Why do you do what you do? How often do you reflect on why you chose your job?

People usually have several possible reasons, but generally, in one way or another, we all want to be helpful. If we look beyond this, we want to do something that can help others — and if we dig even deeper, to create something that will change the world. Ask yourself: Do I want to leave a mark in history? Yes? How?

In 2016, in a beautiful city in the world’s bravest country, Ukraine, an entrepreneur with a desire to solve the problems of a multitude creates a product...

I’m sure many books about incredible brands start this way. But this is not a book; this is just a simple sketch, and it all started very differently.

Stripo history: How it all began

Q: Dmytro, why did you create Stripo? Did you want to make something incredible to help many professionals?

Okay, you could say, "This is just the story of an ordinary startup." Maybe — but give it a chance!

Dmytro Kudrenko: Were there any other editors besides ours? Absolutely! But at some point, each of them started branching out in different directions, and it was the editor itself that got lost. We chose the path of working specifically with the editor and improving it.

I once realized that to create a truly great product, you must do the following:

• focus on one thing (in our case, it’s Email marketing);

• understand your user’s problem;

• find a way to solve it;

• and solve it in such a way that the user can’t imagine their workday without your solution.

When you’re building a product, the most challenging part is creating something that didn’t exist before. The most important moment is solving the user’s problem in such a way that they can grasp the solution and start actively using it. And the most interesting story tells us how to transition from complexity to simplicity.

This has been Stripo’s main goal from the very beginning and our focus all this time.

I’ve been involved in marketing for quite some time, and you know what I always lack? Time! I always wish that there were a few more hours in the day. But how much more time do those who create emails need in a day? What if they can’t code? What if it’s an ambitious startup with a small team, where one person handles multiple tasks?

By the way, here's an example from our COO, Dmitry Kulaksyz:

Q: Dmitry, what was the biggest challenge?

Dmitry Kulaksyz: In the early stages of product development, the team was very small. There were about six of us, including our leader, Dmytro Kudrenko.

Perhaps the most challenging task at that time was finding the balance between quantity and quality. We constantly had to make decisions, even if they turned out to be wrong, draw conclusions, and move forward, often into uncharted territory.

Returning to the time shortage issue, are there any tools to help you optimize it? Of course! Do all of them actually solve this problem? Of course not.

Q: Dmitry, you mentioned that you want to solve the audience’s problem by saving them time on routine tasks and allowing them to focus on more interesting and important ones. How?

Dmitry Kulaksyz: Modular email design. Well, you see, it wasn’t our invention. But we’ve focused so much on modules that now our users can change any email element they need without losing any essential data.

When we were creating modules, they didn’t exist in any editor yet. However, they were used in website development, and that’s exactly what we used as the basis of the idea. We were the ones who introduced the modular system into emails, and now it’s a mandatory feature everywhere.

I believe that coding email templates is not something marketers should be doing. Instead, they should concentrate on marketing strategies. Our modules are what will enable them to make it happen.

By creating a module once, a specialist can use it an unlimited number of times while changing any element they need without affecting the overall modular framework. And since you can create an unlimited number of modules for any unit or task once and use them constantly, it reduces the time it takes to create an email by several hours, simplifying communication between business units or project contractors.

Of course, we test everything ourselves, and we've described how the modules work and how they save time in our case study.

I’m writing about this with pride, and you might think I’m boasting. I am! Because when I talked to the team that has been working on this from the very beginning, I was amazed by their calmness.

Anton Hrynenko, CTO at Stripo:

Anton Hrynenko: I am a perfectionist, so it was initially very challenging for me to mentally adjust to the product-oriented approach to work. The search for "product–market fit" led to constant changes that sometimes didn’t fit into the initial architecture at all.

It sounds like an action video game, doesn’t it? By the way, have you ever noticed that we live every moment of our lives as if we were playing an endless game?

Here’s a quest for groceries; there’s a shootout for a discounted item. In fact, life itself is one big simulator. But for marketing, games are one of the best mechanics for interacting with the audience.

Stripo and email gamification

Marketers have been actively using games for a long time whenever they can, and Stripo makes this possible in emails. Interactive games for email campaigns are one of our unique offerings.

You can find more details about gamification in Email Marketing here, but we’d like to share some facts about our games:

• this is what our first game looked like — recipients had to click on different elements, and after that, they received predictions about email marketing. This gamified email generated twice as many clicks as a regular one;

• this is what our most recently released game looks like.

What’s more:

• we realized that recipients like our games;

• as a result, we created our eBook on gamification in email marketing;

• Dmytro Kudrenko has spoken on this topic at 20 different events;

• Stripo is the only email editor that develops interactive games in AMP and HTML format. We currently have 15 game mechanics in our portfolio, and we’re constantly working on expanding it.

Liubov Rolenko, developer in charge of designing all game mechanics at Stripo

Q: What were your thoughts when you created your first game?

Liubov Rolenko: I wanted to create something interesting and familiar, like the old games from childhood, but in a simpler version. Something that could provide a little distraction and bring back the childlike joy and excitement in the middle of a workday.

Q: Can you tell me, what's your favorite game of all time?

Liubov Rolenko: I’m a gamer, so I’ve been playing video games since childhood, and I still do it. Games have always been a part of my life.

Actually, I don’t have a favorite one because I love diversity. However, I remember my first game. In school, during a computer science class, a teacher showed us a game where there was an animal in a maze, and you had to input commands specifying the direction and the number of steps, like “five steps right.” You had to guide the animal out of the maze. It was while playing this game that I realized I wanted to become a developer.

