Introducing Samra Origins
A branded launch email combining product storytelling, HTML text, and a clear path to early access.
View original feature Email development · Lifecycle · Web production
The craft behind
the customer experience.
I’m Ethan. I build hand-coded emails, personalized customer journeys, and the systems that help teams ship them reliably.
- 13+ years
- Across digital development and delivery
- 5M opt-ins
- Total email program size at Blue Bottle
- Five features
- Production emails selected by Email Love
01 / Selected email work
Built. Sent. Featured.
I developed, sent, and managed every Blue Bottle Coffee email below. Explore the full emails or view the original features on Email Love.
5 projects
Craft coffee meets a capsule collection
A multi-product release email with a dark palette, distinct merchandise sections, and consistent brand typography.
View original featureA helpful return to the store
A seasonal browse abandonment email bringing shipping information, shopping support, and product discovery together.
View original featureRing in the New Year
Cafe updates, a seasonal drink, and a recipe in one email, using clear content hierarchy and reusable sections.
View original featureAn extra day to catch up
A monthly roundup built around readable HTML text, generous spacing, and a flexible editorial layout.
View original featureEmail development, production, sending, and management: Ethan Shaffer. Brand design, copy, photography, and product assets: Blue Bottle Coffee and its collaborators. Preview images courtesy of the linked Email Love archives.
02 / Behind the emailsBetter systems.
Better systems.
More room for craft.
The email is one part of the work. I also build the templates, data connections, and production workflows that make the next hundred easier to deliver.
Blue Bottle Coffee / Iterable
A self-service email builder
I built a configurable production system that turned structured inputs into reusable marketing and transactional emails. Teammates could choose products and layouts, adjust copy, and preview their emails in Iterable.
Excel generated JSON inputs. Handlebars handled conditional layouts, overrides, text truncation, and fallbacks. An RSS-connected catalog supplied product images, descriptions, pricing, and links.
Talk through the projectEstimated email creation time
3 hours1 minute
Compared with the previous creation workflow. Excludes any unmeasured approval, QA, and sending time.
- ~1,500 lines
- Reusable Handlebars logic
- Daily refresh
- RSS-connected product catalog
- 2–3 users
- Documentation, training, and adoption
A
Customer data and journeys
Personalization grounded in real signals
I used SQL against Chord subscription records to create daily Segment traits, then activated them in Iterable for subscription-aware offers and content. Purchase behavior, browsing, engagement, and cafe proximity informed audiences and recommendations.
A unified Blue Bottle and Samra Origins welcome journey used three brand paths, subscription-aware content, and approximately 20 configured touchpoints, with staged testing before launch.
B
Experimentation
Test the experience, then improve it
At Blue Bottle, I independently planned, configured, launched, and analyzed email and journey experiments. Across repeated tests, live-text HTML emails averaged a 140% relative increase in click-through rate versus image-only versions.
This is a result across repeated program tests, not a measured result attributed to any individual email displayed above.
C
Sense / Deema Digital
Useful customer data, delivered by email
I developed weekly and monthly energy-dashboard emails in HTML, CSS, and Handlebars, using customer-specific usage, electricity and solar data, conditional day/night imagery, and fallback content.
The templates adapted across desktop and mobile layouts. Testing covered rendering, dark mode, enlarged fonts, and screen-reader behavior. Multiple project phases shipped on time and within budget.
03 / Web production
Beyond the inbox.
My web work connects design, content, commerce, and quality assurance—from landing pages to enterprise publishing.
Commerce launches and content production
I produced landing pages, product pages, and promotional experiences, implementing design-team Figma files through Contentful and Shopify and coordinating development with Engineering.
I supported migrations to Vercel/Contentful and Pack/Shopify, validated data flows, triaged defects, and documented launch QA and publishing workflows.
$250M+Revenue represented by supported product and promotional launches
Enterprise pages and reusable content
I developed HTML/CSS landing pages, forms, and email templates for enterprise clients. For Philips Healthcare, I supported AEM publishing and regularly maintained content in at least 20 language versions.
I also developed a reusable C# module system for Crownpeak with platform developers, supported large content migrations, and created training and validation processes.
20+ languagesLocalized content regularly maintained for Philips Healthcare
04 / How I workBuild carefully.
Build carefully.
Make it reusable.
I stay close to the code, the customer data, and the final experience. The details matter just as much as the workflow that supports them.
- Email engineering
- Table-based HTML, inline CSS, MSO conditionals, bulletproof buttons, responsive layouts, dark mode, Handlebars, JSON, and RSS.
- Test before shipping
- Litmus, Email on Acid, classic and new Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, iPhone and Android checks, staging journeys, and browser QA.
- Accessibility in the work
- HTML text, alt text, keyboard and screen-reader checks, enlarged-font testing, ARIA where appropriate, and WCAG guidance.
- Leave a useful handoff
- Reusable components, documented defaults and fallbacks, publishing procedures, training, and clear ownership of fixes.
Have a project or role in mind?Let’s build a better
Let’s build a better
customer experience.
Hands-on email development, lifecycle production, marketing technology, and web delivery. Open to remote roles and contract engagements.