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Braze loyalty campaigns work when four choices are made together: how programme data arrives, which entry type starts each journey, how often a member can re-enter, and which message wins when a frequency cap fills. This playbook takes those decisions in order and finishes with a hypothetical worked example you can adapt to your own programme.
Key Takeaways
- Braze offers three delivery routes: scheduled, action-based and API-triggered, and describes action-based delivery as effective for achievement-based messages.
- By default Braze sends to a user only once, so re-eligibility has to be turned on, up to 720 days for a campaign.
- Do not use the trigger as the audience filter in an action-based Canvas, or the member may never enter.
- Braze checks the frequency cap before quiet hours, and quiet hours hold a message instead of aborting it.
- Message Prioritization lets business importance decide which opted-in messages win, but API-triggered sends do not take part.
- We recommend agreeing the message ranking with the programme owner before the first Canvas is built.
What does a loyalty campaign need from the programme underneath it?
Braze documents loyalty platform integrations on its partner pages. One of them shows the common pattern. The loyalty platform sends member data to Braze as attributes, events and purchases, and you use the synced data for segmentation, personalisation and triggers.
The same page asks you to confirm that the external ID it sends matches the one Braze already holds for each person. If the two differ, it says to align identifiers with the partner before any data syncs.
Treat this as the first gate for any loyalty work. A mismatched identifier leaves one member with two profiles, and no campaign setting can repair tier data that is split across them. Our customer data management service covers identity resolution and deduplication logic for teams in that position.
Which entry type fits each loyalty moment?
Braze offers three ways to deliver a message: scheduled, action-based and API-triggered. In a Canvas the same idea is called the entry type. Braze describes action-based delivery as very effective for transactional or achievement-based messages, which fits reward moments well.
| Loyalty moment | Entry type | Why it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome after enrolment | Action-based | Starts when the member completes the enrolment event |
| Tier change or points milestone | Action-based or API-triggered | Starts on an event, or on a call from the programme platform |
| Recurring points statement | Scheduled | Canvas entry can repeat daily, weekly or monthly |
| Lapsed member reminder | Scheduled | The lapsed user template checks for lapsed users daily |
API-triggered delivery lets you manage copy, multivariate testing and re-eligibility rules in the Braze dashboard while your own systems fire the trigger. Braze's Canvas outlines also list a new loyalty member onboarding journey among their examples.
Our rule of thumb is simple. Use API-triggered entry when the programme platform holds the truth about the moment, such as a tier calculation that runs overnight.
How do Braze loyalty campaigns handle re-eligibility?
By default, Braze sends a message to a user only once, even if they re-qualify several times. Re-eligibility has to be turned on separately. For campaigns, the maximum re-eligibility time is 720 days, and Braze calculates every window in seconds rather than calendar days.
Re-entry has a catch for loyalty. When a member enters a Canvas a second time, the steps they received on the first pass are not visible to the new journey, so the same message can arrive again. Braze suggests blocking re-entry, setting re-eligibility to the maximum duration of the Canvas, or logging receipt with a User Update step as a custom attribute you can filter on.
We set the window to the shortest gap you would accept between two sends of the same reward message. A tier upgrade that can happen twice in a year deserves a window shorter than a year. A one-off welcome deserves no re-entry at all.
Why do tier-change triggers sometimes miss members?
Braze warns against using the same trigger as the audience filter in an action-based Canvas, for example a changed attribute or a custom event. A race condition can leave the member outside the audience at the moment they perform the trigger, so they never enter.
A tier change is the classic case. If the trigger is the tier attribute changing, do not also filter the entry audience on the new tier. Filter on something stable, such as programme membership.
Timestamps matter too. Braze evaluates a delay from the timestamp sent with the custom event. If that timestamp is backdated, an action-based Canvas can send earlier than expected.
Programme platforms that sync in batches are the likely source of backdated stamps, so check what your platform sends before launch.
How do frequency caps and quiet hours decide whether a reward message arrives?
Frequency capping is switched on by default when new campaigns are created. It counts by calendar day in the user's time zone instead of in rolling 24-hour periods. In-app messages and Content Cards do not count toward caps, and aborted messages do not count either.
Order matters. Braze checks the cap when a campaign sends or when a member reaches a Canvas Message step, before quiet hours. If the member is already at cap, Braze skips the send and does not hold it for quiet hours.
Quiet hours work differently. They apply in each user's local time zone, and Braze holds the message and delivers it after the window ends. Quiet hours are not an abort, because aborting discards the message entirely.
You can switch frequency capping off for a particular campaign when it must always attempt to send. Braze names transactional messages and legal notifications as examples.
Keep that override for a very small set of loyalty sends, such as a notice that a reward is about to expire. Promotional loyalty messages should sit under the cap like everything else.
What does Message Prioritization change for loyalty?
A cap decides how many messages a member gets. It does not decide which ones. Braze notes that a promotion sent earlier can use up the room that a loyalty reward would have needed later that day.
Message Prioritization addresses this. It lets business importance decide which opted-in messages win the limited space, where send time used to decide. The release notes list it with status ga, dated 15 Oct 2026, so check the current documentation before you build on it.
