Sessions
With 75+ keynotes, breakouts, demos, masterclasses, and more, Forge is packed with opportunities to learn, connect, and be inspired. Explore the agenda preview to see the first wave of sessions and speakers, with fresh announcements rolling out weekly.
AI is reshaping how marketers work, but separating meaningful opportunities from the noise remains difficult. In this hands-on masterclass, George Khachatryan will explore the AI trends and tools that matter most to marketers today, guide attendees through applying AI to a real marketing workflow, and help them build a practical plan they can take back to their teams.
AI is reshaping how marketers work, but separating meaningful opportunities from the noise remains difficult. In this hands-on masterclass, George Khachatryan will explore the AI trends and tools that matter most to marketers today, guide attendees through applying AI to a real marketing workflow, and help them build a practical plan they can take back to their teams.
Every brand says it wants to be AI-ready. Few have actually rebuilt what's underneath to make that true. Saul Lopes, Head of Customer Marketing & Engagement at Compare the Market, walks through the real journey — not the highlight reel — of moving off a legacy CRM and into intelligent, AI-driven engagement. From rethinking the data foundation, to applying AI decisioning across real lifecycle marketing journeys, to building the team and operating model to sustain it, this session is a practitioner's blueprint for what it actually takes to modernize customer engagement at scale. Leave with a clearer view of where to start, what to fix first, and how to build a team that can grow with the technology.
BrazeAI™ Workshops are hands-on working sessions designed to help customers move from inspiration to implementation with Agent Console, Operator, and other BrazeAI™ tools. Participants collaborate directly with Braze facilitators across Solutions Consulting, Product, Success, and Learning to explore real-world use cases, build workflows, and gain practical experience building agentic marketing workflows in a supportive, interactive environment.
Designed for marketers, operators, strategists, and builders of all experience levels, the sessions focus on experimentation, problem-solving, and rapid iteration — no technical background required. Whether attendees arrive with a fully formed idea or simple curiosity about what's possible, the sessions are structured to help teams make meaningful progress quickly.
By the end of the experience, participants walk away with working concepts, actionable next steps, and a clearer understanding of how BrazeAI™ can support more personalized, efficient customer engagement at scale.
BrazeAI™ Workshops are hands-on working sessions designed to help customers move from inspiration to implementation with Agent Console, Operator, and other BrazeAI™ tools. Participants collaborate directly with Braze facilitators across Solutions Consulting, Product, Success, and Learning to explore real-world use cases, build workflows, and gain practical experience building agentic marketing workflows in a supportive, interactive environment.
Designed for marketers, operators, strategists, and builders of all experience levels, the sessions focus on experimentation, problem-solving, and rapid iteration — no technical background required. Whether attendees arrive with a fully formed idea or simple curiosity about what's possible, the sessions are structured to help teams make meaningful progress quickly.
By the end of the experience, participants walk away with working concepts, actionable next steps, and a clearer understanding of how BrazeAI™ can support more personalized, efficient customer engagement at scale.
Kickstart your Braze Certification journey with our most popular bootcamp, then take your Braze Certified Marketing Specialist exam for free while at Forge 2026.
Note: This bootcamp includes training only, and does not include time to take your exam. The Braze Certifications room will be open for you all three days of the event for you to walk in and take your exam for free - no pre-registration required!
Exam Overview:
50 Multiple Choice Questions
90 Minutes
60% Passing Score
Agenda Highlights:
Segmentation
Personalization
Campaign Creation
Channels
Customer Journey Orchestration
Reporting and Analytics
Preparation:
We suggest reviewing the Marketer Learning Path before the bootcamp.
Who Should Attend:
Marketing professionals aiming to certify their intermediate-level Braze knowledge and skills through the Braze Certified Marketing Specialist exam.
Kickstart your Braze Certification journey with our most popular bootcamp, then take your Braze Certified Marketing Specialist exam for free while at Forge 2026.
Note: This bootcamp includes training only, and does not include time to take your exam. The Braze Certifications room is open all three days of the event for you to walk in and take your exam for free - no pre-registration required!
