Braze and Waseda University Consumer Behavior Research Institute Hold Interim Report Meeting for Industry-Academia Collaboration Project
Braze and Waseda University held an interim report meeting for their marketing research project. They presented findings overturning common sense, such as crying emojis increasing CTRs by 1.26 times.
📋 Article Processing Timeline
- 📰 Published: March 31, 2026 at 19:00
- 🔍 Collected: April 1, 2026 at 13:39 (18h 39m after Published)
- 🤖 AI Analyzed: April 22, 2026 at 02:05 (492h 25m after Collected)
Braze, a customer engagement platform provider, announced that it has begun a demonstration experiment in the marketing field in collaboration with the Waseda University Comprehensive Research Organization, Consumer Behavior Research Institute (Director: Tsuyoshi Moriguchi). About one year after the announcement, an "interim report meeting" was held to share the progress of each research theme.
This project is deeply connected to the "Braze Cares" initiative, which connects companies and universities and aims to contribute to society through theorization. Centered around Ken Konno (Principal Customer Success Manager at Braze), the activity is expanding while increasing the number of participating companies in the joint research. For corporate marketing departments, theorizing insights based on actual data makes it easier to prioritize investments, bringing a huge benefit of maximizing ROI. On the other hand, for the university side, theorization utilizing actual data held by companies is strongly demanded in the recent academic world, and we believe that Braze bridging this industry-academia gap has immense social significance.
While setting the goals of theorization, paper publication, and social implementation concerning customer engagement through this project, the interim report meeting shared extremely interesting verification results based on real consumer behaviors in actual fields, such as the following.
■ Highlights of the Interim Report Meeting (Main Research Presentations)
- "Does a crying face move people?": The impact of emojis in recruitment emails [Speaker: Professor Togawa, Sophia University / Joint Research Company: Sharefull]
A statistically significant result showed that using a "😭 (crying face)" emoji in an email newsletter yielded a click-through rate about 1.26 times higher than using a smiling face. It is suggested that the emotional contagion of "wanting help" is at play.
- The impact of "transparent space around in-app pop-ups" [Speaker: Professor Ishii, Waseda University (Read by: Ken Konno, Braze) / Joint Research Company: Sharefull]
Contrary to the hypothesis that pop-up ads are preferred to have margins, actually, full-screen (no margins) pop-ups had both higher click-through rates and conversion rates, and this trend was particularly notable among women.
- "Differences in consumer response due to button shapes" [Speaker: Professor Moriguchi / Joint Research Partner: Sazaby League TOMORROWLAND]
Regarding purchase buttons on EC sites, while previous US studies suggest "rounded corners" are better...
This project is deeply connected to the "Braze Cares" initiative, which connects companies and universities and aims to contribute to society through theorization. Centered around Ken Konno (Principal Customer Success Manager at Braze), the activity is expanding while increasing the number of participating companies in the joint research. For corporate marketing departments, theorizing insights based on actual data makes it easier to prioritize investments, bringing a huge benefit of maximizing ROI. On the other hand, for the university side, theorization utilizing actual data held by companies is strongly demanded in the recent academic world, and we believe that Braze bridging this industry-academia gap has immense social significance.
While setting the goals of theorization, paper publication, and social implementation concerning customer engagement through this project, the interim report meeting shared extremely interesting verification results based on real consumer behaviors in actual fields, such as the following.
■ Highlights of the Interim Report Meeting (Main Research Presentations)
- "Does a crying face move people?": The impact of emojis in recruitment emails [Speaker: Professor Togawa, Sophia University / Joint Research Company: Sharefull]
A statistically significant result showed that using a "😭 (crying face)" emoji in an email newsletter yielded a click-through rate about 1.26 times higher than using a smiling face. It is suggested that the emotional contagion of "wanting help" is at play.
- The impact of "transparent space around in-app pop-ups" [Speaker: Professor Ishii, Waseda University (Read by: Ken Konno, Braze) / Joint Research Company: Sharefull]
Contrary to the hypothesis that pop-up ads are preferred to have margins, actually, full-screen (no margins) pop-ups had both higher click-through rates and conversion rates, and this trend was particularly notable among women.
- "Differences in consumer response due to button shapes" [Speaker: Professor Moriguchi / Joint Research Partner: Sazaby League TOMORROWLAND]
Regarding purchase buttons on EC sites, while previous US studies suggest "rounded corners" are better...