The original challenge: An unmanageable translation database

Before DepositPhotos discovered Lokalise, the development team was struggling with an SQL database that had grown to 120,000 translation keys. Over years of development, the database had become bloated with outdated, unused keys that no one would delete. The task of separating active keys from obsolete ones was unmanageable, and so it was hard to know what needed to be translated.

At the time, much of the localization manager’s workload involved manually coordinating translations and inserting them into the website.
When DepositPhotos' Senior Product Director read about a new startup called Lokalise, he saw an opportunity to solve this problem. He reached out to the founder Nick, and DepositPhotos became one of Lokalise's first major clients.

A new challenge emerges: Email marketing stuck with manual translation workflows

By 2019, when Tetiana Rublova joined as Localization Manager, the website was successfully localized into 16 languages using Lokalise.

While the website localization was running smoothly, email marketing translation remained frustratingly manual.

Email marketing managers would create templates in Iterable, their marketing automation platform. They'd then extract all the text into spreadsheets and pass them over to Tetiana.

She would send them to freelance translators and then the translations to the marketing managers, who would manually copy and paste every translation back into Iterable.

It was a painstaking process. It was manual, error-prone, and it took several days to translate one email. The team spent hours each week on manual copy-pasting, leaving less time for meaningful work like building templates, running experiments, and connecting with customers.

 

Tetiana Rublova

Localization Manager at DepositPhotos

The manual workflow created several problems:

• No translation memory leverage: Every email was translated from scratch, even when templates shared the same structure and repetitive content, meaning duplicate translation work and unnecessary costs
• High translation costs: Without reusing translations, costs remained consistently high
• Slow turnaround times: What should have been quick email campaigns stretched over multiple days, delaying campaign launches and impacting revenue
• Risk of errors: Manual copy-pasting introduced formatting mistakes and broken content
• Wasted specialist time: Manual tasks pulled marketing email managers away from their core responsibilities

As Tetiana put it: "Who still translates content in spreadsheets in 2025? It was so outdated".

Solution: A single source of truth for all localization projects and high praise for the Lokalise-Iterable integration

DepositPhotos chose Lokalise to replace their unmanageable SQL database system, and set up webhooks and integrations to streamline the development team’s workflow and log changes to localization keys.

The marketing team required a different workflow, however.

The breakthrough came in early 2025, when Tetiana proposed adopting the Iterable integration to automate the workflow. A newly hired email marketing specialist quickly supported the initiative, and together they put it into action.

The Iterable integration in action

Here's how the new process works:

1. Import: Email marketing managers create templates in Iterable and send Tetiana the links. She imports the content directly into Lokalise with one click.
    
2. Translate: Most email content is now translated using AI inside Lokalise, which leverages the extensive translation memory built up from hundreds of thousands of previous translations.
    
3. Quality check: Tetiana uses Lokalise's AI scoring feature, which she describes as "amazing" to catch translation issues. "The scoring highlights many important issues in translations," she explains. When needed, her team of long-term freelance translators provides additional proofreading and feedback.
    
4. Deploy: Once approved, translations are pushed directly back to Iterable. No copy-pasting, no formatting errors, no delays.

How email localization is streamlined with the Lokalise + Iterable integration

It was a painstaking process. It was manual, error-prone, and it took several days to translate one email. The team spent hours each week on manual copy-pasting, leaving less time for meaningful work like building templates, running experiments, and connecting with customers.

 

Tetiana Rublova

Localization Manager at DepositPhotos

DepositPhotos' complete localization ecosystem

The Iterable integration is part of DepositPhotos' broader localization infrastructure powered by Lokalise:

• Help center: Zendesk integration for multilingual customer support
• Design assets: Figma integration for localized visual content
• Development: Custom integrations maintained by the development team

Lokalise is the main source of truth. This is where all the roads meet in terms of localization.

 

Tetiana Rublova

Localization Manager at DepositPhotos

Results: 90% cost savings and dramatically faster translations

The partnership with Lokalise delivered transformational results across both challenges:

A 25-fold reduction in database keys

Lokalise transformed DepositPhotos' large 120,000-key database into a manageable 5,000-key system—a 25-fold reduction. Data could finally be organized, filtered, and managed efficiently. Translation history, key filtering, and the ability to safely give translators direct access to the system transformed the localization workflow.

Lokalise is good at enabling you to use the same keys for iOS, Android, and the web simultaneously. Our mobile developers make active use of this functionality.

 

Roman Drogolov

Web developer at DepositPhotos

Most significantly, language rollout time was cut in half, from four months to two months per language.

The Lokalise-Iterable integration impact 

The Iterable for Lokalise integration delivered immediate, measurable impact on email marketing:

• Translation speed increased by 3x

Before the integration, translating a single email campaign took 2-3 days. Now, most emails are translated in under an hour.

• 90% reduction in email translation costs

By leveraging translation memory and AI translation for repetitive content and email templates, DepositPhotos cut email translation costs by 90%.

The extensive translation memory built up over years means similar content is automatically matched, and marketing teams no longer pay to retranslate the same phrases campaign after campaign.

• Marketing team productivity rocketed

The email marketing team is much happier with the new workflow and has regained hours each week previously spent on manual translation tasks.

"They save hours every week now with this integration. The feedback is amazing and they are very happy that now they can spend more time on their direct job—creating nice templates, reaching out to more customer groups, conducting experiments, A/B tests—instead of copy-pasting translations into code."

Global expansion continues

Since adopting Lokalise in the early days of the company's international expansion, DepositPhotos has grown from 16 languages to 29 languages, serving customers in 150 countries. Key markets include Germany, France, the United States, Italy, Spain, and Brazil.

While no new languages have been added over the past two years, the focus has shifted toward optimizing existing languages and improving efficiency.

Scaling to sister company

With the email localization workflow now optimized for DepositPhotos, the team has already begun scaling the process to VistaCreate, their sister brand.

“We’ve already started expanding the workflow to VistaCreate” Tetiana explains.

“The brand has a different tone of voice, so we’re adapting our approach accordingly as we localize their emails as well.“

Future: Continuous adaption for the ever-changing environment

When asked what advice she'd give to other companies seeking a localization platform, Tetiana emphasized the importance of flexibility in 2025's rapidly evolving landscape.

"I would advise people to be ready to adapt because now in 2025 it's an adapt or die strategy. You have to be ready for the ever-changing environment. Be ready that tools change and workflows change and you have to look for the tools that are relevant to your business and that will bring you the most benefits. That's my advice."

For DepositPhotos, adapting meant moving from an unwieldy SQL database to Lokalise's streamlined system, then from manual spreadsheets to the Iterable integration, and finally embracing AI translation with automatic quality scoring.

The partnership continues to evolve. As Tetiana notes, "My colleagues appreciate how quickly and reliably we can now localize content—speed has become a real advantage for the team."

With Lokalise as their foundation, DepositPhotos has transformed from managing an unruly translation database to running a sophisticated, AI-powered localization operation that scales efficiently across nearly 30 languages, proof that early adoption of the right platform, combined with a willingness to adapt, pays long-term dividends.