Reimagining Email Automation Leading to a 32% Increase in User Engagement

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tool. Over 250,000 global businesses use our web and mobile app to enhance billions of customer experiences.

In 2022, our company observed a 13% drop in email automation use month over month. Email automation is a core feature of our product, so improving this experience was of the utmost importance. It was up to me and the Sales team to turn this trend around.
Tools
Figma, Figjam
Timeline
2022 - 2023
Team
1 PM, 7 Engineers
My Role
Lead Designer
Lead Researcher

THE PROBLEM

First, we had to understand why this decrease in automation use was occurring.

To establish a success benchmark, the Product Manager and I assembled a usability test to measure the current experience in Maze. This established a success rate and customer satisfaction score(CSAT) to measure iterations.
↓13%
63%
3.3/5
decrease in email automation use
Task Success Rate
CSAT Score

Unfamiliar

People reported experiencing friction with the automation email creation due to an outdated UI.

Limited

The previous email automation experience lacked key features like email tracking or threading functionality.

THE SOLUTION

↑32%
93%
4.5/5
Increase in email automation use
Task Success Rate
CSAT Score

Unfamiliar → Modern

We tore down the previous UI and rebuilt it with a modern, intuitive experience at the forefront of our minds.

Limited → Robust

We incorporated email tracking capabilities and threading functionality in ways that enhanced our users' ability to control their email experience.

OUR PROCESS

UNDERSTAND

Competitive Analysis

I conducted a competitive analysis to explore user expectations and opportunities to differentiate ourselves.
I identified vital user flow issues and verified my findings using support boards and reviews.
Our research revealed design principles to guide the implementation of this feature:

Co-Design Workshop

The engineers, the product manager, and I gathered to assemble a user journey map for sales representatives.

We aimed to ground our understanding of user's expectations and needs.
One of the insights gleaned was that the engineers noted the platform stumbled threading emails less than 5 minutes apart. Thus, I created wait blocks between each threaded email, each with a minimum of 5 minutes.

DESIGN

Designing the Email Experience

We made it our priority to update and simplify our email automation system. To achieve this, we focused on blending threading functionality into our platform.

I talked to email automation pros in our user base and gathered their feedback on prototypes.

We supplemented qualitative findings with a survey to quantify user feedback.
Driven by the data and insights we gathered from our interviews, I crafted a fresh UI that was intuitive, familiar, and a joy for our users to interact with.
After redesigning the UI and validating our design in internal and external usability tests, we created a design that achieved our desired goals:

Making Threading Discoverable

Threading functionality being discoverable outside of the automation map was our next priority. We analyzed each of the following explorations through usability tests.

Navigating Engineering Constraints

Clicking and dragging functionality was an exploration that had potential. This experience gave users a tactile way to associate emails in a thread. Usability testing uncovered that users expected to thread from within the email window. Thus, we abandoned this exploration, but it provided valuable insight into user patterns.
Engineering limitations withheld us from releasing a feature allowing the user to track the thread path from a single email. Although we felt this feature was useful, we deprioritized and slated it for a future iteration.
Through usability testing, we discovered a button allowing navigation between threads was valuable. This was relevant because some users have automation maps with hundreds of actions.

The engineers noted a novel in-automation navigation feature would be a large engineering expense. The cost of engineering time outweighed the potential value for our users so we made the decision to trim this from the initial release. However, users appreciated the darker 'Threaded to' section underneath the email action so we kept that in.

Introducing Suggested Next Steps

A significant enhancement we made was creating and building out a feature we called “Suggested Next Steps.” A simple but powerful addition to the 1:1 automation email block.
This component allows users to auto-fill common actions after creating a threaded email. For example, this component would allow the automatic creation of a wait of 7 days and then following-up to a prior email. Or ending the automation if a contact replies to an email.
Adding Suggested Next Steps knocked out multiple birds with one stone:

Measuring and Validating Designs

In order to validate our design decisions we started with static prototypes. These helped us explore multiple ideas quickly that we could then narrow down further to start developing.

Every iteration we had some confidence in would then be shipped to the internal company of 100 sales reps for use and with our most trusted users for feedback.

RELEASE

The feature achieved instant success. The feedback from users and results from user testing were outstanding. Every week there was a growing number of new adopters.

Within the initial 6 months, we saw a 32% increase in the number of users of the automation feature. Here are some key performance indicators (KPIs) we measured to validate our success:
↑32%
93%
4.5/5
Increase in email automation use
Task Success Rate
CSAT Score

Documentation

Using Confluence, I documented how our feature release affected email automation users. The engineering team and I documented how to leverage the Suggested Next Steps component. I also included comprehensive notes on what has changed from the previous UI.

50+ automation actions incorporated the suggested next steps feature across the product. Introducing a new experience pattern and design language in the automation map.

Press

I collaborated with the Marketing team to best to present the new email experience to our audience.

Product Updates - How threading improves your automated sales emails
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Key Learnings

Flexibility is part of the job

Throughout this project, we pivoted between many potential design solutions. Being adaptive was fundamental to its success. Our various explorations helped define the scope of the project and revealed the importance of not being confined by the initial ask. From this project forward, I became less attached to my design outputs as a reflection of my design prowess. My designs became merely a marker in the path toward delivery for any given project.

Share early and often

The first meeting with the Product leadership team was pivotal in driving the direction of the project. Sharing my designs early allowed us to deliver a solution that satisfied both our customers and Product Leadership. I learned that sharing my designs—and not holding onto them until I thought they were perfect—led to more alignment across the stakeholders.
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