs often associated with traditional integration projects, enabling a more agile and responsive approach to customer engagement. This also empowers data teams to manage and refine the customer view independently, ensuring data accuracy and consistency across both Salesforce and Braze, while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to evolving business needs.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. Braze Comparison
When considering Braze and Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), it’s crucial to weigh their respective strengths and weaknesses. Braze excels in mobile engagement, offering robust capabilities for SMS, push, and in-app notifications, making it ideal for brands with a strong mobile presence. Its user-friendly interface simplifies campaign setup and management, and its real-time data processing enables timely, personalized interactions. Braze’s non-structured data approach allows for rapid iteration and simpler data integrations.
Its all-in-one product approach creates a cohesive experience for marketing and product teams. Braze also offers advanced audience segmentation, data streaming capabilities, data warehouse activation, a best-in-class workflow builder, and seamless connection with media platforms. However, Braze lacks a comprehensive built-in CDP and its customer support may be concentrated in certain regions.
| Braze vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Deciding Which Is a Better Solution For Your Business |
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| This article compares Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) and Braze, highlighting Braze’s strengths in mobile engagement, cross-channel journeys, real-time personalization, and ease of use. It notes the increasing adoption of Braze by marketing teams seeking agility and effectiveness. The article also delves into Salesforce’s Agentforce and its reliance on Salesforce Data Cloud, cautioning against vendor lock-in and detailing the Data Cloud’s limitations in segmentation, data latency, analytics, and platform fragmentation. Finally, it proposes a combined approach, leveraging Braze and Salesforce together, potentially with a light CDP like Hightouch, to maximize the benefits of both platforms while avoiding the pitfalls of relying solely on the Salesforce ecosystem. Read more: https://insights.massiverocket.com/braze-vs-salesforce-marketing-cloud-deciding-which-is-a-better-solution-for-your-business/ |
SFMC, on the other hand, offers a comprehensive feature set, scalability, and seamless integration with other Salesforce products. Its analytics and reporting capabilities are also noteworthy. However, SFMC comes with a high cost, complex data ingestion processes, implementation and operational complexities, inconsistent support quality, a structured-data approach, limited data warehouse integrations, and limited data streaming options. It also suffers from ecosystem lock-in.
Key Differences and Considerations
Braze generally offers a more user-friendly interface, while SFMC’s extensive features come with increased complexity. Braze’s strength lies in mobile marketing, while SFMC has robust email marketing capabilities. SFMC’s deep integration with the Salesforce ecosystem can be a double-edged sword, while Braze is better positioned for building a best-in-class composable stack. Braze’s real-time personalization capabilities are a significant advantage. Braze’s journey builder is more extensive and comprehensive than SFMC’s.
Massive Rocket’s Opinion: Go Braze.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud has long been a dominant option presented to marketers, and it still holds sway in certain markets. While it’s possible to deliver good experiences with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, other brands have demonstrated this, but there are downsides.
You’ll likely experience a heavy reliance on agencies for basic (BAU) activities, and migration estimates often underestimate the reality of your business to sound appealing. You’ll also need to build, manage, and maintain custom software to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Furthermore, you’ll need to invest in niche solutions to compensate for the platform’s gaps.
The reality is that consumers, particularly Gen Z, engage with digital channels in ways that Salesforce Marketing Cloud isn’t ideally suited to manage. The modern marketing landscape demands a more agile, flexible, and customer-centric approach.
The choice between Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Braze depends on your specific needs and priorities. If your focus is on mobile engagement, real-time personalization, and a user-friendly platform, Braze is a strong contender. For many modern businesses, particularly those prioritizing agility, customer-centricity, and a best-of-breed approach, the composable stack, often with Braze at its core, represents the future of customer engagement.
At Massive Rocket, we are passionate about helping businesses navigate this evolving landscape and build the optimal marketing technology stack for their unique requirements.