Exam Overview:
50 Multiple Choice Questions
90 Minutes
60% Passing Score
Agenda Highlights:
Segmentation
Personalization
Campaign Creation
Channels
Customer Journey Orchestration
Reporting and Analytics
Preparation:
We suggest reviewing the Marketer Learning Path before the bootcamp.
Who Should Attend:
Marketing professionals aiming to certify their intermediate-level Braze knowledge and skills through the Braze Certified Marketing Specialist exam.
Prepare to become a Braze Certified Marketing Strategy Expert in this intensive bootcamp, blending theoretical learning with practical application to cover all exam competencies.
Note: We'll break for lunch from 12-1pm, then resume 1-2pm.
Note: This bootcamp includes training only. The Braze Certifications room is open all three days of the event for you to walk in and take your exam for free - no pre-registration required!
Agenda Highlights:
Braze and Your Tech Stack: Understanding Braze's role in your tech ecosystem.
Data Planning: Methods for importing data and planning strategies.
Lunch Break
User Personas and Journeys: Creating user personas and designing journeys.
Customer Experience and Orchestration: Strategies for multi-channel orchestration.
Data-Driven Messaging: Applying data-driven marketing actions.
Wrap-up and Q&A: Key takeaways and questions.
Preparation:
We suggest reviewing the Marketing Strategy Expert Learning Path.
Join our Practitioner Bootcamp to kickstart your Braze Certification journey and prepare for the Braze Certified Practitioner exam.
Note: This bootcamp includes training only, and does not include time to take your exam. The Braze Certifications room is open all three days of the event for you to walk in and take your exam for free - no pre-registration required!
Exam Overview:
30 Multiple Choice Questions
60 Minutes
70% Passing Score
Agenda Highlights:
Data Integration
Audience Segmentation
Cross-Channel Customer Journeys
Campaign Orchestration
Braze AI Features
Preparation:
We suggest reviewing the Practitioner Learning Path before the bootcamp.
Who Should Attend:
Marketing professionals aiming to enhance their Braze fundamentals and prepare for the Braze Certified Practitioner exam.
Join our Practitioner Bootcamp to kickstart your Braze Certification journey and prepare for the Braze Certified Practitioner exam.
Note: This bootcamp includes training only, and does not include time to take your exam. The Braze Certifications room will be open for you all three days of the event for you to walk in and take your exam for free - no pre-registration required!
Exam Overview:
30 Multiple Choice Questions
60 Minutes
70% Passing Score
Agenda Highlights:
Data Integration
Audience Segmentation
Cross-Channel Customer Journeys
Campaign Orchestration
Braze AI Features
Preparation:
We suggest reviewing the Practitioner Learning Path before the bootcamp.
Who Should Attend:
Marketing professionals aiming to enhance their Braze fundamentals and prepare for the Braze Certified Practitioner exam.
Ready to level up your Braze expertise in our newest bootcamp? This all-day intenseive is built to prepare you for the Braze Certified Technical Marketing Specialist exam.
Note: We'll break for lunch from 12-1pm.
Note: This bootcamp includes training only, and does not include time to take your exam. The Braze Certifications room is open all three days of the event for you to walk in and take your exam for free - no pre-registration required!
Exam Overview:
50 Multiple Choice Questions
90 Minutes
76% Passing Score
Agenda Highlights:
Data Architecture & Design
Technical Integration & SDK Implementation
Data Migration Strategy
REST API Best Practices
Advanced Use-Case Solutions
Preparation:
We suggest reviewing the Technical Marketing Specialist Learning Path.
Who Should Attend:
Technical Marketers, Technical Account Managers, and Solutions Architects aiming to certify their advanced-level Braze technical integration and data strategy skills.
We are living in a marketing era obsessed with efficiency.
With optimization. With dashboards. With shortcuts.
AI promises speed and lower costs. Consolidation promises scale. Performance marketing promises certainty. And yet, brands are getting weaker, work is getting safer and growth is getting harder.
That’s not a coincidence.
In this session, Fernando Machado, Chief Brand Officer for Chipotle and one of the most awarded marketers in the industry, challenges the idea that creativity is a “nice to have”. He exposes the traps brands keep falling into – over-optimising, under-imagining and confusing activity with impact – and sets out a new definition of creativity for an efficiency-obsessed world: creativity not as decoration, but as a strategic growth engine.