Three documented boundaries shape the plan. API-triggered campaigns and Canvases do not take part in prioritisation, and campaigns that send on more than one channel cannot be opted in. A message that loses can be retried the next day if it has a retry window, and is aborted if it does not.
The Braze page suggests one planning question: if a user can receive only one message today, which one should it be? A loyalty reward for long-standing members sits near the top of that list for the programmes we would design, though that ranking is a business decision and not a Braze rule.
What does the lapsed user template show about loyalty win-back?
Braze's lapsed user template is a useful reference because its defaults are explicit. They are not targets for your own programme, but they show which controls a win-back journey needs.
| Control | Template default | Why it matters for loyalty |
|---|---|---|
| Entry audience | Users who have not used the app in over 30 days | Defines "lapsed" in one place |
| Re-entry | After four weeks | Stops a member entering again straight away |
| Quiet hours | Send at next available time | Holds a reward instead of losing it |
The template also applies a frequency cap to messages tagged Lapsing and Retention, so a win-back journey cannot crowd out other messages. Tagging is a cheap way to give the cap something to count.
How would the decisions play out for a hypothetical retailer?
Take a hypothetical retailer with three tiers. Its loyalty platform sends tier changes to Braze as events. This is an illustration, with no client work or CustomerIK delivery data behind it.
The team starts with the moments and leaves channels until later, so a tier upgrade becomes an action-based Canvas that enters on the tier-change event. The entry audience filters on programme membership, never on the new tier, to avoid the race condition. Re-eligibility is set to the maximum duration of the Canvas, so a member who is downgraded and upgraded again does not receive the same message twice in one journey.
The monthly points statement is scheduled and counts toward the email cap, and the lapsed reminder reuses the template pattern with its own entry audience and a quiet hours rule that sends at the next available time. The team then ranks three categories: tier and reward messages first, seasonal promotions second, partner offers third. Reward-expiry notices bypass the cap, and nothing else does.
The sequence is the point. Moments first, entry types second, re-entry third, caps fourth, ranking last. Reversing it usually means rebuilding journeys after the first cap collision.
How does this connect to the rest of the programme?
Loyalty journeys sit on top of programme mechanics, and our guide to automating loyalty programmes with points, tiers and offers covers that layer. A lapsed member is a retention problem, so win-back campaigns in Braze shares much of the logic above.
For the wider picture, read customer retention strategies in Braze. Loyalty messages often span channels, which is where multichannel engagement campaigns matters. Tier-aware targeting depends on audience segmentation in Braze, and the events that trigger rewards depend on user event tracking.
For loyalty work in practice, read our case study on migrating a multi-brand rewards programme, which covers how data attributes and events were structured before campaigns were rebuilt. Our case study on consolidating duplicate guest profiles covers how booking, tier, language and consent data were brought into one profile.
What should you check before launch?
- Confirm the external ID from the programme platform matches the ID Braze holds.
- Choose an entry type for each loyalty moment and write it down.
- Set re-eligibility on purpose for every Canvas, never by default.
- Make sure no action-based trigger is also an audience filter.
- Decide which sends bypass the cap, and keep that list short.
- Look up a test user to confirm they match the audience criteria.
As a Braze implementation partner, CustomerIK recommends agreeing the message ranking with the programme owner before the first Canvas is built, because that ranking is a commercial decision the campaign team should not make alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can a loyalty Canvas send to the same member more than once?
Yes, if you turn on re-eligibility. By default Braze sends to a user only once, and the longest window for a campaign is 720 days.
2. Do in-app messages count toward a frequency cap?
No, Braze states that in-app messages and Content Cards are not counted as or toward caps.
3. Which entry type suits a tier-change message?
Action-based entry is the usual fit because it starts when the member completes an event. API-triggered entry suits cases where the programme platform decides the moment.
4. Does Message Prioritization apply to API-triggered loyalty sends?
No, Braze documents that API-triggered campaigns and Canvases do not take part in prioritisation, so plan their cap impact separately.
5. What happens to a message held by quiet hours?
Braze holds it and delivers it when quiet hours end. It is checked against frequency caps again at that point.
Sources
- Braze, Re-eligibility for campaigns and Canvas. Retrieved 21 Oct 2026.
- Braze, Rate limiting and frequency capping. Retrieved 21 Oct 2026.
- Braze, Quiet hours. Retrieved 21 Oct 2026.
- Braze, Delivery and entry types. Retrieved 21 Oct 2026.
- Braze, Create a Canvas. Retrieved 21 Oct 2026.
- Braze, Message Prioritization. Retrieved 21 Oct 2026.
- Braze, Lapsed user Canvas template. Retrieved 21 Oct 2026.
- Braze, Canvas outlines. Retrieved 21 Oct 2026.
- Braze, GRAVTY Loyalty Platform integration page. Retrieved 21 Oct 2026.
- Braze, Braze release notes. Retrieved 21 Oct 2026.
- Written by CustomerIK, a Braze implementation partner.
CustomerIK is a Braze implementation partner working across onboarding, technical integration, marketing operations and customer data management.
If you are planning a loyalty programme on Braze and want entry types, re-entry rules and message ranking agreed before the first Canvas is built, let's talk.
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