Skip to main content
This guide walks through one complete workflow: connect your email platform, choose the category and competitors that matter to your brand, build an email with that context, then review what Builder learns from your team’s work. Everything belongs to a design system. Use the same design system when configuring sources, drafting the email and reviewing memories.

How the pieces fit together

Reports holds observations. Memories holds lasting facts and preferences. The Assistant can draw on both without requiring you to read a report before every draft.
You can start with brand knowledge and Email Love’s archive without connecting an ESP. Reporting reads aggregate performance only. It does not access or change contacts, recipient lists or individual delivery events.

1. Connect your email platform

A workspace owner or admin opens Integrations, chooses the platform and saves the connection. Give the account a name your team will recognize, especially if you connect more than one account.
Customer.io connection form in Builder

Customer.io is one example. The fields differ by platform; these credentials are blank.

Follow your platform’s integration guide for credentials and permissions. A connection that can export emails does not necessarily have permission to read reports. Reporting support and available metrics also differ by provider. Next: choose which results this design system should use. Connecting an account alone does not enable sync or AI use.

2. Choose competitors and reporting sources

Open your design system’s AI knowledge → Competitors & results. You can also reach these settings through Reports → Email performance → Manage insight settings.
  1. Choose your Category.
  2. Use Find a brand on Email Love and Search brands to add up to five competitors.
  3. Choose an ESP account. Its reporting options load automatically.
  4. Select the available campaigns, newsletters or aggregate source. Some platforms ask for a report ID instead. You can choose up to 20 sources across connected accounts.
  5. Click Save and load results to save your selection and queue the import.
  6. The Email performance report updates when the import finishes. Use Update now for a later manual refresh.
Competitors and results settings with category, competitor brands, reporting sources and separate controls

Demonstration settings. Category, competitors and reporting sources are selected for one design system. The three automatic controls start off.

Choose the automatic behavior you want, then save again: These controls are independent. You can read reports with AI use off, or let the Assistant use stored results while scheduled sync is off. See source selection, controls and supported platforms for the details.

3. Inspect the evidence

In Reports, choose the same design system and open Email performance or Category trends. For ESP results, check the provider, reporting scope, window and capture date. Some reports cover a campaign; others cover an entire account or server. Unknown means a value was not supplied, not zero. For category trends, look for a relevant observation and click View evidence. Email Love’s archive describes what brands send, including examples and available journeys. It does not reveal your competitors’ opens, clicks or revenue.
Category trends report with View evidence and Create brief actions

Demonstration category observation. View evidence shows its source and limitations; Create brief gives you a starting point for an email.

Treat findings as ideas to investigate. A common layout or a higher click count does not prove that a design caused better results. See how to read reports and turn evidence into a brief.

4. Build an email from a brief

Click Create brief on a finding, or go straight to Overview and write your own brief. Choose the design system you configured and the campaign the email belongs in.
Builder Overview with the Assistant brief box and design system and campaign selectors

Start on Overview and check the design system and campaign before submitting your brief.

For example:
Draft a welcome email for Northwind Outfitters. The audience is new subscribers and the goal is to introduce our trail gear. Use our brand instructions, relevant category examples and any available recent ESP findings. Use one primary CTA, “Explore trail gear,” linking to our supplied collection URL. Explain the evidence behind your choices and flag anything missing.
Add your actual offer, dates, product facts and destination URL. Insights provide context; they do not replace the brief or give the Assistant facts about an offer you have not supplied. The Assistant retrieves relevant evidence rather than putting the entire archive into every request. Stored ESP findings are available only when Use results in AI assistance is enabled. Where a reply includes Why these choices, expand it and open View evidence to inspect the cited observations. Not every reply includes citations. Check the draft’s copy, imagery and links. For the full drafting workflow, see The Assistant.

5. Edit, review and learn

Open the email and use AI chat to refine it. Select a section first to focus a request, or edit its fields yourself. Chat applies edits directly; use Undo to reverse a change. Ask teammates for feedback through comments and sign-off. Learning is selective. With Learn memories automatically enabled, Builder can keep lasting facts from chat and repeated structural edit/review observations across three distinct emails. It does not turn every rewritten sentence into a brand preference or infer a winning design from campaign counts. If a rule should apply immediately, add it yourself to Instructions or Memories instead of waiting for a pattern. For example, add “Use sentence case for headlines” as an explicit brand rule. Open AI knowledge → Memories to inspect what is remembered:
  • Expand Why this was remembered on a learned memory to inspect its evidence and scope.
  • Edit a memory to correct it. Human edits protect it from automatic changes.
  • Remove a memory you no longer want used.
  • With automatic learning off, use Remember or Dismiss for chat suggestions.
Design-system Memories page showing suggested and remembered facts and preferences

Demonstration memories with automatic learning off. Suggestions stay separate until you choose Remember; saved items can be edited or removed.

This is the design system’s existing Memories page. You do not need to manage a second memory store. See memory learning and controls.

6. Check, export and use the next results

Before exporting, resolve blocking Checks, preview the email, send an inbox test and complete your team’s sign-off. Insights do not bypass these steps.
Builder Checks panel with a blocking missing image and warnings

Example checks with an issue to fix before export. Open the field named by a check, make the correction and run checks again.

Follow Preview and test emails, Checks and Push to your email platform. Complete sending in your ESP. When results become available, refresh your selected reporting sources or let scheduled sync collect them. If this email was sent through a new campaign or newsletter source, add that source in settings where the provider requires it. Exporting a template does not automatically select a reporting source. Use the next report to plan another brief. Future supported AI requests can draw on the design system’s current memories and authorized stored results. Results remain observations; they do not automatically become permanent claims that a design works best.

Keep control of your data

Private results are scoped to the authorized workspace and design system. They are not pooled across customers. Turning sync off keeps earlier reports; turning AI use off stops their use in new requests. Delete imported results removes Builder’s imported reports and stops sync without changing anything in your ESP. Existing memories have their own controls. See reporting privacy and deletion and Security.