A bank brings card issuance data into Braze and asks Operator to build the activation journey, routing simple reissues one way and new signups down a benefits-led path matched to their card type.
A card issuer wants more spend without blowing its rewards budget. Each cardholder gets a different offer, category, and channel, with the incentive itself adjusted person by person to stay on target.
A mobile game reviews a lapsed player's history to figure out why they left, routes them into a different push depending on the reason, and tests the win-back email automatically.
In 2011, Bill Magnuson and Jon Hyman bet a company on a future that hadn't arrived yet. Fifteen years later, marketing is standing at the same fork.
Bill Magnuson, CEO and Cofounder of Braze, opens Forge 2026 with an honest read on what AI does and doesn't do for marketers. It won't hand you taste, a point of view, or a reason for anyone to care. What it is is a jetpack for your ambition, and ambition is the only edge that was ever really yours.
Jon Hyman, CTO and Cofounder of Braze, then takes the stage to present the Torchie Awards, celebrating the brands and marketers already turning that ambition into results. And because a night this big deserves an ending to match, comedian Jimmy O. Yang closes it out live.
Data is only as valuable as the decisions it drives. This session bridges Braze’s native reporting capabilities—Query Builder, Currents, dashboards—with the broader question of measurement strategy: what should you be tracking, why, and how do you turn it into action? We’ll cover how to build a reporting foundation that connects campaign performance to business outcomes, common pitfalls in attribution and KPI selection, and how to use Braze’s data tools to answer the questions your stakeholders are actually asking.
Data is only as valuable as the decisions it drives. This session bridges Braze’s native reporting capabilities—Query Builder, Currents, dashboards—with the broader question of measurement strategy: what should you be tracking, why, and how do you turn it into action? We’ll cover how to build a reporting foundation that connects campaign performance to business outcomes, common pitfalls in attribution and KPI selection, and how to use Braze’s data tools to answer the questions your stakeholders are actually asking.
Most people are only using a fraction of what BrazeAI™ Operator can actually do — and once you realize that, the next question is usually: what do I actually say to it? This session answers both. You'll see how Operator's reach across the dashboard keeps growing, and the real ways that changes your day-to-day work. WPP’s Paul Cater will share everyday experiences working with Operator as a genuine collaborator, not just a chatbot. We’ll also get specific about shifts in your approach to personalization, where Operator and Liquid do their best work together. You won't leave knowing more Liquid syntax. You'll leave knowing what's possible, and how to direct Operator to build it.
Colin Kelton served as the CMO for Vanguard, one of the largest financial institutions in the world. Drawing from his extensive experience, Colin will lead an interactive session so you can walk away with a framework and plan to modernize your marketing strategy. The session will focus on how modern technologies are impacting the five pillars of a sound strategy: brand marketing, performance marketing, measurement, technology, and employee development.
When your company’s product or service appears similar to your competitor’s offerings, how can you differentiate and get consumers to notice? In this enlightening and entertaining talk, Matthew Luhn, accomplished writer and Pixar story artist on the Toy Story films, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, UP, and Ratatouille, will share his methods and experiences working with Disney/Pixar and advising other Fortune 500 companies. Audiences will learn how to innovate, differentiate and stay relevant in today’s business world, creating more value and winning customer loyalty.
The Women in Leadership Brunch returns to Forge for a morning of connection, reflection, and celebration. Inspired by this year’s Forge theme, Made for This, we’ll take a moment to recognize the experiences, challenges, and strengths that have shaped us as leaders - and the lessons that have stayed with us along the way.
Connect with fellow women leaders and allies across the industry through meaningful conversation and shared experiences. Come ready to celebrate how far you’ve come, learn from those around you, and leave feeling inspired, connected, and confident.
Marketing teams have never been short on AI. They're short on execution. The work between an approved brief and a live campaign crosses a CMS, a DAM, an engagement platform, and a review process, and at every handoff someone carries it to the next tool, or files a ticket and waits. That's the execution gap, and it's why your segments outnumber the experiences you can actually build. This session makes the case for a governed execution layer that runs across the whole stack and ships the full variant set including how AWS cut page creation from ten hours to thirty minutes.
