Client
Adroll
Timeline
Jan 2022 - Mar 2022
My role
Lead Product Designer
platform
Web App
Context
Adroll helps D2C brands boost engagement and revenue, using their email campaign tools. But the frustrating experience of accessing, creating, and managing email templates, is leading our customers to switching over to our competitors.
business problem
In the last 90 days, only 13% of customers launched a campaign, after creating a campaign. Drop of 87% was due to lack of features specifically around email templates.
overall goal
Redesign the email template experience to achieve core feature parity, improve usability & discoverability, and increase activation.
solution
Our solution introduced a user-friendly interface, making it easy for users to access, edit, create, and manage their templates. We also restructured the product’s information architecture to ensure seamless integration and smoother navigation for two key user groups: actionable users managing campaigns and creative users generating content.
impact
Before redesign, 1.3% of total users clicked on our email templates to create campaigns. After soft launch to our first 100 users, 19% of them clicked.
Therefore, we achieved 14.6x increase of feature/user activation, specifically:
Achieved 50% feature parity with competitors
From 5 clicks to 1: A simpler, more personalized email template library
19% increase in using the templates, which then lead to 1.5% increase in using the campaign
my role
As the Lead Product Designer, I defined the UX strategy, mapped customer journeys, and designed intuitive UX/UI solutions, including a new design system palette.
I conducted user and market research, developed ideas, and managed design implementation. I led testing and post-launch user analysis.
I collaborated with five engineers, the product manager, and leadership stakeholders, driving UX scrums and resolving challenges to ensure on-time delivery.
Goal 1
Achieve feature parity
Make email templates easy to find and access.
Add key management features like renaming, deleting, archiving, and cloning
How we stacked up against competitors before redesign ?
Problem #1
Email Templates: Hard to access and manage
Email Templates are hidden in the "Create Campaign" flow, making them hard to find.
Users click on “Create Newsletter” flow to access Email Templates
Users can't rename, delete, archive, or unarchive templates
research insight #1
Looking at our competitors: Micro-Interactions for core functionality
Analyzed how competitors integrated key features like edit, rename, delete, and duplicate.
Adopted a similar approach while adapting it to fit our current design system.
Made necessary updates to seamlessly incorporate the new functionality.
solution #1
Introducing simple template management: Rename, delete, archive, and unarchive
To improve discoverability and achieve parity, we prioritized making email templates easier to find. After extensive discussions with the broader team, we added “Email Templates” to the left navigation bar, providing clear and direct access
Email Templates _ ”My Templates” section
impact 1
Achieved 50% feature parity with competitors
Goal 2: Improve discoverability
Our goal was to make it easier for creative users to discover and access email templates while designing two distinct experiences for creative and actionable users to reduce frustration and drop-offs.
User 1: Creative users
Access email templates from the left nav.
Edit, create, and manage templates.
User 2: Actionable users - Creates campaigns/newsletters
Access email templates from campaigns/newsletters.
Use pre-populated themes and custom templates.
Cannot manage templates or modify the template library.
Problem #2
Creative users struggled to find email templates, so they created fewer templates.
The current experience fails to cater to two distinct user groups:
Actionable Users: Focused on managing and deploying campaigns.
Creative Users: Focused on designing and creating content. This one-size-fits-all approach creates broader usability challenges and fails to meet the unique needs of either group.
research insight #2
Positioning Email Templates: Learning from competitors
Analyzed competitor designs, including Klaviyo and Mailchimp, to determine the best placement for email templates.
Positioned templates in the left navigation, following a familiar approach used by competitors.
Ensured a frictionless experience by aligning with user expectations.
solution #2
Introducing “Email Templates” in the left nav for easy access
To improve discoverability and achieve parity, we prioritized making email templates easier to find. After extensive discussions with the broader team, we added “Email Templates” to the left navigation bar, providing clear and direct access
Tailored solutions: Redefining user roles and template access
Creative Users: Focused on managing and editing templates.
Actionable Users: Focused on using templates to send campaigns.
Streamlining Email Templates access
We redesigned the experience to provide clear and efficient access to templates, creating two distinct user flows:
Accessing templates from the Email Templates Library.
Accessing templates through a campaign.
Detailing user flows for the Email Template feature
Accessing “Email Templates “_ From left hand navigation
Editing, managing “Email Templates“
impact 2
From 5 clicks to 1: A simpler, more personalized email template library
We redesigned the email template library to reduce clicks from 5 to 1, offering tailored experiences for both creative and action-driven users.
goal 3
Increase activation
Simplify email template creation to match customer branding.
Enable quick, efficient template creation.
Help customers create templates easily and maintain brand consistency.
Problem #3
In the last 90 days, only 13% of customers that created a campaign launched a campaign.
Missing features reduce adoption and satisfaction compared to competitors.
Low campaign launch rates due to inefficient workflows.
Users spend too much time creating brand-aligned templates.
The system lacks quick brand-alignment tools, frustrating users.
These issues hurt satisfaction and competitiveness.
solution #3
Introducing the new "Create" CTA for effortless template creation
Simplifies template creation with a single click.
Aligns templates seamlessly with brand guidelines.
Offers branded templates, themes, and a code editor for customization.
Customize with branded templates
Customize with code editor
impact 3
19% increase in using the templates, which then lead to 1.5% increase in using the campaign
In the last 90 days, only 13% of customers who created a campaign launched it. To improve activation, we introduced a "Create" CTA, simplifying the process of making branded templates and driving campaign success
conclusion
Learnings & Personal Reflections
Redesigning existing features with poor UX takes a different approach than designing new ones.
I conducted a deep product analysis to understand how everything was set up, how users interacted with it, and why the current email template experience wasn’t working.
I worked to achieve feature parity with key competitors to stop losing customers. At the same time, I navigated the constraints of existing technology, design systems, and the roadmap for the larger vision.
As a designer, I had to make key decisions about what to prioritize in this phase and what to roll out in future iterations.
Challenge Phase
One of the biggest challenges was working with engineers who had never collaborated with designers or product managers before.
At Adroll, an engineering-driven platform, features were abundant, but UX wasn’t a priority. Engineers often defined, developed, and shipped features without considering user experience.
Initially, my design recommendations faced resistance. Comments like, "This design will never work," were common. For example, the "ellipsis" interaction—a standard pattern for editing and modifying used by competitors and even in parts of our own product—was met with pushback. It took extensive research, competitive analysis, and clear examples to convince the team that this approach was the best solution.
Finding a way to collaborate effectively took time. Building trust and aligning as a team required persistence, but eventually, we found our rhythm. By the time of the soft launch, we had become a highly collaborative team, working seamlessly across design, product, and engineering—and celebrating our success together.
Future Iterations & Next Steps
100% parity with key competitors, branded templates deep dive.
In the first phase, we achieved 50% feature parity with competitors by prioritizing the most critical features that were causing user loss. In the next phase, we aim to reach 100% parity and push our product ahead of the competition.
We plan to integrate automated emails, campaign recipes, and other advanced features. A key focus will be perfecting branded templates to make the product indispensable for users. This involves improving the template design interface and reevaluating our asset management tools. We’ll decide whether to continue with our current third-party solution or develop something better in-house.
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