Email personalization for publishers is the key to unlocking massive engagement. Q.Digital, America’s leading LGBTQ+ media company (home to Queerty, LGBTQ Nation, and others), knows this well. Its email subscribers are 2–3 times more engaged than its general audience, making newsletters crucial for ad revenue and retention.
The problem? Their previous workflow was manual, inefficient, and complex, requiring developers and editors to waste time switching between systems. They needed true email automation and personalization.
😩 The pain point: The manual workflow that killed time
Despite the importance of newsletters, Q.Digital’s workflow was a major issue. Their custom setup — connecting their CMS with their previous ESP — was cumbersome and collaborative, involving editorial, marketing, and web development.
Marc Kreidler, Q.Digital’s Full Stack Developer, recalls the headache: “I would have to go to our ESP, mock up the email, export the code, put the code in our CMS, put the variables in… it took a lot of time and work to get it right.”
This constant switching and manual QA meant editors wasted hours daily. Furthermore, any template adjustments required Kreidler’s time, often amounting to many hours a week, all lost to manual maintenance.
🧠 The game-changer: Unified platform and personalization
The prospect of Echobox’s AI automation and personalization was too good to ignore. The Q.Digital team switched.
Kreidler recalls the decisive moment: “We saw what Echobox could do—things that I could never get our previous ESP to do. It’s all unified, I don’t have to maintain anything, and it comes with these amazing features like personalized send times and personalized content selection. We felt that Echobox would set us up for a more successful future with newsletters.”
The migration was smooth, with Echobox handling the complex template translation and data transfer. Ian Helms, Director of Growth Marketing, noted: “We’d been through an ESP migration just before we started with Echobox, so we expected it to be similar. It wasn’t. It was so much easier.”
Plus, creating new newsletters became a breeze: “It only took an afternoon to set up 3 new campaigns on Echobox,” Kreidler says. “That would have been unthinkable with our previous ESP.” Learn more about the technology behind this success at echobox.com/email.
🥳 The big win: Performance soars, time is reclaimed
The transition delivered immediate, undeniable results, proving the power of proper email personalization for publishers:
| Key Performance Metric | The Improvement |
| Average Open Rate | Increased by 25% |
| Average Click Rate | Increased by 16% |
| Editorial Time Saved | Around 20 hours weekly |
Q.Digital’s own testing confirmed that personalized send times were the primary driver for the open rate increase. When they reverted to fixed-time sends, rates plummeted—only to shoot back up when Echobox’s personalization was reintroduced.
The new automated workflow significantly reduced the manual workload. Kreidler estimates that editorial teams now save around 20 hours each and every week.
“When I asked our editors what they think about Echobox, they all said the same thing: it’s such a relief not to spend hours managing newsletters manually,” said Helms. “Everything just works, looks great, and gives them more time to focus on creating great content.”
🌟 Ready to unlock the power of email personalization for publishers?
If complex workflows are limiting your engagement, Q.Digital’s story shows that a unified platform with true AI-driven email personalization for publishers is the solution.
Download the full case study for the blueprint, the details on the personalized send time success, and all the insider info on how they achieved a 25% higher open rate and saved 20 hours a week!
➡️ DOWNLOAD THE FULL CASE STUDY (PDF) — Get the Full ROI! ⬅️
