Countdown (now Woolworths New Zealand) was going through an email re-platforming to SFMC and looking to move away from an agency managed email, and I went onboard for a redesign of their newsletter - myCountdown. The main goal of this project was to have a newsletter that would give customers relevant communications and value.
The team were committed to doing this project for the right reasons and in the right way. We decided to use the Double Diamond framework as a basis for our project:
We wanted to find out how customers feel about emails in general, and what they thought of the current state of the myCountdown email. We also wanted to explore current email statistics (open rate, click rate, etc.) and what the technology replatform would mean. Sessions with other parts of the business to understand their pain points were also held.
This started off with quick ideation and customer testing sessions for concepts, and would lead into prioritisation sessions, as well as feasibility and viability sessions. We also brought the relevant stakeholders onboard e.g. marketing, sales, as they would have a vested interest as well.
Having tested the concepts and defined the project, I went into high fidelity designs, defining interactions and the customer journeys and touchpoints the for the email.
We had to ensure that all the content that were available in the previous email would be accounted for in the new one, unless specifically otherwise decided.
One of the key design problems in the previous email were image-based text, which affected accessibility and scaleability, and this was a main focus for improvement. Another challenge was the technical restrictions of an email platform - there were compatibility concerns, and limitations to what could be achieved on the email platform that had to be considered.
The designs were handed over to the developers, with my support in place.
As development went on, there were discoveries in technical feasibility, and we had to review our MVP, and decide what would go on the backlog and what would be a fast follow.