PubNub is where I first built what I'd now call an email build system — years before purpose-built tooling for this existed. The problem was familiar: production was slow, repetitive, and entirely manual. Every email meant duplicating code, swapping variables by hand, and rebuilding shared elements from scratch. I redesigned PubNub's email templates to bring them in line with the website's visual identity, but the more meaningful contribution was what I built underneath them. Using good ol' fashioned PHP, I created a custom include-and-variable system that let shared components — headers, footers, navigation — live in a single source file and get pulled into any template at compile time. Output was rendered as static HTML ready for deployment in Pardot. For newsletters, I used PHP loops to echo JSON content directly into the template, which effectively automated the content-population step entirely. Scrappy? Sure. But it worked. And the mindset — automate the repetitive parts so the creative parts get more attention — is something I've carried into every role since.

Details

• Role: Senior Email Developer

• Languages Used: HTML, CSS, PHP

• Marketing Automation Platform: Pardot

• Email Creation Dates: August 2016 – June 2017