Adding Product Announcement Emails to Progressive Leasing’s Repertoire
How do you let users know about new features and updates to products? Tell them about it!
When the Customer Tools team updated MyAccount (the customer facing app at Progressive Leasing) we decided to do just that. We started by introducing users to the new features within the app, which you can read more about in my previous article. While pursuing that project, we realized an email campaign would be another opportunity to inform customers about product updates.
Select an audience
We met with marketing and user research analysts to determine an appropriate audience. A user’s email inbox is their personal space, so we needed to be careful about how we sent out a product update email. We determined that we would send an informational email to all current MyAccount users to let them know the experience had changed. We would also send an email to non-MyAccount users, with information about the update and how they could create an account to access the new features.
Design
This was a new type of email for the company, so I set to work developing a template for this product update announcement. As a template, this could also be used for future product updates, speed up the design process, and develop brand consistency.
I started by auditing other new product or product update announcements from a variety of other businesses. Auditing emails can be difficult. Unlike apps or websites, I can’t simply download or visit an email and audit my experience. Thankfully, there are lots of email geeks out there willing to help out. I turned to a couple of my favorite resources, Really Good Emails and Litmus, to help me gather more examples of the types of emails I was looking for.
I pulled out what elements were successful at communication, looked at how each email was written (headlines, intro, body copy, etc.), and analyzed how these emails balanced visual elements with informative copy.
Quick wireframing
I took inspiration from my audits and drew up some quick wireframes. I leveraged layouts I had designed for Progressive’s other emails. This saved me some time and kept the user experience with emails from the company consistent.
I translated the best ideas from my rapid wireframing into low-fidelity designs in Sketch. I then pulled in elements from our design system and other emails I had already crafted to bring the designs into a mid-fidelity state.
Craft content
I separated the design iterations into two categories: current MyAccount users and non-MyAccount users, and began writing copy for each. I focused on the title and subtitle first. The email for current users needed to be more informative, while the non-users email needed to be more advertising focused. I created multiple options to review with the team later.
I then drafted the content for the body of the email. I surveyed the Customer Tools triad to learn what they thought was crucial to share with customers. The key features they wanted to highlight in this email were:
1. The improved speed of applying for a lease
2. The ability to find stores that offer leasing with Progressive
3. The power to start a lease application on a user’s personal device
I added these features to the body of the email as bullet points, like I had done in other emails. Then I crafted sub-content under each bullet to give the reader more information about how this new feature can benefit them. This copy had to be written specific to the two different audiences receiving the email. This variation accounted for the users’ previous experience with the product. Again, I created many options to review later.
Design team review
At this point, I had multiple options for each audience, and needed help narrowing down my designs. I met with other designers to review all the designs and iterations of copy. We settled on a design for each audience that I would continue to refine as I brought them in to high-fidelity.
Visual element exploration
There were a few visual elements that did not exist in any of our products that needed exploration. The largest of these was a screenshot of the updated app framed in a phone. I asked the designers on the design system team if we had a standard mock I should use. We did not. We decided that since our users often use older phone models, I would design a generic frame to use in emails. These would then go into the design system for future use.
I also explored different styles of bullets. I had used bullets in other emails, but those had numbers in them to distinguish steps a user needed to take. The features highlighted in these emails did not need to occur in a specific order, so a numbered list was not appropriate. Instead, I settled on no bullets in the current user email, to keep it more informative, and minimal bullets in the non-user email, to add some visual interest without distracting from the rest of the page.
Final results
I added the finalized visual elements to the emails and reviewed designs with stakeholders of this project. We made minimal changes to copy and approved the emails for production.
Currently, these emails have gone through production and are ready to ship. We will deploy to customers within the next two weeks. I’ll update this article when I have data on how these emails impact the business. Check back to see how these perform!
