Case study: How University High School of Indiana creates professional emails without coding skills

Email communications can be a challenge even for small educational institutions. Email diversity isn't directly related to the number of emails sent but, rather, to the tasks these emails must accomplish, such as communicating with applicants, promoting events, and sending internal updates — all while maintaining an attractive appearance and brand consistency.

If you’re in a similar situation and wondering how to balance the creation of memorable emails with the limited resources you have, read this case study. Nila Nealy, director of communications at University High School of Indiana, shared how her two-person team uses Stripo to streamline email production and maintain a consistent brand identity across all email communications.

Expert

Nila Nealy

Director of Communications at University High School of Indiana

Meet the university

University High School of Indiana is an independent, secular, college-preparatory day school for students in grades 9-12. Located in Indianapolis, it enrolls approximately 320 students and intentionally maintains a small-school environment in which students are personally known to their teachers and mentors. Its academic culture is rigorous, and communication plays an important role in supporting relationships with students, parents, alumni, donors, and prospective families.

The Communications department operates as a two-person team as part of the school’s External Relations group and alongside Admissions and Advancement. The team manages almost every outward-facing communication effort, including weekly parent newsletters, admissions marketing, advancement campaigns, event promotion, alumni storytelling, social media, digital advertising, and internal communications.

Challenge: Maintain professional email communication with a small team

For University High School of Indiana, emails is one of the main communication channels across the school community. The Communications team manages weekly parent newsletters, advancement and fundraising campaigns, Summer U camp promotions, admissions communications, alumni storytelling, and event-related emails. Many of these campaigns are sent to parents, students, faculty, staff, donors, board members, and prospective families; thus, maintaining a polished, consistent brand presence is important to the school.

The team experienced data loss, ongoing sending issues, and increasing production difficulties, thus making email creation frustrating and inefficient. When the platform was acquired by a larger company and product quality declined further, the school decided it was time to seek a better solution.

Beyond such technical instabilities, the team also needed more control over email design and branding. The existing workflow made it difficult to efficiently create professional-looking campaigns without spending hours on formatting or involving technical specialists. As a two-person department responsible for almost all outward-facing communications, the team needed a tool that would simplify production, support collaboration, and help them consistently create branded emails with a high visual standard.

Solution: Finding an email builder created for efficient branded production

When evaluating a new email solution, University High School of Indiana focused on several practical requirements. 

The Communications team needed a tool with the following main features:

• help create visually polished emails; 
• maintain strong brand consistency across recurring campaigns; 
• ease of use and production efficiency; 
• support collaboration and reduce the need to build emails from scratch every time.

After reviewing several options, the school chose Stripo.

One of the biggest advantages was that Stripo was designed specifically for email production rather than being part of a larger marketing platform. For a small team managing multiple campaign types with different audiences and branding needs, that specialization mattered.

Nila Nealy,

Director of Communications, University High School of Indiana.

The transition also immediately improved the team’s day-to-day workflow. The contrast with the previous platform was evident from the very first use. After working for years with a system that had become slow and unreliable, moving to Stripo made email production feel significantly more intuitive and manageable. 

Workflow: Building collaborative and consistent email production

Today, University High School of Indiana uses Stripo as the central design environment for its branded email campaigns. The Communications department primarily uses it for the weekly Blazer Blast parent newsletter, advancement and annual fund campaigns, Summer U camp promotions, and selected admissions communications where design quality and brand consistency are particularly important.

The workflow begins long before the email itself is assembled. The Communications team continuously monitors what is happening across the school, including upcoming events, student achievements, institutional priorities, fundraising initiatives, and campaign moments. Based on this information, the team develops the content direction for each campaign.

Once production begins, responsibilities are divided depending on the type of campaign and current priorities. Both team members actively work in Stripo and occasionally collaborate on the same email. Content may also come from other departments or administrators, but the Communications team remains responsible for the email structure, branding, layout, and final production.

Here are the important aspects of the workflow that make it effective.

Using templates with reusable headers, footers, and structural modules

One of the most important elements of the workflow is the template system. For recurring campaigns such as the Blazer Blast newsletter and U Fund appeals, the team utilizes established templates with reusable headers, footers, and structural modules. This approach helps maintain visual consistency across campaigns while significantly reducing production time. Instead of rebuilding emails from scratch, the team can focus on updating content, refining layouts, and adjusting the messaging for every communication.

