Designed a Sign-Up Newsletter Journey for Salesforce’s Website

A tablet, desktop and mobile device displaying the same email

Project

Salesforce wanted to deliver role-specific content to their audience. The Role-Based Newsletter was the company's first attempt at doing this.

Anyone can subscribe from Salesforce's website. There were eight total newsletters, each offering curated resources to different industry roles.

Roles

  • Art Direction
  • Design

The Challenge

My team received the assignment to design and build this new email program. A lot of influential stakeholders wanted the program to succeed, so there was a lot of focus on it. The pressure was high.

We started with the visual design of the emails. But it was unclear what type of content these newsletters would include. As a result, I spent months iterating and responding to diverse feedback. By the fourteenth round, I was starting to feel a bit frustrated.

Thankfully, at this point, the digital design team lent me the help of two very talented designers. The entire design process became a collaborative effort. While I remained the design lead, these designers gave the project a much needed breath of fresh air.

Version 6
Sixth version of the newsletter design mockup
Version 7
Seventh version of the newsletter design mockup
Version 10
Tenth version of the newsletter design mockup
Version 11
Sixth version of the newsletter design mockup

User Flow

Visitors to the Salesforce home page hit the "Subscribe" button on the top right of the page. Next they fill out a form where they select the role-based newsletters they want to receive. They then receive a series of emails for every newsletter they subscribed to.

www.salesforce.com
The salesforce.com home page highlighting the subscribe button
User can choose from eight role-based newsletters
The newsletter sign-up landing page highlighting the sign-up form
Confirmation email notifies user of all selected newsletters
User receives a welcome email for every selected newsletter
Curated content newsletter is
delivered twice a month per role

Design Approach

We used a warm, bright collection of "national parks" illustrations throughout the emails. These provided bursts of color to Salesforce's dominant blue swatch library.

Each newsletter featured a key Salesforce decision maker. They were the guides and content curators for each newsletter. So, the emails had to feel personal and friendly.

The desktop version of the Confirmation Email
The desktop version of the Welcome Email
The desktop version of the Bi-Weekly Email

AB Testing

This program continues to evolve through constant AB testing. I’ve modified several visual elements, as well as made several new ones, based on engagement data.

Below is one of the first data-driven changes we made. We transformed the somewhat bulky intro paragraph module into a compact capsule

Version A desktop emailVersion B desktop email