Braze Campaigns: Frequency Capping
Pop Quiz: How many Frequency Capping Rules can you set up in a single Braze Workspace?
🗣️ WATCH FULL YOUTUBE VIDEO HERE 🗣
[Braze-mas 2023, Day 21]
What’s up everyone, my name is Allan, Founder and Consultant at For Now Marketing, and welcome to Day 21 of Braze-mas 2023!
Before we get started, if you have any questions, whether you are currently using Braze or considering using Braze, please feel free to reach out! You can find these addresses and more in the Youtube description below.
Frequency Capping
Yesterday, we talked about Campaign Re-Eligibility, and I’m sure you couldn’t help but wonder the feature that lives right below the Re-Eligibility settings: Frequency Capping. Let’s talk about Frequency Capping today, what it is, where to set it up, and what your capabilities are.
Let’s get started!
Dashboard Navigation
So back on the Campaign Builder, under page 2, Schedule Delivery, all the way at the bottom in the Delivery Controls section, we see: “Frequency Capping, You have not created any Frequency Capping rules.”
We can click “Manage frequency capping rules” to get to the Frequency Cap page in Braze, and you can also go to Settings → Frequency Capping Rules under the middle, Workspace Settings column.
Frequency Capping Definition
So before we look at the setup page, let’s hover over this tooltip, which says: “Set Frequency Cap rules to control the volume of messages that your users will receive and avoid overwhelming your audience.”
So the brand can literally set a cap for how frequently they message their users, and Braze allows us to set separate rules for each channel. Let’s check out what that looks like.
Frequency Capping Setup
So here we are, on the Frequency Capping page. Right now, I have no rules set up, and it says “Add rules to limit the frequency at which users receive different types of message”, so let’s go ahead and click “Add Rule”.
Frequency
The first field we get is the frequency number. Send no more than x messages, and we get to set that frequency number right here.
By the way, there’s really no magic number for the right amount of frequency; every industry is different, and every user base might have different expectations for the number of messages they receive for each channel. We always encourage to experiment, learn, and iterate!
Channel
The next dropdown is where we choose the channel. The first and default option is for all channels. It simply just says “campaigns / canvas steps of any type”. If you click the dropdown, you should see all the available channels in your dashboard, so you can set channel-specific Frequency Capping rules.
Now, we get some additional information when we choose the all-channel option: it says that Frequency Capping rules will be applied to Webhooks, Push, and Emails, but not to In-App Messages and User Update Canvas Steps, so this is good information to know.
All or Tag
The next dropdown, our options are: “from all campaigns/canvas steps” or “with specific tag”. Now you actually need to already have tags existing in your dashboard to see the second “with specific tag” option, so I’ve added two high-level tags for now, “marketing” and “transactional”.
The first option applies this Frequency Capping rule to all Campaigns and Canvases in your dashboard. However, you do have the option to opt out of Frequency Capping rules for each specific Campaign and Canvas, so even if you do choose this “all” option, you still have some flexibility.
I like the tag option because it helps us think about our Campaign and Canvas efforts in a more organized way, having to keep in mind which tags are appropriate for which Campaigns or Canvases, and how we might want to set a Frequency Cap at the tag level.
Time Frame
Lastly, we set the time frame, by adding an integer and choosing minutes, days, or weeks.
Multiple Rules
Notice that every addition rule that we add, they get added on an AND basis. That means that Braze will make sure that every single rule is respected when messaging your users.
Say for example, I have these two rules set up:
1. Send no more than 10 campaigns / canvas steps of any type from all campaigns/canvas steps to a user every 1 week and
2. Send no more than 5 email campaigns / canvas steps from all campaign/canvas steps to a user every 1 week
This means that even if a user only received 3 emails in 1 week, if they’ve received more than 7 other messages, like push or SMS, during the same week, then they’ve hit their first rule already, and they will not be eligible to receive anymore emails for the rest of the week.
Additional Information
Here are some important callouts from the Braze Documentation:
- This time frame can be measured in minutes, days, weeks (seven days), or months, with a maximum duration of 30 days.
- You can add up to 10 rules per workspace
- Global frequency capping is scheduled based on the user’s time zone, and is calculated by calendar days, not 24-hour periods. For example, if you set up a frequency capping rule of sending no more than one campaign a day, a user may receive a message at 11 pm in their local time zone and they would be eligible to receive another message an hour later.
- With frequency capping by tag, rules can be set on the main and nested tags, so Braze will take into account all tags. For example, if you’ve selected to use the main tag A to frequency cap, we’ll also include information in all the nested tags (for example, tags B and C) when determining the limit.
- Canvases are tagged at the Canvas level, as opposed to tagging by component. So, each Canvas component will inherit all of the Canvas level tags.
Campaign Setup
Lastly, now that I have some Frequency Capping rules set up, let’s revisit the Campaign Builder page. Frequency Capping will be turned on by default, and as I mentioned earlier, we have the option to opt-out of Frequency Capping for each Campaign, meaning this Campaign will not be following the Frequency Capping rules we set up earlier.
Most transactional Campaigns do not follow Frequency Capping rules to make sure that all users receive all the messages that they should.
Thank You!
That’s it for Day 21.
If you have any questions, please share them in the comments. We’re happy to help! 🙏
If you learned something from this video, please subscribe for more awesome Braze videos in the future!
Thank you for watching, and see you next time!
allan@fornowmarketing.com
fornowmarketing.com
