Speed ​​up the process: How to create and update lists in emails easily with Stripo’s widget

Think about the last marketing email you opened. Did you read every word, or did you just scan the headlines, the numbers, and the offers to see what caught your eye? Very likely, you did the latter.

Your subscribers probably do the same. A 2024 eye-tracking study mentions earlier research that people spend around 10 seconds reading promotional emails. With such a short window to communicate your message, making important information easy to find matters.

That's where well-structured lists come in. They're excellent for organizing the information in your marketing emails.

Standard bullet points or numbered lists work fine for straightforward messages, but what to do if you want more individual design? The main challenge is that creating custom-designed lists and keeping their formatting consistent as content changes takes extra time and manual effort.

In this article, we'll explore whether you can simplify this process and how Stripo's List widget can help.

4 situations where marketers need lists in emails

Lists can take many forms and serve different purposes in emails. To show the range of possibilities, let's look at 4 examples of how a list can present information clearly and compellingly.

1. Monthly performance reports for marketing agency clients

When you prepare a monthly performance report for a client, you usually need to share campaign results, key wins, and recommendations.

Presenting all of that in long paragraphs makes it hard to find the important data. A well-structured list breaks the report into clear sections, each covering a specific metric, achievement, or recommendation.

For example, G&T Seguros' marketing report presents advertising investments and campaign results in individual cards. Each card highlights a key number, while icons, labels, and percentage changes help readers distinguish between metrics and quickly understand campaign performance.

(Source: Email from G&T Seguros)

2. Pricing and feature comparisons

Choosing between subscription plans, products, or service packages often means that a potential client is evaluating multiple features and benefits.

When this information is scattered across paragraphs, readers have to work harder to understand the differences. A well-designed list brings key details together in a consistent format, making options easier to compare.

(Source: Email from AppSumo)

Research by the Baymard Institute found that 67% of participants shopping for specification-heavy products used comparison features during testing. Although the study focused on eCommerce websites rather than emails, it highlights the value of making product differences easy to evaluate.

3. Monthly product update digests

Product teams often announce several new features, improvements, and integrations in a single email, making it harder for readers to find the updates most relevant to them.

A designed list gives each announcement its own heading, a short description, a supporting image, and a CTA. This lets subscribers scan updates and explore the ones that interest them.

(Source: Email from Betterment)

4. SaaS onboarding checklists

A successful registration alone is not enough to keep people engaged or get them to stick with the product in the long term.

New subscribers may still need to configure their accounts, connect integrations, invite teammates, or explore key features before they can get the most out of the platform.

That’s why a step-by-step checklist is the best option. It breaks the onboarding process into smaller, actionable tasks. Each list item can include a number or icon, a short instruction, and a CTA that takes subscribers directly to the next step.

Apollo's email demonstrates how a structured checklist can guide new subscribers through the onboarding process.

(Source: Email from Apollo.io)

How marketers usually create lists in emails

Creating a list in an email can seem simple, but it depends on the kind of list you're trying to create. A basic bulleted list takes a few clicks. A more elaborate list with images, headings, descriptions, and buttons will take more content blocks and a bit more work.

Let's look at how you can build these lists in Stripo and the problems you might encounter when updating them.

Creating lists with Stripo’s standard editor tools

To create simple lists, you can use a Text block, enter your content, and format it as a list. This approach works well for short instructions, feature highlights, or any information that doesn't require a complex visual layout.

For more complex designs, you are free to combine Stripo's standard Text block with the ready-to-use list elements from the general modules.

For instance, if you're preparing a monthly product update email, you might build each item using an image, a feature title, a short description, and a CTA button. You can then duplicate the structure to maintain a consistent design across the email.

This approach gives you the flexibility to create lists that match your company’s brand and campaign goals.

Why maintaining designed lists becomes challenging

As lists become more complex or span multiple campaigns, it can be difficult to maintain a consistent look.

Here are some common issues marketers face at this stage:

1. Updating content: Editing titles, descriptions, images, and links across multiple blocks.
2. Adding or rearranging items: Duplicating, moving, or deleting blocks whilst maintaining the layout.
3. Changing the design: Adjusting fonts, colors, spacing, or switching between list layouts.
4. Optimizing for mobile: Checking and tweaking the complex layouts for smaller screens.
5. Maintaining accessibility: Ensuring custom layouts still have a sensible reading order and retain an accessible HTML structure.

These issues are especially apparent when content changes constantly, but the design stays static.

How Stripo's List widget simplifies creating and maintaining lists

Stripo's List widget, with the help of the AI Assistant, allows you to manage content and design separately. You can update information, rearrange items, or change the layout using AI chat commands without manually rebuilding individual elements.

Let’s look at how to do all of that.

Creating a custom-designed list using a chat prompt 

If you need a monthly performance report, add a List widget to your template and ask the AI Assistant to create a list of campaign metrics, each with a title, description, and performance indicator. AI turns your description into a formatted list, generating the necessary HTML automatically.

Instead of building each list item from discrete content blocks, you can focus on the information you want to display and get a ready-made design without writing a single line of code.

Updating list content without rebuilding the design

Once you've created a list via a widget, you don't have to start from scratch each time the information changes. With Stripo's AI Assistant, you can add, remove, edit, and reorder list items via chat commands, and the list will maintain its existing layout and styling.

If you're producing your performance reports on a weekly or monthly basis, then you can reuse the same list design and just update the metrics, descriptions, and so on.

This saves you the bother of manually editing each individual block or rebuilding the list for every campaign. It makes it far easier to manage your recurring emails whilst still maintaining a consistent design.

Changing the list layout while keeping the same content 

Sometimes you will want to change how information is presented without changing the content itself. With the List widget, you can switch layouts using commands in AI Assistant, for example, from a simple vertical list to a more visual card-based design.

You can also have the AI Assistant copy an existing layout and add blank cards to it. That makes it very easy to expand your list or create alternative versions without having to start from scratch.

Additionally, you can customize individual design elements, such as font sizes, colors, images, icons, and spacing, to better match your email's style.

Please note that the AI Assistant may also ask you clarifying questions or request further instructions to better understand your requirements and ensure the final output is exactly what you're after.

Wrapping up 

Creating and maintaining a well-designed email list doesn't necessarily require you to do all the boring, repetitive manual editing and HTML coding.

With Stripo's List widget, you can create custom lists, update the content, and play around with different layouts using simple AI chat commands. By keeping the content and design separate, the Stripo’s List widget makes it far easier to maintain a consistent format, reuse designs, and adapt the list to different email campaigns.