BrazeAI™ Workshops are hands-on working sessions designed to help customers move from inspiration to implementation with Agent Console, Operator, and other BrazeAI™ tools. Participants collaborate directly with Braze facilitators across Solutions Consulting, Product, Success, and Learning to explore real-world use cases, build workflows, and gain practical experience building agentic marketing workflows in a supportive, interactive environment.
Designed for marketers, operators, strategists, and builders of all experience levels, the sessions focus on experimentation, problem-solving, and rapid iteration — no technical background required. Whether attendees arrive with a fully formed idea or simple curiosity about what's possible, the sessions are structured to help teams make meaningful progress quickly.
By the end of the experience, participants walk away with working concepts, actionable next steps, and a clearer understanding of how BrazeAI™ can support more personalized, efficient customer engagement at scale.
BrazeAI™ Workshops are hands-on working sessions designed to help customers move from inspiration to implementation with Agent Console, Operator, and other BrazeAI™ tools. Participants collaborate directly with Braze facilitators across Solutions Consulting, Product, Success, and Learning to explore real-world use cases, build workflows, and gain practical experience building agentic marketing workflows in a supportive, interactive environment.
Designed for marketers, operators, strategists, and builders of all experience levels, the sessions focus on experimentation, problem-solving, and rapid iteration — no technical background required. Whether attendees arrive with a fully formed idea or simple curiosity about what's possible, the sessions are structured to help teams make meaningful progress quickly.
By the end of the experience, participants walk away with working concepts, actionable next steps, and a clearer understanding of how BrazeAI™ can support more personalized, efficient customer engagement at scale.
Discover how the Braze Customer Lifecycle Marketing team used BrazeAI Decisioning Studio™ Go to drive a record-breaking month of registrations and email engagement in July. Following a short re-introduction to Decisioning Studio Go, we will walk through the before, during, and after of the campaign: the six elements given to AI decisioning, the 53,475 variant combinations tested across 60,000 contacts, and the 272% lift in click rate and 235% lift in registration rate that followed. Walk away with a practical framework for choosing which elements to test, scoping agent-generated copy, and setting expectations for your own Decisioning Studio Go campaign.
Join Kamille from AMC Global Media to discover how Acorn TV’s "Murder Mystery May" campaign leveraged Braze Landing Pages and Canvas to create a hyper-personalized, five-page interactive experience. Learn how they captured double of their goal entries, managed complex user profile data to eliminate duplicates, and drove an incredible 32%+ subscriber CTOR.
You will walk away with actionable strategies to optimize campaigns mid-flight and build gamified journeys that successfully convert prospects, subscribers, and lapsed users alike.
A growth marketer connects their AI assistant directly to Braze, asks it to review a stalling onboarding flow, then has it make the fix and confirm the lift days later.
A bank is about to launch a new rewards card campaign. See an automated review catch a missing legal disclosure and a broken personalization fallback before either reaches a customer.
Upgrade pushes used to go to everyone on an account, kids included. See how targeting the primary holder and matching each trial user to the right upgrade journey fixes that.
A retail brand imports its Black Friday assets, builds a multi-day sale journey across email, RCS, and web banners with Operator, and keeps an eye on credit usage as weekend traffic spikes.
Most abandoned cart tests change one thing at a time. See every subject line, copy, and CTA combination tried at once, with volume shifting automatically toward whatever performs best.
A retail brand wants every undecided sign-up to become a first purchase. See an AI agent test subject lines, creative, and calls to action automatically, then keep running whatever's winning for each person.
DocMorris, Germany's leading digital pharmacy with 12.2M active customers, swapped a fragmented, campaign-driven stack for a real-time, app-first engagement model on Braze. With their partner sparkplant, they deployed AI agents that build 1:1 subject lines and editorial content from purchase history and external data (like regional pollen forecasts).All inside strict Rx-advertising and health-data guardrails. You'll see the architecture, the live use cases, and the hard numbers, what's working and driving revenue and what didn't work out. Three practical examples and live results.
