The Challenge
As user experience designer, we always thinking about how to find out what user want and bring it to them. But what if someone ask you to design a product that other people don’t want it?
It is actually a common situation in a big company. Conflicts between stakeholders occasionally happened in workplace. Providing acceptable solutions for them is also a very important part of my job.
This project is kicked off by a IT team leader asking for a marketing campaign management system, while the marketing department colleagues, who is the system user, were against the idea. Through a series conversation with them, I discovered their pain points and pivoted the initial requirement into a solution that resolved problem for both departments.
Here is the process:
The Outcome
- Redesigned the original subscriber filter to improve usability.
- Collaborated with data science team and product manager to implement smart filter which raised email open rate and reduced waste by 30+%.
My Role
I responsible for the design strategy and research in this project. Clarified the requirements and propose practical solutions.
Kick off
The initial requirement from IT team leader is to build a campaign management platform that merged existing eDM and push notification system, which allowed them to calculate and compare ROI of the two types of marketing materials on the same basis.
Concept Testing
Considered the time and effort we will devote into the project, I decided to conduct a concept test first. I drawed sketches based on the original requirement, then invited several marketing colleagues to test the idea. I also observed how they use the existing systems in real works to explore more design opportunities.
The marketing colleagues expressed worries to the concept. The idea doesn’t quite fit their workflow due to some unavoidable technique issue. It is also bring them unnecessary extra workload, in short, the concept testing shows the merged system is an unwelcome idea.
Understanding the Pain Points
Since the original idea is not work, I refocus on the business goal and tried to provide another solution that help reach the goal of IT team and easier adopted by marketing department.
After a few conversations with the two departments, some unmentioned but crucial needs emerged:
The real purpose behind the requirement
Saving budget for email marketing is the primary goal of the project. As the number of member registration goes up, the IT cost of email marketing increased rapidly than estimation. That’s the reason why the IT department planned to merge the two systems, because they want to cutdown repeated sending messages.
Why budget are wasted
Marketing department usually send eDM to the entire subscriber list without using filter. The reason is that they are afraid of missing any potential sales opportunity, also, most of them are not sure how to operate the filter.
The challenge marketing department faced
The above situation not just wasted email marketing budget, but also caused low eDM open rate, which brought another kind of pressure to marketing department.
Pivot the Requirement
Based on the information collected from interviews, I provided 2 suggestions to IT department:
- Improving the usability of subscriber filter instead of redesigning the whole system.
- Collaborating with data science team to implement the Smart Filter, which is a technique that using statistical model to find out subscribers who the most likely to open eDM.
I heard the technique in a sharing meeting with data science colleagues several months ago. When I was thinking if there any easy and effective way to improve the subscriber filter, the Smart Filter flashed in my head immediately.
The real problem is not the repeated sending messages but a part of recipients no longer interactive with our campaign. In fact, the frequency of exposure is a crucial factor affected the effectiveness of advertisement. By filtered out inactive accounts from subscriber list, we can both raise eDM open rate and reduce budget waste.
The suggestions were soon adopted by IT team leader, marketing colleagues also endorsed the alternative solution.
Designing
Redesigning the original subscriber filter
Not like an order form or a video list, the subscriber filter is not a feature we broadly use in our daily life, it takes time to learn its logic or how to set up the conditions. Therefore, my design strategy is to shorten learning curves by imitate similar feature in other popular digital marketing tools, e.g.the audience segment editor in Google Analytics and Mailchimp.
Here is the redesigned subscriber filter.
The Smart Filter
To encourage marketing department use it, I tried to keep the design as simple as possible. A switch with a short note and the estimated number of open rate was added on the eDM editor, just switch on the smart filter, the estimated number of open rate will boost immediately. User can see the benefit of using the filter directly from the interface feedback.
What I Learned from this Project
Although the solution is not what the IT team leader ask for in the beginning, it resolved both budget issue and marketing performance issue in the end.
One of the most important lessons I learned from this project is don’t be afraid of telling people who in a higher position than you that there are something wrong with their ideas. Most of them are happy to hear our advices so that they don’t need to spend so much time to think about every decision, and that is UX designer’s value.
Besides, always focus on the business goal, tried to provide a better solution instead of just build something the stakeholders asked for, that is the mistake I made in the beginning of this project, luckily I corrected it in the concept testing.
Finally, concentrating on every sharing meeting even though the project seems not related to me at that time. You never know when will you use the knowledges.
