Product Updates
Customers can now manage their own team from a new Settings area:
• Invite teammates and assign Admin / Member roles
• Require MFA for users, plus self-enroll in MFA
• Switch between accounts (for users who belong to more than one) (can you say hello Agency world?!)
• Brand Config & Integrations now live under Settings
Self-serve password reset is now available (a small but mighty one)
Surge isn't limited to one-off campaigns
You can add the same predictive hero targeting to Klaviyo flow steps — Welcome, Abandoned Cart, Browse Abandon, Post-Purchase, and any other flow with an email step. Set it up once, and every subscriber who passes through that step sees the hero predicted to perform best for their cohort, without your creative team touching it again.
Connect Backstroke to Claude, or any AI assistant, and get subject lines, heroes, and content predicted to perform. Learned from 10,000 ecommerce brands, returned right in your prompt.
The Backstroke MCP Server connects your AI assistant to Backstroke's prediction models. Most marketing connectors give an assistant read access to your own account data. Backstroke returns something your account cannot produce on its own: a read on what will actually perform, learned from real email outcomes across 10,000 brands.
You ask in plain language. Backstroke answers right in your prompt, and with your approval it can write the winner back into your email platform. Your work stays in the assistant you already use, and Backstroke stays the prediction engine behind it.
Backstroke MCP is a hosted endpoint your assistant connects to. You sign in once. From then on, your assistant can call Backstroke's tools whenever you ask.
You ask. Describe what you are working on, such as subject lines for an email or which hero wins for your audience, in natural language.
Backstroke predicts. Your request runs against models learned from outcomes across 10,000 brands, not your account alone.
You decide. The answer comes back in your prompt. Anything that writes to your email platform pauses for your explicit approval first.
Summary: Find, edit, download, and reuse every saved hero and background in one place — no more re-creating proven creative from scratch.
What's Changing
Before: When you saved a hero in Hero Lab, it went... somewhere. There was no place in the app to actually find it again. And if you spotted a typo or wanted to tweak the text, your only option was to start over from a blank canvas. Background images were even more fleeting — every background you uploaded or generated lived only for that session, so reusing a great shot from one photo shoot meant uploading it all over again, every time.
After: Hero Lab now has a dedicated Library. Open it and you'll see everything you've saved, split into two tabs — Heroes and Backgrounds. Sort by newest, filter by aspect ratio, date, or source, and search by text to find exactly what you need, even across hundreds of assets. Hover any tile to edit, download, rename, or delete, and select several at once to clean up in bulk. Editing a hero reopens it in Create mode with everything restored, so fixing that typo takes seconds instead of a fresh start. Best of all, your saved backgrounds become reusable building blocks: drop them straight into new heroes as a base image, or feed them back in as AI reference images so your best-performing visuals compound into better generations over time.
Describe the look you want, get on-brand background images, and turn each one into 36 ready-to-test hero variants in a single flow.
What's Changing
Before, building a set of hero images for testing meant sourcing or designing each background separately, then recreating typography, CTAs, and layout variations one at a time. Getting to a meaningful number of on-brand variants took hours of design work for every campaign.
Now, open Hero Lab, flip to Bulk Variants, and you've got two paths into the same flow. Bring your own images and we'll generate 36 brand-correct text-overlay variants per image automatically. Or click "Generate with AI," write a quick campaign brief, optionally drop in a product reference (PDP URL or upload), and choose 1, 3, or 6 backgrounds — we'll produce text-free, brand-aligned backgrounds you can turn straight into the full variant set. A new Hero Image Brand Guidelines tab in Brand Config keeps everything on-brand: your typography, CTA style, photography direction, color palette, subject guidance, reference images, and an avoid list all feed into every generation. Edit any variant with prev/next navigation, approve the ones you want, and push them straight to your Hero Library.
Connect your store to sync products into Backstroke. Use live product data in your campaigns.
Backstroke connects to your Shopify store and automatically syncs your product catalog, including product details, images, variants, and collections. Once connected, you can use real Shopify product data directly inside Backstroke email campaigns without manually copying or updating product information. When products change in Shopify, Backstroke keeps your catalog in sync so campaigns always reflect your current inventory. Connect in one click from the Backstroke integrations page.
One-click connect syncs your full product catalog into Backstroke automatically
Products, images, variants, and collections stay up to date as you make changes
Use real Shopify product data directly in your email campaigns
App Story Listing: https://apps.shopify.com/backstroke
Video Demo:
A redesigned login page and MFA flow with a fresh new look — a polished first touchpoint every time you come back to Backstroke.
What's Changing
Before, the login page and verification screens were functional but plain.
Now, signing in opens onto a softly animated backdrop with a frosted-glass form card on top. Typography, inputs, and buttons have all been retuned for clarity, and the experience adapts cleanly to mobile. The two-factor verification and setup screens have been rebuilt to match, so the whole sign-in flow feels like one cohesive experience.
Upload a background image, place text with your brand fonts and colors, and save or download — a lightweight way to build on-brand heroes without leaving Backstroke.
What's Changing
Before, Hero Lab was focused on AI-generated heroes. If you wanted to place your own text on a background image using your brand fonts and colors, you needed an external design tool.
Now, the new Create option lets you upload a background image, add headline, subheadline, and CTA text with your brand fonts, and drag everything into position right on the canvas. Download as PNG or save straight to your hero library.
Surge adds predictive hero intelligence to the campaigns you're already building in Klaviyo. Instead of switching to a different tool, you stay in your ESP and let Backstroke handle the hero optimization behind the scenes. You pick the hero images, Surge predicts which one performs best for each audience segment, and delivers a ready-to-use content block you drag into your Klaviyo email.
What Surge Does
Today, when you build a campaign in Klaviyo, you pick one hero image and send it to everyone. You might suspect that different audiences respond to different visuals, but testing hero variations manually — building segments, creating conditional content blocks, managing merge tags — is tedious enough that most teams skip it.
Surge eliminates that work. It automatically detects your draft and scheduled campaigns from Klaviyo, lets you upload 2–10 hero image variations, predicts which hero will perform best for each audience segment, and generates a smart content block that handles the personalization for you. You drag one block into your email in Klaviyo and send. Each subscriber sees the hero predicted to drive the highest engagement for their profile.