Not an AI hype session, but the practical changes we've made to our operating model, experimentation, measurement, and how our teams work to become more AI-native while driving better business outcomes.
What does it take to build a CRM function that actually scales? Not just more headcount or more tools — but the right operating model to move fast, grow across brands, and keep owned channels at the center of how you engage customers.
In this session, Sarah Lands Ramrup, the CRM Strategy & Personalization Lead at Purina, shares how Purina evolved from a mobile-only Braze implementation to a full-platform, shared-service model running across their entire portfolio. She'll walk through the operating structure — internal ownership, agency partnerships, and scaled execution support — that lets their team move from idea to launch faster, across gamification, personalization, email migration, and AI-assisted execution.
This session will show how marketing gets done around Braze so that brands can maximize the full value of their investments.
Most brands engage only a fraction of their true audience because they can't recognize anonymous visitors. In this session, discover how Merkle and Braze close the identity gap by transforming unknown users into valuable customer profiles, creating richer data for personalization. Learn how BrazeAI Decisioning then turns those insights into 1:1 customer experiences across channels, offers, and messaging. See how Merkle brings identity, AI, and lifecycle strategy together to increase loyalty, recover abandoned journeys, and drive measurable business outcomes.
Most of your global customers check WhatsApp long before they ever open your email. Across Europe, Latin America, and Asia, it's where daily conversations happen with friends, family, and increasingly, brands. In this session, learn why leading global brands are adding WhatsApp to their mix, and hear real-world strategies from customers running promotional and transactional messaging across the lifecycle. Plus, see how to go further using Commerce, Flows, and two-way messaging to deliver immersive, conversational experiences that turn one-off chats into lasting relationships.
Aeroflow Health transformed patient communications by pairing Braze with the Snowflake Data Share. Before, marketers depended on backend engineers to pull lists and trigger ad-hoc communications. Now, through Braze and Snowflake integrations data flows directly into Snowflake, powering omni-channel dashboards and a communications hub that gives teams better visibility to patient experiences. Brian Munn, Director of Marketing Technology and Customer Engagement, will share how Aeroflow utilized these tools to break down siloed operational inefficiencies to give patients a better experience — and what's next for Aeroflow's partnership with Snowflake and Braze.
CRM has been through a lot over the past 20 years; automation promised speed, mobile put it in your pocket, and AI said it would do it for you. Each era left behind the brands still optimising for the last one.
Now with AI, we’ve watched businesses overcome technical bottlenecks, but we’ve also seen the organisational chaos that followed. Teams build assistants in isolation, prompts are duplicated, knowledge becomes fragmented, and no one knows which tools, outputs or workflows can be trusted. The answer isn’t simply more AI, it’s future proofing how it’s used.
In this session, SCHMACK shares a practical approach for scaling AI through three foundations: Knowledge, Capability and Governance. You'll learn how to create reusable AI systems instead of one-off experiments, how to scale AI and deliver at pace, and which measures demonstrate real business value.
Apple, Google, and Gmail are inserting AI layers that summarize, prioritize, and sometimes silence messages before customers ever see them. In this product learning session, Braze product and deliverability experts unpack what that means for marketers — from writing AI-legible copy to leaning on in-product channels like in-app messages and Content Cards — and share concrete tactics for staying visible as engagement shifts from customer-controlled to system-controlled.
Hear from Jon Hyman, CTO & Cofounder of Braze, as he showcases exactly how AI, data, and orchestration come together to help marketers act faster, decide smarter, and create experiences that actually land. Expect demos and previews of what's coming and what's already working.
You'll leave this keynote with more than inspiration. You'll leave with exactly what to do next.
Discover how GALE and PGA TOUR partnered with Braze to launch TOUR PASS, a fan engagement program that debuted at THE PLAYERS Championship and will evolve from an MVP into a scalable engagement platform. Learn how the team validated early success, expanded capabilities, and built a foundation for long-term loyalty. Attendees will leave with a practical framework they can apply to accelerate their own customer engagement and loyalty initiatives.
Pick up your Forge badge and get ready for the day ahead.
