Knak / 2022-2026
Dynamic Content & Personalization
Let marketers manage personalized content for many audiences inside one email, reducing duplicate campaign work and increasing usage frequency by 15%.
Design Highlights
Add dynamic content in context
Start personalizing email details directly in the editor.
Manage content variants
Access segment selection and creation from the variant controls for an email’s social-link block.
Define a segment
Name a segment and configure its matching conditions.
Refine messaging for an active variant
Review AI-generated subject-line and preview-text pairs while the New Subscriber variant is selected.
Overview
I designed Dynamic Content & Personalization so Knak users could target multiple audience segments within one email instead of managing a separate asset for each group. Integrated directly into the Editor, it supports personalization from individual text and images to entire content blocks.
Challenge
Customers needed to target different user segments with personalized content but were creating separate emails for each segment, a time-consuming and management-heavy approach. As campaigns grew more sophisticated, managing dozens of email variants became unsustainable. The design challenge was compounded by tight timelines and the need to support complex rules and conditions that varied depending on the customer's marketing automation platform integration (Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot, Pardot).
Approach
I designed personalization at multiple levels, from individual images, text, and buttons to entire content blocks. I also built a condition builder that made complex rules approachable for non-technical marketers while adapting to each marketing automation platform's capabilities and data structures.
Solution
Built a segment builder where admins create reusable audience segments using rules and conditions based on user data. Within the editor, users create content variants at any level: swap an image for one segment, change a CTA for another, or show entirely different content blocks. Preview controls allow users to view the email as different segments would see it directly in the builder. Collaboration features enable team members to comment on segment-specific content, suggesting changes and having conversations about content targeted at different personas. The entire dynamic email syncs to the customer's marketing automation platform for distribution.
Impact
Marketers can create and review content for many audience segments inside one email instead of duplicating and maintaining a separate campaign for each group. Customers gain a consistent condition-building workflow across different marketing automation platforms, reducing both production effort and integration complexity. For Knak, the capability increased MAU/WAU by 15% and strengthened the editor's role as the source of truth for sophisticated enterprise personalization.
Key Learnings
Building a condition builder that adapts to different marketing automation platforms while staying usable for non-technical marketers required careful abstraction. Hiding platform-specific complexity behind a consistent UI meant users could focus on their segmentation logic, not the underlying platform differences. Tight timelines forced disciplined prioritization, shipping a focused, usable solution was more valuable than a feature-complete one.