I designed and coded more than 20 email campaigns for a global community of 45+ million users, working cross-functionally to deliver consistent, on-brand communication.
How do you craft emails that feel relevant, work across devices, and get better with every send? For an audience of 20M+, localization, tech limits, and performance targets posed real challenges.
I collaborated cross-functionally to build a process of our own; one rooted in tailored messaging, creativity, and continuous iteration, delivering consistent, on-brand product communications.
Each campaign needed to feel natural in every market. Localisation ranged from six to eleven languages, so I worked closely with copywriters to adjust tone, length, and structure. From the subject line to the visuals, every detail was adapted to make the message clear and relevant for different audiences.
An engaging narrative must work within email’s tight limits. With platform quirks, uneven support, and limited design options, layouts had to stay simple and flexible across devices. Careful attention to contrast, dark mode, image size, and alt text ensured designs looked right, met accessibility standards, and worked reliably everywhere.
To maintain high standards and maximise impact, each newsletter went through continuous testing and refinement. I developed an A/B testing protocol and helped improve our QA workflow. Experiment results, thorough reviews, and performance data guided every decision, ensuring each send was better than the last.
While each email was unique, I relied on a set of recurring patterns to help every newsletter perform at its best. Over time, these evolved into a simple framework, shaping structure, visuals, and consistency across campaigns. Small, reliable practices that kept every send cohesive and on brand.
Key information is placed above the fold, with short, snappy copy to set the tone. A playful animation often helped boost engagement.*
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A compelling hero image paired with a clear call to action drives higher user interaction.
Skimmable sections and product visuals kept things clear and engaging. Short animations and secondary CTAs helped explain features and drive curiosity.*
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If a feature’s tricky to explain, a short animation does the job and keeps attention where it matters the most.
Callouts guided the reader through the email, offering visual pauses and highlighting extra details. Secondary CTAs were placed strategically to keep the flow engaging and optimize clicks.
Sometimes we added extra content to make the email more engaging and tie it back to other brand touchpoints, like social media or YouTube.
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Last but not least, don’t forget a compliant footer, yes, that includes the dreaded unsubscribe button.
Key information is placed above the fold, with short, snappy copy to set the tone. A playful animation often helped boost engagement.
Skimmable sections and product visuals kept things clear and engaging. Short animations and secondary CTAs helped explain features and drive curiosity.
Callouts guided the reader through the email, offering visual pauses and highlighting extra details. Secondary CTAs were placed strategically to keep the flow engaging and optimize clicks.
Sometimes we added extra content to make the email more engaging and tie it back to other brand touchpoints, like social media or YouTube. Last but not least, don't forget a compliant footer and the unsubscribe button.
These are a few of the projects I enjoyed most, and a good way to see how all the elements come together in a finished email.
This product-focused email invited users to explore the map in depth, from 3D terrain and trail photos to weather forecasts and road surface previews.
An email highlighting komoot’s route planning capabilities, adventures that start right from your location, no extra travel needed.
A seasonal activation to celebrate the unique superpowers of the running community during autumn.
Over three years at komoot, our email program grew into the primary communication channel, keeping the audience informed and engaged. Here’s a look at the results and impact.
A significant jump from our baseline of 1.71%, achieved through an evolved design strategy focused on creating more actionable and high-performing content.
Tailored messaging and more engaging visuals, including short animations, drove a big boost in performance. Open Rates grew from 26% to 36% and absolute CTR doubled.
Maintained strong relevance and engagement as the user base scaled globally. The drop from 0.36% to 0.24% shows the content resonated more deeply with a growing audience.
Designing emails taught me that simplicity is hard. Localisation, unpredictable email clients, and countless constraints demanded creative problem-solving. While drag-and-drop editors are practical, working manually helped me understand the complexities of email and how to design within limits. I learned to treat functionality as the foundation, data as a design tool, and localisation as adaptation, not translation.
Santiago’s designs turned our newsletters into a genuine enticement for our audience, resulting in some of our highest engagement rates to date. He ensured design and copy worked seamlessly together and proactively mentored others to ensure team-wide success.
Brand Director @komoot
Santiago evolved our design language with a fresh, engaging approach. He proactively optimized our email testing processes, and his rigorous attention to detail ensured that every deliverable met the highest standards, giving the team complete confidence in his work.
