When working at Tropogo, we were laser-focused on rapid
brand growth.
Email campaigns played a crucial role in our strategy, and we aimed to send out at least two emailers or newsletters per week.
However, limited developer bandwidth
posed a challenge.
Our developers prioritized core product features, which meant emailers took a backseat. Converting our designs into coded email templates consumed approximately four hours of a developer’s time, making it a bottleneck we needed to overcome.
We understood the development team’s priorities, but at the same time, we couldn’t afford to slow down our email marketing efforts. To find a solution, we turned to industry benchmarks, analyzing hundreds of emailers from fast-paced brands. Among them, one company’s approach stood out—Swiggy.
Swiggy’s emailers were fundamentally
different.
Instead of coding their email designs in the traditional way, they used a fully image-based approach, incorporating GIFs and visuals. This caught our attention for one major reason: it drastically reduced the coding effort. While we weren’t sure of Swiggy’s exact rationale, we realized that this approach could work for us too.
We decided to pivot.
Instead of coding intricate email templates, we designed emailers entirely as images. However, this shift introduced a new challenge—CTA buttons. Traditional HTML-coded emails allow clickable buttons, but using images meant we couldn’t place standalone buttons.
To solve this, we restructured our emailers into segmented image sections. Any section containing a CTA was made fully clickable, giving users the impression they were clicking on a button, when in reality, they were clicking on the entire image. This not only solved the CTA issue but also simplified our design process, as each section contained a single, clear action.
The results were remarkable.
Our design team could now create high-fidelity emailers, break them into image sections, and pass the assets to developers for quick assembly.
What once took developers around 40 minutes was now reduced to just 5-10 minutes of effort.
By embracing a new approach, inspired by a leader in the industry, we optimized our workflow and significantly improved efficiency—allowing Tropogo to keep running at the speed of a unicorn.
