Product Updates
The Hero Image step in the campaign stepper now lets you pick from your saved Hero Library instead of only uploading or generating a new image each time.
What's Changing
Before: When you reached the Hero Image step during campaign creation, your only options were to upload a new image or generate one on the spot. Even if you'd already created the perfect hero in Hero Lab last week, there was no way to pull it into a new campaign. You'd either regenerate something similar or re-upload the file manually.
After: The Hero Image step now shows your saved Hero Library as a visual grid. Browse your previously saved heroes and select one directly — no regeneration, no re-uploading. If you saved a hero in Hero Lab that worked well, you can reuse it across as many campaigns as you want with a single click.
You can now save hero images you've generated in Hero Lab to a persistent library tied to your account. Saved heroes are available across sessions and can be selected when building campaigns.
What's Changing
Before: Heroes you generated in Hero Lab existed only in that session. If you created a great hero image on Monday, there was no way to bookmark it and pull it back up on Thursday when you were building a new campaign. You'd either need to regenerate something similar or dig through your history hoping to find it. Heroes were essentially single-use — generate, pick one for the current campaign, and move on.
After: Every generated hero now has a save action (star/bookmark) directly in Hero Lab. Save the ones you like and they persist in your Hero Library, scoped to your account. When you're building a campaign later, your saved heroes are available for selection in the campaign stepper — no regeneration needed. You'll see a clear visual indicator showing which heroes are saved vs. not, so you always know what's in your library at a glance.
Backstroke now lets you duplicate any campaign so you can reuse your content and layout without rebuilding from scratch. Duplicate from the campaigns list after editing or after syncing to Klaviyo - the new copy starts as a fresh draft ready for a different audience.
What's Changing
Before: Every audience variant of a campaign (prospect, rejoin, member) had to be built from scratch. If you wanted the same content with a different audience, you'd recreate the entire campaign — content, layout, everything — even though only headers, CTA, and audience-specific copy were different.
After: Hit "Duplicate" on any campaign. Backstroke copies your content and layout into a new draft. Audiences and subject lines are intentionally reset so you can tailor them for the new segment. The original campaign stays untouched. What used to take 15–20 minutes of repetitive setup now takes seconds.
Your campaigns list now sorts by when a campaign was last updated, not when it was created. The campaigns you're actively working on always appear at the top.
What's Changing
Before: The campaigns grid sorted by creation date. If you created a campaign last week and generated variations or edited content today, it stayed buried lower in the list. You had to scroll or search to find the campaign you were just working on.
After: The default sort is now "last updated." Any action on a campaign — generating variations, saving edits, changing status — moves it to the top of the list. The campaigns you touched most recently are always front and center. The original creation date is still visible but no longer drives the sort order.
Brand Config now flags fonts that won't render in email clients and shows you exactly which fallback font your subscribers will see instead.
What's Changing
Before: You could configure brand fonts in Backstroke without any indication that they weren't email-safe. Emails would go out, and the fonts your subscribers actually saw in Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail were different from what you configured — but you wouldn't know until after the fact.
After: Non-email-safe fonts are now clearly flagged with a warning directly in Brand Config. You'll see which fallback font will be used when your chosen font isn't supported (e.g., "This font may not render in Gmail/Outlook — we'll use Arial instead"). Email-safe and non-email-safe fonts are visually distinguished so you can make an informed choice at setup time, not after emails are already sent.
Hero Lab is a new feature in Backstroke where you generate hero images with AI. Using product photos, style references, and typography examples, you can go from blank canvas to gorgeous assets in a f
Here’s How It Works.
Open Hero Lab in Backstroke
Choose your mode:
HERO: Create net-new hero images from product images, style references and typography.
ADD TEXT: Overlay typography onto your existing assets.
Configure in seconds: Enter headline, subheadline, button CTA and visual direction. Attach product images, style references and typography examples. Set your image ratio.
Generate: AI creates your hero image in under a minute.
Download: Get a campaign-ready image file that works in your existing workflow.
This Changes Everything: Why Hero Lab Matters to You
Ship campaigns on time. No more waiting 3-4 days for design. Generate heroes in seconds and hit your launch windows without compromise.
Uncork creative variations. Need five hero concepts to test? Ten variations for different segments? Generate them all in minutes. Test more, learn faster, personalize content and optimize performance.
Free your design team. Let designers focus on strategic creative work while marketers generate campaign heroes independently. No more bottlenecks, no more blocked launches.
Powered by real ecommerce data. Hero Lab uses Backstroke’s proprietary ecommerce data—12,000+ brands’ creative strategies and consumer interactions—to generate heroes that match subscriber intent. Whether someone’s browsing or ready to buy, Hero Lab adjusts visuals to match their journey.
Bonus: Perfect rendering across email clients. As a nice side benefit, because Hero Lab outputs a single image, Gmail can’t mangle your custom fonts and Outlook can’t strip your backgrounds. Your hero looks exactly as intended—every time, in every inbox.
First release is download-only: Generate in Hero Lab, download, then add the image in your existing template or campaign workflow. In-app library and “insert into campaign” features are coming based on your feedback.Here’s How It Works
The character limit for Custom Instructions in Brand Config has been raised from 1,000 to 2,500 characters, so you can include your full brand brief without trimming
What's Changing
Before: Custom Instructions in Brand Config were capped at ~1,000 characters. If you had a detailed brand brief — voice guidelines, product rules, formatting preferences, do's and don'ts — you had to trim it down or maintain a separate document and manually shorten for Backstroke. The generation pipeline only saw a fraction of your brand guidance, which meant emails wouldn't consistently follow all your rules.
After: The limit is now 2,500 characters. You can paste or write a full brand brief in one place — voice, tone, product rules, formatting notes — without arbitrary trimming. The entire brief is passed to the generation pipeline, so emails better match your brand guidelines. No more maintaining a separate shortened version or pruning on every edit.
Backstroke’s new L5 Agentic Engine builds fully dynamic, on-brand email campaigns from a simple brief—unlocking flexible layouts, faster production, and data-driven performance.
The L5 system is designed around agentic workflows, rather than predefined templates. Instead of dropping content into a static structure, the engine plans and constructs layouts dynamically based on the brand, the content selected, the intent of the message and sometimes reference HTML.
This shift enables several important capabilities:
1) Flexible, brand-aligned layout formation
The engine starts by forming a structural plan. It decides how many modules an email needs, how products should be arranged, where emphasis should go and how copy should be distributed. Layouts adapt to the shape and goals of the message, rather than forcing the message into a preset framework.
2) Multi-pass reasoning and refinement
Email creation now happens through a series of coordinated steps. The agent interprets campaigns requests, like a creative brief, collections page and/or a set of product description pages. Other agents form a plan, draft an email structure, create and populate content and refine tone and layout to match the brand. This produces consistent results across a wider range of inputs, edge cases and brand preferences.
3) Embedded image generation through AI Content Studio
Backstroke has always offered AI Content Studio (AICS) as a standalone product. Marketers at brands like PSD and Cabana Life use AICS to generate photoshoot quality content to leverage in email campaigns. The new L5 Agentic Engine allows marketers to tap AICS simultaneously during the construction of the campaigns. This means asset requests can be made within the creative brief itself and Backstroke agents will call AICS and inject brand new imagery into the email.
4) A more resilient editing experience
Late-stage changes no longer break the system. Adjusting a headline or promotion triggers the engine to re-evaluate the structure so the final layout still feels coherent. This makes the tool feel closer to working with a flexible design partner, rather than a set of locked components. Backstroke is also rolling out expanded in-app editing capabilities for times when that little human touch is a must to take a campaign from great to perfect.