Stripo education

Everything always starts with education. Perhaps not all the knowledge we gain in school will be useful in the future, but that’s where we acquire the essential elements of our future life: a knowledge base, friends, and allies, as well as support.

Although we at Stripo already have an excellent 24/7 support service ready to assist you, we are creating our knowledge base, where users can delve into all the intricacies of using our product. Our support team is always ready to answer your questions, but exploring the educational database will offer its own fascinations.

Maryna Krivenets, the head of customer support at Stripo

Q: Maryna, do you think the knowledge base will replace customer support?

This is a photo from the shoot of our Udemy course, which is suitable for all beginners and has already been completed by nearly 2,000 students.

If you'd like to take one of our courses, you can do it right here. You can also follow this link to find a guide with 94 email marketing resources for inspiration and work.

And if you'd like to leave a review of us, you can easily do it on G2 or Capterra. Believe me, our whole team is over the moon when we see your reviews! Your feedback is incredibly inspiring to us.

Stripo and interactive content in emails

By the way, did you know that inspiration is one of our team’s core principles, and everyone strives not only to create something new but to do it in a way that conveys a piece of their inspiration?

For example, while working on this article, I was inspired by the stories of the people who created (and continue to create) our product. After another dose of inspiration, I turned to Roman, our head designer and the person who remembers the very first template that appeared in Stripo.

Here it is — our first email template, which was used 450 times.

Roman Burdyga, product designer at Stripo

Roman Burdyga: Hello! I’m Roman, a product designer at Stripo. I was also the developer of the email template layout structure, which is the basis for all templates in the system. Now, let me share some history...

Before Stripo was launched, I worked on the same thing in another product, where there was also a template editor, and gained all my experience in creating templates there. I created templates for our clients and learned all the intricacies and subtleties of email layout. Since I am a designer, I combined this experience with my knowledge of template creation to strengthen Stripo.

By that time, I had several colleagues who started creating templates and became the first authors of this library. These colleagues include Liubov Rolenko, who initiated this great project and later became a mentor to other colleagues. Afterwards, Ruslan Trepuhalov and Oleg Ponamarchuk joined us, adding a different perspective and ideas and accelerating the library’s growth. A year later, Anastasiia Babintseva joined us with her sense of beauty and artistic skills.

They all made a significant contribution to the template development, and each of them is unique in their style, skills, and views, which is why the templates are so diverse and interesting.

At that time, of course, I was creating templates quickly because I was the author of both the template editor and the template code. The main challenge was finding ideas, designing, choosing themes, and turning everything into a finished template.

What I remember most were a few of our email campaigns at the beginning of our interactive content development at Stripo:

1. A Christmas email for our clients with an interactive coloring feature that collected data and reproduced all the users’ drawings. We received numerous amazing drawings, carefully selected the best ones, and sent thanks to our artists.

While creating the design for that email, I encouraged my child to use the coloring feature and offered his drawings as an example of what could be created. It was very interesting and satisfying to receive such feedback and encouragement from our clients.

2. Then, we had the idea to create a crossword puzzle directly in the email. It was incredibly cool, although quite challenging and time-consuming to implement. However, it was totally worth it, and we received many positive responses.

3. Another memorable mechanic was a quiz where I worked on the design. It was an interactive chat within the email. It felt like you were having a real-time conversation with someone who was responding to you. It was incredibly cool.

These interactive elements were widely discussed in the email community as well.

Stripo’s plans for the future

Well, I’m getting carried away with the past. We have a million users. A million. For me, that’s an unbelievable number. When I asked everyone involved in this article what they would say to our million users, they all replied: "Stay with us! We’re preparing a lot of interesting and useful things for your email marketing campaigns!"

For example:

• a new editor;
• real-time co-editing and commenting;
• integration with Figma;
• improvements in AI functionality within Stripo's structure;
• collaboration tools;
• email accessibility precheck; 
• dark mode UI for email preview; 
• new games, templates, helpful guides, and much more for your emails.

If you’ve read this far, I want to personally thank you for your time. At the very beginning of this article, I mentioned how we always seem to lack time. But we’re constantly working to free up as much of it for you as possible!

Volodymyr Kreshchenko, CMO at Stripo

Q: What do you think makes Stripo unique?

Q: What has surprised you the most during your entire time working at Stripo?

Volodymyr Kreshchenko: What surprised me the most is that in the company, there are many people who genuinely care about our users’ problems and the bugs that arise, and they strive to fix them as quickly as possible. It’s very pleasant to work together on something when people are passionate about what they do.

You may ask — why not expand our horizons? Partly because the focus on something is an endless horizon itself.

Ivan Burban, former CMO at Stripo

Q: Ivan, what was most challenging at the beginning of the journey? What did you believe in?

Ivan Burban: The most challenging thing was understanding how to stand out from other products. At that time, we positioned ourselves as an email template builder, and we became a platform three years later. During this transitional period, we were searching for this positioning and had many conversations with users and market experts.

Q: What do you think it takes to leave a mark in history?

Ivan Burban: I believe that to make a mark in history, you need to change the approach to a particular process, not just improve it slightly. In the case of Uber, they reimagined the process of calling a taxi. In the case of Stripo, I think you are on the right path, and you can not only change the approach to creating emails but also make this complex task more accessible to a broader audience. Our inboxes will become interactive and easy to comprehend.

Wrapping up

Will we leave a mark in history as a whole team? I don’t know. But I do know that if you ask the question, "Do you use Stripo?" almost everyone in the digital market will answer: “Of course!” So, we definitely don’t start our day with team meetings for nothing!

We thank each and every one of you for being a part of Stripo.