As customer expectations evolve, marketers need technology foundations that can adapt just as quickly. Join Panera and Epsilon for an inside look at how they developed a reusable component framework within Braze to simplify campaign execution, reduce technical debt, and scale personalization across the customer journey. Learn how this flexible architecture enabled faster responses to changing business needs and helped support Panera's Loyalty 2.0 transition without sacrificing speed, consistency, or customer experience.
Each year, the Torchie Awards spotlight the brands and teams pushing the boundaries of what's possible in customer engagement. This year's honorees rewrote the playbook for what AI-powered, real-time, and culturally-fluent engagement can achieve. In this session, we'll sit down with the 2026 recipients of the Torchies for AI in Action, Creative Excellence, Braze for Impact, and Campaign of the Year. Hear firsthand how they moved from concept to launch in record time, embraced experimentation over perfection, and used data, automation, and creativity to turn engagement into measurable business outcomes. From orchestrating complex, real-time decisions at scale to building infrastructure that responds in a crisis, from bending brand voice into unexpected new territory to turning transactions into deeper emotional investment, these stories prove that the biggest wins come from teams willing to take risks.
Explore Braze’s latest innovations in action. See our newest capabilities at work and learn how to apply them to drive stronger, more relevant customer engagement. Get a front-row look at the latest innovations across the Braze platform through live, in-dashboard demos, you’ll take a practical deep dive into new features, product updates, and what’s coming next—plus clear guidance on how to apply these enhancements in your own engagement strategies.
In the world of global entertainment, traditional linear CRM funnels crack under the pressure of real-time fan behavior. For Mnet, a premier global fandom platform, standard marketing automation wasn't enough to capture highly volatile, event-driven user journeys. This session shares the practical insights gained from moving away from static funnel tracking toward an agile, context-based CRM model. Learn how Mnet maps the unique psychology of global fandoms, triggers engagement based on live fan actions, and redefines CRM retention metrics for the modern attention economy.
This session will explore how AI is reshaping the design, operation, and governance of modern marketing technology ecosystems. It will consider where teams should invest, which capabilities should remain core to the existing stack, and where AI can deliver the greatest impact across speed, personalization, experimentation, decisioning, and operational efficiency.
What started as a simple idea — celebrating the studios, gyms, and instructors ClassPass members love — became a globally scaled, multi-channel campaign powered by Braze. In this session, ClassPass lifecycle marketers and designers walk through how they used Braze Canvas, in-app modals, targeted push notifications, and personalized email to orchestrate the annual Best of ClassPass Awards across six languages. The result: 120% YoY growth in voting participation and CTRs that beat every benchmark as well as a 2025 Braze Torchie Award win for Creative Excellence.
BrazeAI™ Workshops are hands-on working sessions designed to help customers move from inspiration to implementation with Agent Console, Operator, and other BrazeAI™ tools. Participants collaborate directly with Braze facilitators across Solutions Consulting, Product, Success, and Learning to explore real-world use cases, build workflows, and gain practical experience building agentic marketing workflows in a supportive, interactive environment.
Designed for marketers, operators, strategists, and builders of all experience levels, the sessions focus on experimentation, problem-solving, and rapid iteration — no technical background required. Whether attendees arrive with a fully formed idea or simple curiosity about what's possible, the sessions are structured to help teams make meaningful progress quickly.
By the end of the experience, participants walk away with working concepts, actionable next steps, and a clearer understanding of how BrazeAI™ can support more personalized, efficient customer engagement at scale.
BrazeAI™ Workshops are hands-on working sessions designed to help customers move from inspiration to implementation with Agent Console, Operator, and other BrazeAI™ tools. Participants collaborate directly with Braze facilitators across Solutions Consulting, Product, Success, and Learning to explore real-world use cases, build workflows, and gain practical experience building agentic marketing workflows in a supportive, interactive environment.
Designed for marketers, operators, strategists, and builders of all experience levels, the sessions focus on experimentation, problem-solving, and rapid iteration — no technical background required. Whether attendees arrive with a fully formed idea or simple curiosity about what's possible, the sessions are structured to help teams make meaningful progress quickly.
By the end of the experience, participants walk away with working concepts, actionable next steps, and a clearer understanding of how BrazeAI™ can support more personalized, efficient customer engagement at scale.