Here is an example of a Blazer Blast weekly newsletter:

(Source: Email by University High School of Indiana)

The templates' flexibility is particularly valuable because the school manages various communication types for different audiences. Weekly parent newsletters, fundraising campaigns, and Summer U promotions each require slightly different structures and visual approaches while remaining aligned with the school’s overall brand identity.

Here is an example of the U Fund campaign:

(Source: Email by University High School of Indiana)

Testing process 

After designing the email in Stripo, the team runs an initial review and testing process directly within the platform. This helps them immediately spot layout issues and fix them before exporting the email to a sending service.

Once finalized, the email code is exported to MailerLite for sending. Before launch, the team performs a second round of testing on MailerLite to confirm that nothing shifted during export.

We like the adage: measure twice, cut once. Running a second test after import catches anything that may have shifted in the transfer and gives us confidence before anything reaches our audience. That said, our testing mainly involves ensuring the email looks good on mobile devices and across different browsers.

Nila Nealy,

Director of Communications, University High School of Indiana.

While they acknowledge that testing every possible device, browser, operating system, and email client combination is impossible for a small team, the additional review step enables them to minimize rendering issues before emails are sent to parents, students, donors, alumni, faculty, and board members.

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Improving email rendering consistency across devices and browsers

Results: More consistent and professional email communication

Since implementing Stripo, University High School of Indiana has improved the quality, efficiency, and consistency of its branded email production. For a small team managing a wide range of campaigns, the platform has helped simplify production while maintaining a professional visual standard across all major communications.

Here is an example of a U Fund campaign:

(Source: Email by University High School of Indiana)

Consistent branding across recurring campaigns

One of the most noticeable improvements for the school has been consistency. The team now uses established templates and reusable modules for recurring communications, such as the Blazer Blast newsletter, U Fund fundraising appeals, and Summer U promotional campaigns. This enables them to maintain a recognizable visual structure and consistent branding across sends without rebuilding emails each time.

According to the team, Stripo enables polished campaigns to be efficiently produced while still adapting content and layouts to different audiences and communication goals.

Professional email design without coding resources

For University High School of Indiana, maintaining a professional appearance in email communication is important because many campaigns are sent to parents, donors, alumni, faculty, staff, board members, and prospective families.

The Communications department noted that Stripo provides the design control needed to consistently meet this expectation, even without dedicated developers or additional design resources. The team specifically highlighted that the platform enables a small department without coding skills to produce work that feels comparable to that of a much larger team.

This has been particularly important for advancement and fundraising communications. The annual U Fund campaigns were mentioned as one of the strongest examples because donor communication heavily depends on institutional trust and credibility. The ability to create professionally designed fundraising emails helped the school present campaigns that reflect the seriousness of the initiative.

A smoother and more manageable production process

The transition to Stripo also improved the daily production experience for the Communications team. After working with a previous platform that had become slow, unreliable, and frustrating to use, the difference was immediate.

My brightest moment working with Stripo was the first time I used it. I spent the majority of my career as a print designer and have been steadily pulled into the digital world over the years. The platform we had been using had become genuinely frustrating: unreliable, slow, and difficult to work in. When we moved to Stripo, the contrast was immediate. It was so much easier. The friction that had built up around email production just... lifted. For someone whose design instincts were formed in print, finding a digital tool that felt intuitive and produced results that I was proud of made a real difference.

Nila Nealy,

Director of Communications, University High School of Indiana.

Reliable support and ongoing product improvements

Beyond the workflow itself, the team also emphasized the importance of ongoing product development and support. They noted that Stripo continues to improve the platform in ways that genuinely benefit users, and that whenever they needed support, Stripo’s response has always been prompt and helpful.

Wrapping up

For University High School of Indiana, email remains one of the most important channels for remaining connected with parents, students, donors, alumni, and prospective families. With a small communications team that manages a wide range of responsibilities, speed, consistency, and design quality are critical to maintaining effective communication that is aligned with the school’s brand.

By moving to Stripo, the team stabilized and streamlined its email production process, improved collaboration, and maintained a high standard of visual communication across all key campaigns. Most importantly, Stripo enabled a small team to produce reliable, structured, and professional email campaigns that reflect the institution's quality and expectations, without adding technical complexity or requiring additional resources.