How DocuSign Drove a Seamless Eloqua-to-Iterable Migration with Knak

The Challenge: Migrating Platforms Without Slowing the Business

As DocuSign prepared to migrate from Eloqua to Iterable, the challenge wasn’t just technical—it was operational.

Years of growth had left DocuSign with:

• 3,000+ active and always-on emails embedded across complex Eloqua programs
• A homegrown, code-heavy email builder that required ongoing engineering support
• Dozens of marketers creating campaigns, while central teams handled QA, HTML fixes, and maintenance

A traditional ESP migration would have required manually rebuilding thousands of emails, consuming months of time, significant budget, and scarce engineering resources—while putting campaign velocity and performance at risk.

DocuSign needed a way to:

• Migrate email content without recreating it from scratch
• Keep campaigns running during the transition
• Reduce operational and engineering burden
• Maintain brand governance at enterprise scale

Why Knak

Knak became the content layer that decoupled email creation from orchestration.

Instead of rebuilding emails directly inside each ESP, DocuSign centralized email creation in Knak—allowing the same content to be synced to Eloqua or Iterable as needed.

This approach enabled Knak to act as a safe bridge between platforms, allowing DocuSign to migrate on its own timeline without disrupting campaign execution.

What Knak Enabled

Sync, Not Rebuild

Knak’s native Iterable integration eliminated the need to manually recreate emails during migration.

• Avoided rebuilding 3,000+ emails
• Removed months of migration effort
• Eliminated thousands of dollars in manual and engineering costs

Emails continued syncing to Eloqua while Iterable was implemented—then synced to Iterable with a single click.

Parallel Platform Support

During the migration:

• Eloqua remained active for ongoing programs
• Iterable integration was enabled in parallel
• Teams continued building emails the same way in Knak

This ensured zero downtime, no duplicated workflows, and a controlled cutover.

Dramatic Time Savings

Early pilots highlighted the efficiency gains immediately.

DocuSign’s Brand Creative team reported:

• 45 email assets built in Knak during early testing
• An average build time of ~6 minutes per email

Compared to the previous HTML-driven process, Knak reduced creation time by up to 90%, freeing marketing operations and engineering teams to focus on higher-impact work.

Reduced Engineering Dependency

Before Knak:

• Engineers were inundated with run-the-business tickets
• Email updates and rendering fixes competed with strategic initiatives

With Knak:

• Marketers built and updated emails without HTML
• Knak handled ongoing code maintenance and email-client updates
• Engineering involvement dropped significantly

This reduction in operational drag was especially critical during DocuSign’s broader martech and data transformation.

Why This Matters for Enterprise Marketing Teams

Knak didn’t just simplify DocuSign’s migration—it changed how email was built and governed.

By reducing mechanical work, teams gained more capacity to focus on:

• Migration readiness without risk
• Campaign strategy and optimization
• Consistent brand governance at scale

Key Takeaway

Knak didn’t make DocuSign’s migration easier by replacing marketers—it made it easier by removing unnecessary rebuild work.

By separating content creation from ESP orchestration, DocuSign was able to migrate platforms faster, safer, and with greater confidence—while improving the efficiency and quality of its email program along the way.

Looking Ahead

With Knak in place, DocuSign now has a flexible foundation for future change:

• Faster ESP transitions
• Scalable, repeatable campaign execution
• Reduced operational risk during transformation

For enterprise teams facing an ESP migration, DocuSign’s experience shows that the right content layer can be the difference between a painful rebuild and a controlled evolution.