BrazeAI™ Workshops are hands-on working sessions designed to help customers move from inspiration to implementation with Agent Console, Operator, and other BrazeAI™ tools. Participants collaborate directly with Braze facilitators across Solutions Consulting, Product, Success, and Learning to explore real-world use cases, build workflows, and gain practical experience building agentic marketing workflows in a supportive, interactive environment.
Designed for marketers, operators, strategists, and builders of all experience levels, the sessions focus on experimentation, problem-solving, and rapid iteration — no technical background required. Whether attendees arrive with a fully formed idea or simple curiosity about what's possible, the sessions are structured to help teams make meaningful progress quickly.
By the end of the experience, participants walk away with working concepts, actionable next steps, and a clearer understanding of how BrazeAI™ can support more personalized, efficient customer engagement at scale.
Most marketing orgs have AI access but few have an operating model for it. This talk lays out what an AI-native marketing organization actually looks like: where CMOs are embedding agents, which work stays human, and how to build a team whose capacity isn't rationed by who happened to get a license. It also covers the failure mode nobody advertises: tokenmaxxing, where pilots burn spend without shipping real work, and what separates orgs building brands from orgs still working backlogs.
A global Shopify retailer localizes pricing by region, triggers the right follow-up the moment a shopper looks ready to buy, and turns post-purchase ratings into a review prompt or a discount code.
An investing app surveys new users on their money goals, reaches stalled sign-ups over WhatsApp, personalizes every message that follows, and makes sure a real-time trade alert always outranks a nudge.
A growth marketer connects their AI assistant directly to Braze, asks it to review a stalling onboarding flow, then has it make the fix and confirm the lift days later.
A global quick-service brand rolls out new menu items across ten countries at once. See every localized email and push checked against brand voice, allergen rules, and pricing before it sends.
A bank has an account alert and a promo offer competing for the same customer on the same day. See how the right one gets decided automatically, every time, no spreadsheet required.
A streaming brand wants former subscribers back. Watch an AI agent test subject lines, creative, CTAs, and send timing across a win-back audience, then double down on what actually gets people to return
Today, passive consumption is out; active, participatory fan ecosystems are in. Drawing on real-world success stories we’ll discover how these powerhouse brands leverage Braze to move from acquisition to deep, personalized retention. We'll explore community building, co-creation, and content-to-commerce. Learn real-world strategies to architect real-time engagement and transform audiences into passionate, revenue-generating communities.
In a world of infinite scroll and shrinking attention spans, the most sophisticated brands aren't just competing for clicks — they're building ecosystems of devotion. Four women leading digital strategy at some of America's most-loved consumer brands share how they're turning passive audiences into deeply engaged communities, and what it takes to drive that transformation from the VP seat.
Sonos runs a global email program across 27 countries with a lean brand team — a recipe for bottlenecks. In this session, Libby Croak from Sonos shares how they deployed Denada, a Braze Certified Technology Partner, to cut production timelines from 41 to 12 days, double output, and hand campaign managers the power to build fully on-brand emails and in-app messages in Braze — without waiting on creative. You'll leave with a real-world playbook for scaling creative through AI.
Bilt's members don't just get email newsletters. They get merchant offers ranked for their location, behavior, and eligibility by an AI recommendation model, then assembled at send time with Braze Connected Content: live reservation slots, real class schedules, the exact offer at each merchant, and personalized copy. Learn how Bilt leverages real-time data and AI to reward and retain customer loyalty.
Join McDonald’s & Publicis Groupe for a roundtable on the next frontier of McDonald’s CRM in the US market. Discuss their shift from a calendar-driven marketing approach to a customer-first strategy, with insights into the challenges and wins along the way. Learn practical tactics for breaking siloes between lifecycle, loyalty and campaign teams as well as hear how advances in data hygiene, martech and an iterative test-and-learn philosophy are powering more relevant, effective CRM for a connected future.
In a world where audiences have infinate content choices, the brands that win are the ones that make every interaction feel like it was made for you. We'll walk through real use cases, from AI generated personalized show recaps and highlight reels tailored to your favorite team, to real-time smart recommendatinos during live events, and show how these creative campaigns drive measurable engagement, retention, and ilfetime value. This isn't about blasting push notifications, it's about telling each fan their story, in their moment at scale.