Brand Manager @komoot
You’re already on the doorstep of your next adventure.
Find routes
The fastest path to fun is from wherever you are and you can find routes that begin right there.
When you head to the map, you’ll immediately see routes that begin nearby or at your current location, depending on your sport.
At komoot, we believe in ushering you out the door asap. That’s why the map takes popular existing local routes on komoot and alters their start and end points slightly  just for you, so they begin wherever you want them to.
Search adventures
The best adventures often begin and end at home, where there’s a hot shower and a full fridge. When you save your home address, you’ll see a house icon appear on the map that you can tap to see routes for the sport you’ve selected. Only you can see suggested routes that start from your home.
Your home address is private and only visible to you. All completed routes have their start and end points covered by any privacy zones you set up before you completed the routes. You can learn more about privacy zones or setting your home address on our support pages.
Just tap into the map’s search bar on komoot.com (not mobile) to find the set address prompt. Moving house or prefer using your friend’s apartment as your base? We got you. You can change your home address at any point from the search bar or from settings.
Recipients: 9.877.470
Relative CTR: 2.44%
Unsubscribe rate: 0.36%
This email landed in the inboxes of nearly 10 million users and instantly captured interest, reaching a remarkable open rate of 42.9%. The content and visual flow drew readers in, with 2.44% of openers clicking through, well above industry averages and a strong marker of persuasive design, copy and CTA placement. Just 0.36% unsubscribed, showing the email’s message resonated without feeling pushy.
The map has all the information you could need — let’s peel back its layers.
Find a route
When you find a great looking route, you can get heaps more information if you want to ensure it’s just right. Just head to the map and you’ll find everything you need to know embedded in its layers.
Find a routeOn the desktop site, get eyes on the trail by using komoot Trail View for recent, community-added photos of that exact trail. In the mountains? Select 3D maps for a better idea of steepness.
Ride and hike with the wind by using the built-in weather forecast. Scroll down on your saved route to find the weather section and tap into the wind forecast to see directional markers appear on the map.
Explore features
When you’re after blissful road riding, head to the desktop site, click on a road and you’ll see a little Google Street View icon. Tap that to get dropped into the map and check out the road surface.
Explore rides
Customize the route you’ve found by adding in the places you want to stop at. When editing a route, tap into the search bar to see a whole list of practical places from cafes and water fountains to play parks and public loos.
Explore routes
Is this route right for you? Komoot Trail View is a window onto the trail, allowing you to judge the terrain more accurately.
Watch on YouTubeRecipients: 9.791.650
Relative CTR: 2.94%
Unsubscribe rate: 0.32%
This campaign reached nearly 9.8 million users and achieved a 40.4% open rate. With a 1.19% overall click rate and 2.94% relative CTR, engagement was solid and evenly spread across multiple CTAs. The results show that product updates, especially those highlighting mapping features, strongly resonated with komoot’s audience.
Welcome back to the annual collaboration that sees runners whip out very specific superpowers…
Discover run routes
Who needs summer? When you run, you basically turn into a heat generator, bounding along the paths and trails hardly believing that you ever felt cold.
Perfect your balletic leaps over puddles, revel in falling leaves like they’re confetti, and chase the sunset as though it’s holding the snack bag.
Plan your next run
Trail shorts over Lycra leggings? Bright socks with clashing shoes? Pink beanie with a blue t-shirt? Autumn gives runners the superpower of looking cool no matter what you’re wearing.
There’s no time to get lost – you’ve got a hot chocolate waiting at home. Click your start point on the Discover Map to find routes convenient for you. When you’ve found or planned a route, you can navigate seamlessly from your phone or GPS smartwatch.
Discover runs nearbyRecipients: 4.060.167
Relative CTR: 2.13%
Unsubscribe rate: 0.3%
This running activation email reached over 4 million runners in a single send while achieving an open rate of 31.7%, in line with other high‑performing sport‑specific campaigns. The example shown is one of several sport activations that kept engagement steady by pairing clear running benefits with visually focused storytelling, trading a lower overall click‑through (0.68%) for highly intent‑driven clicks.
Turning lapsed users into active explorers through a high-impact visual identity and gamified brand campaign.
