Consider this: Consumers process visual content 60,000 times faster than text. Couple that with the fact that brands only have 2–3 seconds to capture their attention. Welcome to the era of email marketing where visuals reign supreme and timing is everything.

Now consider this: What ends up in inboxes has to make one heck of an impression and strike a very challenging balance. Emails have to catch the eye with striking visuals, while succinctly personalizing content that highlights the exact right offer, at the exact right time. Of course, email marketers need to deliver it all, without blowing their budgets or wasting hours fiddling with design software. 

Today, Backstroke isn’t just meeting this era’s demands. We’re lighting up its marquee, stealing the spotlight and rewriting the rules of email marketing in AI-powered style.

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve raised $2.8 million to fuel our vision of making email marketing smarter, faster and (very importantly) better looking. Read the full press release here.

But this isn’t just about the capital. It's about what we’ve built to help marketers win in an era that’s tougher than any before. We’re introducing three powerful product upgrades designed to help brands make their emails look stunning, offer tailored content and drive more revenue in a fraction of the time.

New Tools Powering The Future Email Marketing

Hero Lab: AI-Generated, Conversion-Optimized Visuals

With our new Hero Lab, you can generate your email hero section—including imagery, copy and CTAs—without ever touching traditional design tools. 

The email content generated by Hero Lab is powered by Backstroke’s proprietary ecommerce data. With access to 12k+ brands’ creative data and consumer interactions, Backstroke confidently clusters subscribers by their buying stages and intents. So, whether someone is in “buy-mode” or just browsing, Hero Lab adjusts visuals to match their intent and drive them to complete an action that’s best for them. 

With Hero Lab, you get: Hours of saved design time, more personalized offers, better results and emails that look as professional as a big-budget campaign.

Predictive Templates: Smarter Personalization, Better Performance

Predictive Templates drive the themes of enhanced visuals and personalized content even further. In fact, they take the guesswork out of personalization by predicting subscriber behavior.

Who’s likely to open? To scroll? How about click? And who’s gonna convert? 

Backstroke uses predictive analytics to generate the best visuals and template combinations for each of these subscriber types. In fact, our system is pre-loaded with over 75 template variations, each of which are optimized to drive everything from engagement to sales.  

With Predictive Templates, you get: Email content personalization at the cluster level. This is a huge step forward for marketers who want to scale campaigns that still feel personal, relevant and fresh.

AI Content Studio: Editorial-Quality Product Images Without the Studio

Need gorgeous, photoshoot-quality product images without the expense, hassle and time delays of shooting in a studio? Enter our AI Content Studio. 

With this new tool, email marketers can, well, create creative! You can now generate on-brand visuals matched to subscriber clusters with endless variations. This means that you can generate visual content, test it with different subscriber clusters, iterate and drive more revenue without waiting on a model, photographer or retoucher. 

With AI Content Studio, you get: Editorial-quality, AI-generated visuals tailored for subscriber clusters’ interests, intents and preferences.

Backstroke’s Building the Future of Email Marketing with Privacy & Security in Mind

As much as we’re innovating on visuals and personalization, we know trust matters just as much. That’s why we brought on Jim Goldman, former Salesforce & FBI security leader, as our new Chief Information Security Officer. Onboarding Goldman furthers our commitment and continued investment in enterprise-grade privacy and AI security. 

With our commitment to security and privacy, Backstroke customers get peace of mind, knowing that they can move fast without worrying about compliance or data integrity.

Your Competitive Edge Starts Now

Marketers using Backstroke today are already outpacing their competition, driving 31% more revenue per send. Combining Backstroke’s access to ecommerce data with enterprise-level AI tools, it’s no challenge for email marketers to capture consumer attention in those precious 2-3 seconds. And they can do it with beautiful, personalized content to boot.

If you’re ready to elevate your email visuals, personalize at scale and turn campaigns around in minutes, Backstroke is ready for you.

Make your emails look (and perform) better than ever  →