Behind every campaign you've ever admired is a person who decided to build it before anyone told them how. Astha Malik, Chief Business Officer at Braze, closes Forge 2026 by making the case for the marketer over the machine and why the people in this room decide what customer engagement becomes next. There's no playbook for this moment, because it’s yours to write.
Seth Matlins will then join to lead a CMO panel exploring the shifts shaping the industry today, from AI and technology to the changing customer expectations, brand, and growth.
Finally, Astha will bring the “Made for This” theme full circle with a headliner panel exploring how the challenges marketers have solved, the campaigns they’ve launched, and the technologies they’ve embraced have prepared them to lead what comes next.
Mystery Box is a post-payment gamification experience built entirely inside the Deuna app. After completing a qualifying purchase at a participating merchant, users receive a real-time in-app trigger — a mystery box animation — and discover an instant reward redeemable on the spot. No waiting.
Pick up your Forge badge and get ready for the day ahead.
SMS is one of the most underutilized channels in a marketer’s toolkit—not because brands don’t want it, but because they struggle to design experiences that are strategic, compliant, and scalable. In this session, we unpack how Exact Sciences transformed a fragmented reorder journey into a conversational experience using Braze. Plus, how the solution began linear, but evolved through MMS, RCS, and future agentic conversation experiences.
You’ll leave with practical frameworks for strategy, execution, and measurement—plus a blueprint for turning text messages into measurable business outcomes.
Low email engagement, poor data quality, and compliance risks plaguing your B2B program? Discover how TELUS Digital helped Ohio Liquor (OHLQ) migrate to Braze and implement a custom integration that unified contact data, powered sophisticated segmentation and personalization, and dramatically improved messaging deliverability. Walk away with concrete implementation strategies, B2B-specific segmentation approaches, and the practical tactics used to transform communications across their network of nearly 500 retail stores in Ohio.
Personalization sounds simple until you try to do it at the scale of millions of fans, customers, or users — each expecting a moment that feels made just for them. This panel brings together marketers from marquee global brands to unpack how they moved from broad segmentation to real-time, individualized engagement without breaking their systems, their teams, or their trust with audiences.
Your AI can make a confident, personalized decision and still get it wrong when it's missing context. Learn about the context advantage in marketing and leave with actionable takeaways for your data team to build smarter campaigns.
In this 15-minute talk, you'll get three real-world workflows for putting your Braze data in context with Snowflake: Braze engagement enriched with the rest of your customer and business data, then smarter decisions sent right back into Braze to act on. You'll leave with three actionable takeaways for your data team.
Over the past four years, Screwfix and B&Q transformed their customer engagement by migrating from legacy systems to a unified, modern ecosystem powered by Braze, Databricks, and Talon.One. What began as a UK-focused rollout has evolved into a scalable multi-banner strategy—driving 1:1 personalization, powering Screwfix Rewards, and elevating service communications. In this session, learn how clear vision, strong leadership, and cross-team alignment delivered this step-change and unlocked enterprise-wide customer value.
What really does occupy the mind of CMOs today, and what's expected of them? Whether it's brand, growth, or creative, AI has fundamentally changed the marketing function forever.
In this session, Chris Taylor, Chief Growth Officer at Left Lane Capital, and Neal Behrend, SVP Growth Advisory at Insight Partners, will share insights and real life examples from helping dozens of CMOs and Marketing Leaders across their vast venture portfolios.
Both panelists have impressive operator backgrounds from well-known brands and are now spending their time advising CMOs across industries and company sizes.
At Luxury Escapes, CRM and lifecycle marketing don't sit in the marketing org. That was a deliberate leadership decision, and one that's paid off. Shay, CTO/COO of one of Australia's fastest-growing travel platforms, shares the philosophy behind embedding customer engagement within Technology & Product: why personalisation at scale demands engineering velocity, how AI and data become genuinely strategic when the right teams own them, and what this means for the future of marketing leadership. This session is for leaders asking whether their org structure is keeping pace with their ambitions.