How this venture-backed app transformed its email branding with MailerLite and MailerSend
Soon after his app shot to the top 15 of the Google Play and Apple App Store, Nicholas Carlton began looking for a better way to send marketing and transactional emails to his 43,000-plus subscribers.
The previous solutions he used worked, but were clunky. Using completely separate platforms for transactional and marketing emails meant it was difficult to create a cohesive and consistent brand identity.
That’s when he discovered MailerLite and our transactional partner software MailerSend. As well as being impressed by our drag-and-drop editor and sky-high email deliverability, using 2 tools built on the same technology made it easy to create a consistent experience across all emails.
We sat down with Nick to hear about how switching to MailerLite and MailerSend helped transform his email communication, enabling more consistency, creativity, and control.
Spoony: A safe space to make friends
Spoony is a safe space for neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled people to make friends and find support. This is an important problem since isolation impacts these groups disproportionately, and many don’t find the current social media options welcoming.
The problem we are solving is the profound social isolation that people with health conditions and disability grapple with every day.
Nick began working on the app and growing its email list in March 2024. By the time he released the app in September, he had 43,000 people waiting for its release. Around 50% of these people converted into app users. Following this release, the Spoony team closed a $1 million funding round in January 2025.
Here’s a look at how the team currently uses MailerLite.
Nicholas and non-technical team members use the Drag & drop builder to create beautiful, branded emails.
The engineering team uses the API to automate emails based on app interaction.
The community team drives brand engagement with stories and product updates shared via email campaigns.
Tools to create a consistent brand experience
When Spoony started, it used unrelated platforms for its transactional and marketing emails. The resulting brand experience was inconsistent and didn’t reflect the app’s thoughtful design.
We were using two systems that were unrelated to each other. They felt dated and clunky to use. We weren’t able to get our transactional emails to look like our marketing emails and vice versa.
For a consumer-facing company whose branding was an essential part of attracting users, this disconnect was a big problem.
Having a beautiful brand that is loved by our users is really important to us. Aesthetics and user experience have been a vital part of Spoony’s success so far. The ability to reflect the brand in emails was an important factor when I was evaluating platforms.
That’s what led Nick to MailerLite and MailerSend. With powerful drag-and-drop builders that use the same underlying technology, both platforms made creating on-brand, beautifully designed emails a breeze. For example, the image below shows an email made with MailerSend on the left and one made with Mailerlite on the right.
We are now able to run our transactional and marketing emails and have them look and feel the same, so they don’t seem like separate systems. We wanted to find a family of platforms that would do both things.
Now, Spoony delivers a seamless email experience fully aligned with its visual identity and brand voice.
Transactional vs. marketing email
MailerSend is a transactional email solution. Companies use it to automate essential email communication such as security codes, password resets and purchase confirmations.
Developers typically integrate their platforms with the app via its API or SMTP. Once set up, founders, designers and marketers can use the drag and drop editor and user-friendly interface to build templates, create analytics reports and run A/B tests.
This compares to an email marketing tool like MailerLite, which is used to send promotional emails such as campaigns and automations, and usually requires zero technical knowledge to get set up.
The table below shows a clear look at the essential differences between the 2 tools.
| MailerLite | MailerSend |
|---|---|
| Use for marketing emails | Use for transactional emails |
| Send newsletters, nurture sequences, and marketing automations | Send account confirmations, password resets, one-time codes |
| Connect with integrations or API | Connect to your app via API, SMTP or integrations |
| Intuitive drag and drop builder, rich text editor and HTML editor | Intuitive drag and drop builder, rich text editor and HTML editor |
| Create and reuse templates, brand styles and email blocks | Create and reuse templates, brand styles and email blocks |
| SSO and access in same dashboard | SSO and access in same dashboard |
Straightforward setup with comprehensive documentation
For Nick, a major plus point of MailerLite and MailerSend is how easy the tools are to use, both for the team’s engineers and marketers.
Thanks to the intuitive API and crystal-clear documentation, the technical setup was quick and painless.
Setting up MailerLite and MailerSend was fantastically simple. The engineers had an easy time integrating the APIs. It was all really well documented. They had no trouble at all.
The team used MailerLite to manage marketing automations, like adding new users to the newsletter list. Meanwhile, MailerSend handled essential transactional emails—account confirmations, password resets, one-time codes, and more.
Once the API was set up, Nick and the team’s marketers could use MailerLite and MailerSend's intuitive no-code tools to create the campaigns they need without the bottleneck of relying on engineering teams.
I’m not an engineer. I love that as a marketer I can come in and design the transactional emails and make changes without having to bother the engineers.
Building a powerful asset for learning and growing
The Spoony newsletter has been essential to its success. It gives the brand a direct connection with its community.
It’s a noisy world, so having that direct channel with our users is really important. It allows us to have engaging and deeper conversations.
The impact of the newsletter became apparent early on when the brand sent out a survey and started getting responses immediately. It was a truly eye-opening moment.
We had a Slack channel set up to notify us of survey responses. Within seconds of hitting send, Slack started to ping and people’s responses were coming in thick and fast.
That moment confirmed just how engaged the community was—and how valuable the newsletter would be.
Today, Spoony continues to use email surveys to gather insights. But it’s also a platform to celebrate the community, highlight success stories, and share meaningful updates.
We share success stories, such as people who have made friends in the community. We also share articles we’ve written and highlight the different health conditions in the community. It’s a powerful way to remind people that they aren’t alone.
This ultimately leads to stronger brand engagement, a connected community, and more success for the app.
The road ahead: Millions of users and beyond
With a reliable, brand-consistent email setup in place, Nick and the Spoony team can focus on what matters most: growing their impact.
The brand’s goal is to reach millions of users and beyond. As they scale, they can do so with confidence, knowing that thanks to MailerLite and MailerSend, the brand has the infrastructure it needs to grow.
Power your email with MailerLite and MailerSend
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