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Creating a birthday promotion via Braze

Birthdays are a great opportunity to give presents to someone so treating your customers with a discount on their birthday is a great way to increase brand loyalty. In this tutorial, let's see how to build a birthday promotion using Braze and Talon.One.

Let's imagine that we want to email a customer on their birthday via Braze. This email contains a coupon for the customer. The coupon's validity starts on the day the email is sent to the customer and ends 7 days after that date.

When the customer redeems the coupon within its validity period, they get 10% off on their whole order.

Talon.One requirements​

Ensure you already have an Application set up and that it contains a running campaign with the Coupons feature enabled.

You can edit the default format of the coupon codes in the campaign's Settings section.

Braze requirements​

We assume that you have set up your Braze account and that you have an active Braze campaign for which you want to generate coupon codes.

We also assume that the campaign is configured so that it sends an email to customers on their birthday.

See Creating an email campaign for more information.

Creating an API key in Talon.One​

In the Campaign Manager, create a Braze-specific API key:

  1. In your Talon.One Application, click Settings > Developer settings.
  2. Click Create API Key.
  3. For Do you want to use this API Key with a 3rd party service?, select Yes.
  4. From Platform, select Braze.
  5. Select an expiration date, and click Create API Key.
  6. Copy the key for later use.

    7. note
    You cannot display the API key after this step. If you lose the value, create a new API key.

We will use the API key in the Braze campaign template.

Creating the birthday coupon code​

To generate a coupon from Braze, we call the following endpoint:

POST coupon
https://integration.talon.one/braze/coupon

See API Docs

To trigger the endpoint, we must use Braze's Connected Content feature and Braze's Liquid tags.

Important

We assume that your customer profile in Braze contains a unique identifier that is equal to the customer integration ID in Talon.One. In this tutorial, we use ${user_id}. Ensure the user ID matches the integration ID in Talon.One.

  1. Open your Braze email campaign for editing.

  2. According to the Braze docs, add the following Connected Content call to the email body, where:

    • YOUR_DEPLOYMENT_URL is the base URL of your Talon.One deployment.
    • YOUR_APPLICATION_ID is the ID of your Application in Talon.One.
    • YOUR_CAMPAIGN_ID is the ID of your campaign in Talon.One.
    • YOUR_API_KEY is the API key you created.
    {% assign today = 'now' | date: "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ" %}
    {% assign todayinseconds = 'now' | date: "%s" %}
    {% assign seven_days = {{todayinseconds}} | plus: 604800 | date: "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ" %}

    {% capture postbody %}
      {"deploymentUrl": "YOUR_DEPLOYMENT_URL", "applicationId":YOUR_APPLICATION_ID, "campaignId":YOUR_CAMPAIGN_ID, "identifier":"{{campaign.${dispatch_id}}", "integrationId":"{{${user_id}}}", "startDate":"{{today}}", "expiryDate":"{{seven_days}}"}
    {% endcapture %}

    {% connected_content https://integration.talon.one/braze/coupon
       :headers {
          "Authorization": "ApiKey-v1 YOUR_API_KEY"
       }
       :method post
       :body {{postbody}}
       :content_type application/json
       :save result
    %}

    <p>Your coupon code is: {{result.Value}}</p>
    note

    result.Value must be written with a capital V, according to the response of the Create coupon endpoint.

  3. To test your request:

    1. Click Preview in the template editor.
    2. In Preview as User, click Select existing user and search for an existing user in Braze.
      You should see a coupon code.
    note

    A new coupon code is only generated when you use the preview function for the first time. This is because the dispatch_id isn't available at campaign creation. When your campaign is running, the call behaves as expected.

Your birthday coupon codes are now generated automatically when your campaign is running. The coupon start date is set as the time Braze sent the email. The coupon end date is the time Braze sent the email + 7 days.