A 15-30% lift in opens, clicks, and conversions — Stripo.email

When you’re a global hospitality brand like Hyatt, every email counts — from reservation confirmation emails to check-out details. But behind those seemingly simple messages is a complex system that has to keep up with evolving guest expectations and internal tools. 

In this case study for our Email Marketer’s Code series, Daniel Kim explains how an email marketing team revamped a high-volume email program for Hyatt, modernizing legacy email campaigns while navigating technical debt, tight timelines, and platform transition. By using Stripo’s reusable modules and automation, the team achieved an impressive 15-30% boost in key performance metrics.

Meet the expert: Daniel Kim

Daniel Kim is an experienced email and front-end developer who first entered the tech world in 2017 after completing a FullStack boot camp at CodingDojo. With a background in economics from the University of San Francisco, Daniel quickly found his niche in email development, drawn in by both the creative challenges and the technical quirks of the field.

Over the past five years, he’s worked on a range of high-profile projects, including campaigns for Google and Hyatt, during his time at Hawkeye Agency (formerly Epsilon). His passion for front-end work and attention to detail continue to drive his success in email marketing today.

Fun fact: When he’s not building emails, Daniel is deep in the world of PC gaming. His current favorites include Monster Hunter Wilds, Helldivers 2, The Finals, and Marvel Rivals.

The challenge: Modernizing legacy emails to boost engagement and streamline the guest experience

Between 2024 and 2025, I worked with the Hyatt Guest Communications Team on a major email modernization project. The goal was to update a series of legacy emails that were still being hosted on Adobe Experience Manager. These emails play a key role in the guest journey, so the stakes were high.

Our objective was to improve subscriber engagement and loyalty, smooth the reservation process, and give the emails a much-needed design refresh. A big part of this was integrating the Hyatt Bellhop System, a personalization engine that allows us to tailor each message to the individual guest. We focused on a few key types of emails: reservations, meetings and events, ESummary, Check-in/Check-out (CICO), and Folio messages.

It wasn’t just a visual redesign — the real challenge was modernizing how the emails worked behind the scenes. The preparation process had a unique twist: 

1. We were making major “quality of life” changes to our CRM platform, the Hyatt Personalization Engine, right in the middle of everything. 
2. We had to make large-scale updates to our Stripo templates, even though some of them were already live or in the middle of being deployed.

We also faced a few practical limitations: tight deadlines, not enough QA support, and a small team juggling a lot of work. Still, we kept pushing, knowing that the impact on the guest experience would be worth it.

(Source: Stripo template)

The solution: How we sped up email production

To manage all the moving pieces — the new personalization engine, the updated templates, and the pressure of ongoing deployments — we had to work smart.

We created a library of reusable modules — things like headers, footers, and personalization blocks — that we could drop into different emails as needed. That alone saved us a huge amount of time and helped us keep everything consistent.

Creating localized versions was another lifesaver. Keeping multiple versions in Stripo allowed us to test updates or apply personalization changes without fear of overwriting anything critical.

These two features together helped us reduce the time it took to build out localized versions of templates. What could’ve taken days per version was now done much faster, and with fewer errors. It definitely helped us stay on track despite the heavy workload and limited resources.

How we built the emails: step by step

To make the whole project manageable, we broke down the email development process into clear stages. Here’s how it looked for us:

1. Collecting and organizing the existing emails

First, we pulled all the legacy email templates from Adobe Experience Manager. We needed to see exactly what we were working with — what could stay, what needed a refresh, and what had to be rebuilt from the ground up. This gave us a solid starting point and helped us avoid missing anything important.

2. Rebuilding templates in Stripo

Once we had everything mapped out, we began recreating the emails in Stripo. This is where things started to get smoother. Using Stripo’s drag-and-drop editor, we built modern, responsive templates that were much easier to maintain than the old ones. We also created saved modules for repeated elements, such as branding sections, which saved us time later.

3. Adding personalization

Next, we plugged in the Hyatt Bellhop System — our personalization engine. This step involved integrating dynamic content based on the guest’s reservation details or preferences. Stripo made it easy to slot in these dynamic fields, which helped us keep the design clean while still making each message feel personalized.

4. Testing in Litmus

After building and integrating content, we ran each email through Litmus to test how it looked across different devices and email clients. This helped us catch layout issues early and make sure everything was rendering as expected, which is especially important for such a high-volume hospitality brand.

5. Versioning and localization

For each base template, we created multiple versions depending on language and market needs. Stripo’s built-in Email Translate service helped us keep everything organized and allowed us to quickly switch between different versions without duplicating work or losing track.

6. Final QA and deployment back to AEM

Once the emails passed testing, we pushed them back into Adobe Experience Manager for deployment. At this stage, we did a final check to make sure everything was connected to the right systems and personalization rules, then handed it off for rollout.

Each step relied on solid tools — Stripo for building and organizing, Litmus for testing, and Adobe Experience Manager for the final deployment. Without this tool stack, managing so many emails with a small team wouldn’t have been possible.

The results: 15-30% increase in key metrics

The updates made a real impact. Across the board, we saw an average increase of about 15% to 30% in key metrics such as open rates, click-throughs, and conversions. That’s a big win, especially considering how many guests these emails reach every day.

The combination of a cleaner design, better personalization, and a more efficient development process really paid off. For our small team, it was a reminder that the right tools — and a bit of upfront planning — can make a complex project much more manageable.

(Source: Stripo template)

Recommendations and takeaways

Looking back on this project with the Hyatt team, I can say one thing for sure — modernizing email campaigns doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With the right setup, even a small team can handle a big workload and still deliver great results.

1. Use reusable components as much as possible: Save your time (and headaches) by building a library of modules you can use across campaigns. It takes some work upfront, but once it’s set up, it removes a lot of guesswork from both development and QA. You’ll also keep your branding more consistent.

2. Plan for localization early: Designing for different languages can be tricky — not all layouts or fonts work for certain languages. If localization is even a possibility, consider it early in your design process to avoid time-consuming fixes later.

3. Automate where you can: The more you manually edit and re-edit a campaign, the more likely something will slip through the cracks. Automate what you can — version control, testing, and dynamic content — to reduce human error and speed up your workflow.

Wrapping up

We thank Daniel Kim for sharing his insights and experiences with us. This project showed me how powerful it is to combine the right tools with a solid strategy. By focusing on reusable modules, building with personalization and localization in mind, and streamlining our processes with automation, we modernized a key part of Hyatt’s communication and saw strong performance gains as a result.

Whether you’re working with a hospitality brand or another industry entirely, these same practices can help you make your email campaigns more effective, more scalable, and a lot easier to manage.