One design system instead of five

Co-op brought email development in-house in 2022 on Taxi for Email and built an Email Design System: a library of reusable modules and templates that could be combined into hundreds of variations. It worked. The team went from 800 unique creatives (campaigns) in 2022 to 1,400 in 2024, with lower agency spend, more control, faster delivery and more consistent output.

Three years on, the foundation was strong, but it was being asked to do more than it was built for. Limited support for code reuse meant every new feature and every round of maintenance took more effort than it should. The team was maintaining five separate design systems across its business units, even though they shared most of the same modules, so every change had to be made five times. The module library had grown to 46, while just 13 of them accounted for 90% of usage. Enhancements the team wanted to make were harder to implement than the design system approach promised, and with little visibility of Taxi's long-term roadmap, planning ahead was difficult.

Co-op went to market with a formal RFP. When the team shared its pain points during Better Email's demo, Better Email built the capability they had asked for, segmentation set up directly inside the campaign, and showed it working two days later. Better Email went on to win on three things Co-op's evaluation team called out: a comprehensive product, a clear roadmap, and a collaborative approach.

What decided it was the combination: a significant reduction in the complexity of Co-op's setup without giving up flexibility, plus capabilities the team had not been looking for, including Betty, Better Email's AI agent.

Co-op and Better Email planned a phased migration. Co-op backed up its existing code, reviewed campaign schedules and business priorities with stakeholders, and agreed defined timelines for user access, development, UAT and go-live. A discovery workshop in April mapped all five existing design systems, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement setup and the migration requirements, and chose Membership as the first business unit to move.

Rather than recreating five design systems, Co-op's in-house developers built one. A single Email Design System with reusable code references now serves every business unit, with brand guardrails that keep each brand's identity intact no matter who is building. The module library was rebuilt around what the team actually used: around 20 modules now deliver the same or improved capability that 46 did before. Four Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement integrations connect the platform directly to Co-op's sending environments, with one-click export into the right business unit.

Co-op and Better Email worked together to extend release management, role profiles and editing controls to fit a 27-person team spanning developers, campaign builders and campaign managers across multiple business units. Granular permissions mean each role sees what it needs, and audit logging gives the team oversight of every change. Co-op has since established a regular design system release schedule, so improvements ship on a cadence rather than when someone finds time.

Over the rollout Co-op shared close to 100 enhancement suggestions. The majority have been implemented, including PDF support, link tracking, render testing, new input types, shared inputs and multiple content zones. In Tara Knowles' words, the most positive surprise was how quickly feedback was understood and acted on: “Rather than feeling like a fixed product with a static set of features, the platform has continued to evolve in response to our needs.”