Case study: How Break Charity transforms email workflows with Stripo
Summarize
If you work for a non-profit organization, you know that email communication with supporters is a crucial task, especially in the charity sector. This is especially critical when preparing and executing large-scale charity events, where every email contributes to the overall impression of and fosters a sense of trust and support in the organization.
In this case study, Break Charity shared with us how Stripo’s flexible templates, saved modules, and reliable rendering cut email creation time in half and increased branding consistency across newsletters, triggered emails, and streamlined the fundraising email campaign that had raised over £380,000.
Expert
Meet the company
Break is a nonprofit organization supporting children and young people in, around, and leaving care across East Anglia. It provides foster care, residential homes, wellbeing support, mentoring, and a leaving care service. It aims to help young people build confidence, form strong relationships, and access new opportunities. Break is committed to being present when it matters most, offering lifelong care and love and encouraging ambition so young people can live up to their full potential.
Communication plays a key role in how Break operates and fulfills its mission. Efficient communication helps the charity generate income, raise awareness, and stay connected with supporters, volunteers, partners, and new audiences. Emails are especially important. It keeps supporters informed about the impact of Break’s services, highlights urgent appeals, and encourages engagement.
Through thoughtful and timely newsletters and campaign emails, Break can strengthen relationships and inspire action, such as donating, participating, or volunteering, ensuring they can continue our life-changing work with children and young people in care.
Challenge: Streamlining email creation for fundraising and newsletters
Emails form one of Break’s most critical communication channels. It helps the team share work updates, run fundraising campaigns, promote volunteer opportunities, and stay connected with supporters. These emails need to be clear, visually structured, and aligned with the charity’s brand. As the volume of newsletters and campaigns grew, so did the need for a more reliable and flexible way to build them.
Before using Stripo, Break struggled with layout and design control. The team spent a considerable amount of time creating emails that matched the charity’s branding, often working around the limitations of their previous platform. Every adjustment required manual checks on desktop and mobile devices, which added extra rounds of internal review. Customer service on the platform also felt impersonal and frustrating.
Fundraising campaigns and newsletters were especially challenging. These emails required multiple content blocks, imagery, and visual storytelling, which took a long time to build manually. The team also could not include a navigation bar. After seeing the number of navigation clicks they received with Stripo, they realized how much engagement they were missing before.
Selection: Finding an intuitive and flexible email editor
Break first heard about Stripo in networking events. The team had been struggling with design limitations and time-consuming email production, so their manager asked peers how they were handling similar challenges. Learning that Stripo offered a free trial was especially important. Since they had a small marketing budget, the team needed to test whether the tool could meet their needs before committing funds.
Stripo proved to be the right fit. It offered the flexibility required by the communications team without adding complexity. The drag-n-drop editor felt intuitive, and features like modular templates, saved blocks, and locked brand elements supported consistent design.
These capabilities significantly simplified the workflow for a small team. The ability to export directly to Mailchimp was another key factor in our decision. It allowed Break to maintain high-quality, on-brand emails without long build times or the need to move their audience.
Workflow: Building a smoother and more collaborative email process
Break communicates with a wide range of supporters. The email list includes individuals who have participated in fundraising events, visited charity shops, or utilized Break’s services. Stripo has helped Break set up a clear production workflow.
The marketing team meets every few months to plan the content calendar, following which they work on emails:
- Jules Parker, Digital Marketing Lead, creates a short brief for each email;
- Nikki Neile, Marketing & PR Lead, turns the brief into copy;
- and Steph Asprey, Content Editor, builds the email in Stripo.
The first draft is shared with the communications team for feedback, proofreading, and link checks. Jules then finalizes the email in Mailchimp, adding segmentation and scheduling as needed. This structure enables the team to collaborate efficiently while maintaining a consistent on-brand tone throughout every email.
Every few years, the charity runs a large art trail that attracts thousands of new followers who love receiving GoGo trail updates. Many of them stay subscribed long after the events end.
This year, the GoGoSafari art trail dominated Break’s content plan. Emails included information on early access to the event app, sculpture reveals, and merchandise announcements. The team also builds its automated flows in Stripo. These processes create a consistent experience for new supporters and event participants.
Here is an example of how the emails looked during GoGoSafari.
(Source: Email from Break)
Break sends emails to more than 40,000 subscribers, and the list continues to grow through its charity shops. During the GoGoSafari period, emails were sent out weekly, along with automated journeys for new sign-ups.
Now that the trail is finished and has raised over £380,000 through its final auction, the team is preparing a monthly update and testing targeted emails for specific segments.
(Source: Email from Break)
Results: Faster production and stronger engagement
Break saw clear improvements after adopting Stripo. Email creation became faster, templates looked more consistent, and the team gained more time to focus on content quality and supporter journeys. This impact is apparent in daily work and campaign performance.
Features that make the biggest difference include the following:
- drag-n-drop blocks;
- saved modules for recurring content;
- easy HTML export to Mailchimp;
- preview and testing functions;
- hiding features on mobile or desktop.
Key results
The email marketing team at the non-profit organization notes the following impact of Stripo on their processes:
- Production time was reduced by about half. A newsletter that once took half a day now takes about an hour to complete. Reusable blocks and modular layouts made the workflow much more efficient.
- Stripo supported Break’s rebrand. The templates helped the team shape and refine the visual style of their new branded emails.
- Templates render reliably across devices and inboxes. Emails behave as expected on both mobile and desktop, which reduces manual testing and improves design quality and accessibility.
- Engagement increased, especially for event-driven and fundraising campaigns.
- Formatting issues decreased, and the team now spends less time troubleshooting.
Impact on key campaigns
More time for mission-focused work
Stripo has allowed Break to focus more on content quality and supporter journeys. The increased flexibility in design inspired the team to improve their automated flows and overall storytelling.
The team also shared ideas for future improvements that would be especially helpful for non-profits. A centralized image library would support more consistent campaigns. Charity-specific templates would make it easier to get started, and more interactive elements within their pricing tier would help enhance supporter engagement.
This is an example of how Break kicked off the Christmas campaign with an email from a young man to help the audience understand the mission behind the experiment:
(Source: Email from Break)
Wrapping up
Break transformed its email production process by implementing Stripo. The charity moved from labor-intensive, manually crafted newsletters to a streamlined workflow built on flexible email templates and robust visualization. Now, the team crafts emails more efficiently, maintains consistent branding, and creates more engaging campaigns for over 40,000 donors.
Freed from troubleshooting and manual work, Break can focus on what matters most. The team can invest their energy in storytelling, donor relationships, and creating meaningful events that help children and young people in care.