Case Study: Hugo (meeting productivity hub) achieves 3–4x email conversion lift with Census

How Hugo’s COO Darren Chait used data to increase conversions with more personalized emails

Hugo, a meeting productivity hub led by COO Darren Chait, needed a way to use its analytics to deliver truly personalized emails through Customer.io rather than relying on raw event triggers. To do this they adopted Census to run queries on their warehouse and sync transformed traits and lists back into Customer.io (a reverse‑ETL/data‑sync approach) so emails could include personalized content like top contacts and weekly summaries.

Using Census, Hugo implemented daily syncs and an early‑engagement scoring model that tags users for different onboarding and upgrade tracks; those traits feed Customer.io to trigger tailored email campaigns. The result: highly personalized campaigns convert three to four times better than generic ones, faster execution without hiring a dedicated data engineer, and broader, democratized access to data across the team — outcomes achieved by leveraging Census to operationalize warehouse data.

Hugo

Darren Chait

Co-Founder & COO