Braze: How This Startup Grew Quickly Into A Marketing Automation Giant

By Dan Anderson ● Oct 9, 2018

Braze (formerly known as Appboy) is a rapidly growing marketing automation company that is known for being able to deliver personalized messaging experiences across email, apps, push notifications, etc.

“Coupled with ever increasing customer expectations, the relentless advance of technology is creating an immense challenge for brands to maintain and strengthen their customer relationships over time,” said Braze CEO and co-founder Bill Magnuson. “We’ve built Braze to be the backbone of customer engagement, helping brands combine our sophisticated technology with a fundamentally human approach that helps turn that challenge into opportunity.”

Braze currently has more than 500 digital-first and enterprise brand customers such as ABC, AccuWeather, Delivery Hero, KFC, Microsoft, Overstock, RetailMeNot, The Skimm, Venmo, and Walmart’s Jet.com. RetailMeNot’s Chief Marketing Officer Marissa Tarleton also pointed out that the product, marketing, and engineering teams at her company “unanimously chose” Braze to build human connections with customers at scale.

Every month, Braze powers tens of billions of messages to more than 1.5 billion monthly active users globally. And in Q2 2018, Braze processed 1 trillion engagement events, which enabled brands to take immediate action on customer insights and create personalized experiences.

Braze’s executive team have been constantly focused on how data, technology, and teams work together to create better experiences through messaging. Braze was built to be the backbone of customer engagement and helps brands enrich long-term relationships with customers. And the company has been recognized by Business Insider, Deloitte, Forbes, G2Crowd, and Inc. along the way.

Recently, Braze raised $80 million in Series E funding led by Meritech Capital Partners, which more than doubled its valuation to $850 million since raising $50 million in Series D about a year ago. Spark Capital, Cross Creek, Battery, and ICONIQ also participated in this round.

“Meritech invests in fast growing sector leaders offering new technology to large markets—and that is exactly what we see in Braze,” added Meritech Capital Partners co-founder Paul Madera. “We rarely hear customers rave enthusiastically over technology, but that is exactly what we heard regarding Braze. Their customers are passionate about the differentiated solution to cloud-based marketing, and their remarkably effective platform surpasses a prior generation of tools that no longer work.”

Braze has more than tripled its annual recurring revenue since the beginning of 2017. And the company increased its monthly email volume by 600%. Plus the company opened an office in Singapore to address the APAC market.