Braze in Action: A Step-By-Step Guide for Loyalty Teams in Travel & Hospitality

In partnership with Braze, this article builds on insights from the latest Melting Points report by their 427° Innovation Lab.

For travel and hospitality brands, points-based loyalty programs are more than just perks — they’re often the most important means through which brands drive repeat business, reward engagement, and deepen customer relationships. But when points go unredeemed, both brand and customer miss out.

That’s where strategic, personalized content comes in.

At WillowTree, we help brands activate untapped loyalty potential by partnering with Braze — a leading customer engagement platform — to build smart, scalable campaigns.

Defining The Use Case

This article showcases a real-world use case: a personalized promotion for loyalty members with an unclaimed balance of reward points (e.g., 120K points). The campaign leverages a dynamic product feed with Braze Content Cards, paired with proactive email and push notifications, to encourage redemption and drive incremental purchases.

We will show you how Braze’s robust feature set - from segmentation to channel preference logic - can be leveraged to turn passive point holders into active brand advocates. Simple enough to quickly and efficiently deploy campaigns and flexible enough to allow for nearly endless customization through advanced features, Braze is an incredibly powerful platform that can elevate the customer experience for travel brands.

Whether you're exploring loyalty strategies or want to see the power of Braze in action, this step-by-step guide delivers both inspiration and technical clarity on the path to implementation.

What You’ll Find Valuable in This Use Case

This isn’t just a redemption campaign — it’s a strategic framework for how to use point balance as a behavioral signal, personalize at scale, and automate what used to be manual. If you’re managing a loyalty program or tasked with increasing engagement among high-value members, here’s what stands out:

• It targets real opportunity, not just status. Rather than segmenting by tier or tenure, this campaign focuses on actual point balance — giving you a clean, actionable audience that’s ready to convert.
• ‍It creates visibility where customers already are. With persistent Content Cards placed directly in the app — on the home screen and in a promotion feed — customers won’t need to open an email to see what’s available.
• It’s deeply personalized, but fully automated. Channel preferences are honored, redemption behavior is tracked, and users who requalify get re-included — all without manual intervention.
• ‍It respects the moment. Messages are sent once, at the right (local) time, and only to users who haven’t already engaged — ensuring communication adds value, not clutter.
• ‍It makes loyalty feel earned and exclusive. When you offer aspirational redemptions only to those who have enough points to claim them, you reinforce the value of earning — and deepen the emotional payoff of being a loyal guest.

For marketers, this use case offers a playbook that’s both practical and inspiring — a way to activate loyalty redemption, delight customers, and let your tech stack do the heavy lifting.

Step-by-Step Execution in Braze

Now that we’ve covered the strategic “why” and the practical “what,” let’s get into the “how.” Below is a walkthrough of how this loyalty promotion is executed in Braze — from identifying qualified users to deploying personalized content and messaging at scale.

Each part of this journey leverages native Braze capabilities, keeping the logic flexible and the experience automated.

1. Canvas Entry Logic: Targeting High-Point Loyalty Members

• Schedule: The Canvas is scheduled to evaluate eligible users daily at 1:00 AM local time.
  
• Audience: Users must have a current point balance of 120,000 or more. This can be managed via a custom attribute (e.g. loyalty_points_balance) or real-time event-based calculation.‍
• Exit criteria: Users exit the Canvas automatically if their point balance drops below 120,000, ensuring that only eligible users remain active within the journey.

2. Triggering In-App Content: Persistent Cards with Smart Removal

Upon entering the Canvas, the user triggers four in-app Content Cards:

Card 1

• Placement: App home screen
  
• Content: High-visibility card promoting the vacation offer
  
• CTA: Deep link to the promotion feed
  

Cards 2–4

• ‍Placement: Promotion feed‍
• Content: One card per destination vacation package‍
• Behavior: Each card includes a deep link to a native Product Detail Page (PDP) within the app. These PDPs are tailored to the destination and include full package details, redemption requirements, imagery, and terms and conditions.
  

Removal event‍

• Each card includes a removal trigger tied to a custom event (e.g., redeemed_points) where the remaining point balance falls below 120,000.
• This ensures the offer disappears if the user is no longer eligible — keeping the experience relevant.
  

3. Timing Logic: Delay Step to Align Messaging with Morning Behavior

In a delay step — after Content Cards load, users wait in a delay for 6 hours, aligning outreach to roughly 7:00 AM local time. This timing is optimized for visibility and relevance — catching users early in the day when they’re most likely to explore travel or rewards content.

4. Audience Path: Filtering by Behavior and Channel Preference

After the delay, users pass through a decision split and audience path that filters based on:

Engagement behavior

‍If a user has already interacted with any of the content cards, they are filtered out to avoid redundant messaging.

Channel preference logic‍

• Users with a custom attribute (e.g., preferred_channel = email) receive an email.
• All others default to a push notification.
• Both include deep links to the promotion feed for seamless navigation.
  

5. Message Logic: Deliver Once Per User

To avoid spamming or over-messaging:

• Each user receives only one message (email or push) during their Canvas lifetime, regardless of how many times they re-enter.
• The re-entry logic exists to refresh the Content Cards (e.g., if the user earns enough points to requalify), but does not trigger another message.

Evolving the Use Case with Advanced Braze Features

The campaign outlined above offers a strong foundation — but it’s just the beginning. For brands looking to build even more personalized and scalable loyalty experiences, Braze offers advanced features that unlock powerful next-level iterations.

Here’s how this use case can evolve:

Tiered Promotions Based on Points Balance

Rather than a single 120K threshold, you can introduce multiple tiers of rewards — for example:

• 80K points → 2-night stay at select hotels
• 120K points → premium destination packages
• 200K points → luxury, all-inclusive getaways

Braze’s segmentation and Canvas branching logic allow you to define these thresholds and serve distinct experiences to each segment — all within a single campaign.

Dynamic Offer Catalog Powered by Custom Attributes

Using Braze’s Connected Content, you can dynamically populate Content Cards and messages with personalized offers based on each user’s point balance.

This approach enables:

• Flexible offer configuration without creating separate cards for every threshold
• Real-time updates to reward availability or redemption options
• More streamlined testing and version control

Liquid Logic to Simplify Workflows and Scale Personalization

Braze’s Liquid templating allows you to dynamically adjust messaging, Content Card copy, CTAs, and imagery based on each user's data — such as their point balance, past redemptions, or location.

This removes the need to create separate campaigns for each user segment and allows for true one-to-one personalization at scale.

With these advanced techniques, brands can transform a static loyalty offer into a responsive, data-driven experience that evolves with each customer — all without overcomplicating campaign operations.

Conclusion: Driving Impact with the Right Strategy and Stack

At WillowTree, we believe loyalty is a powerful lever for growth. And when you pair a smart, data-driven use case with the right tools and expertise, that lever moves quickly.

This use case shows how Braze can bring a loyalty experience to life — personalized, automated, and fully integrated into your customer journey. From segmentation to content deployment, channel orchestration to re-engagement, it’s a blueprint for how hospitality brands can drive real business impact with their loyalty investment.

If you're looking to unlock the full potential of Braze or just want to explore how points-based promotions can move the needle for your brand, we’d love to partner with you. As certified Braze experts, we help marketing teams turn strategy into systems — and customers into advocates.

Let’s build something unforgettable.