Designing the Email marketing and campaigning platform :Research Findings and Design Process

Objectives

The objective is to study the phenomenonof Email marketing holistically and design an Email campaign Manager.

Methodology

Secondary Research-Reading online journals, papers and reviews about email marketing. Havingenough knowledge base to design a system encompassing the phenomenon.Simultaneously, user research is being carried out through the same media.

Systems approach-Study about system thinking, dynamicsand the relevance to selected area ofexploration.(Email marketing)

System Design-Identifying the main entities in the system problem, having set labels and working out the dynamics to form feedback loops

Knowledge workers sift through hundreds of emails per week, more than one-half of which are spam, leading to information overload- a situation when more information is not better. (Schwartz, 2004 and Simon, 1971)

The bottom line is that useful email marketing messages are lost in the background noise with negative consequences for short-term ROI and long-term industry health.(Nussey, 2007)

development of more efficient algorithms for distinguishing regular email from spam (Fawcett, 2003 and Gray and Haahr, 2004).

less spam like messages need to be created by marketing personnel whosebusiness now relies on email campaigning(Garretson, 2007) .

Problem areas identified

Design Intervention

To design a responsive email campaigning manager which makes sure that email goes to the user's inbox instead of going to junk folder.

There are people actually responsibleto design and send email campaigns, with the use of email designing software online.

User Research

User research in the matter is primarily dependent on secondary research techniques.

Customer expectations, expert reviewsof products, blogs and surveys have been a good source to gather insights from actual users of email marketing.

Primary user expectations

Feature Setoffers professional features user will need to create customer surveys, newsletters and other event emails.. Email Campaign CreationCreating an email marketing campaign should be easy, regardless of user’s skill level or experience.. Campaign ReportingEmail marketing services provide reports, graphs and statistics that show the user how the email campaign is doing.

Help & SupportHelp options to get the user started, including a user manual, a wizard to walk him through the creation and monitoring of email campaign, FAQs, a blog, tutorials and articles that explain how to create effective campaigns.

Intricate details gathered from customer reviews.• They tend to become frustrated with providers that ask the user for extra fee for every feature they

wanted to add. It’s like a promise broken, the user may switch to other services.• The initial user may pass on the job of designing the campaigns to other people like assistants after they

have also got acquainted with the platform.• Customer like to have an email marketing consultant who will be your contact for your campaign. They are

very helpful and easy to get in contact with.• “Choosing a solution for a new company, I needed an email application that gave me the tools I needed on

a tight budget. I needed quality reporting, and a robust interface that would be quick to get up and running—after all I want to focus on marketing not the application. “

• Loved features : 1. Dragging and dropping sections2. Undo Button3. Creating columns in sections4. After sending an email, a map shows up pinpointing where your readers are located5. No sign up fee, pay per month for unlimited emails sent, not cost per email.6. Appreciate fast and clear telephonic support.7. Ability to send email from mobile devices8. The interface is intuitive9. to sync my mailing list to an existing CRM database— users don't have time to manually synch up data

through CSV files, or work with API's as is required with most other apps 10. compatibility with Microsoft Excel to import contacts.11. To add custom made templates (by a developer).12. No restrictions of any sort on the contact lists.

Stephanie GandseySenior Marketing Communication SpecialistResponsible for all internal and external communications for the company, including web management, brand management, content creation, marketing collateral design, training and IT Communication.

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Few real user profiles:

Russ HenneberryContent Manager | Business Blog Strategist at Crazy Egg Software Companyexperienced in using the Internet to drive sales, leads and referrals. My background is in content management, business blogging, analytics, conversion optimization and community building through social media. . Angela Noble

Graphic designer and writer. Creates brand identities, website designs, mobile app interfaces, marketing copy, marketing collateral and more for clients both locally and across the U.S. UI Designer/Developer) working on website designs, email marketing campaigns, brand identities

Email Client Popularity

iOS Devices 35.60%

iPhone 25.05%

iPad 9.74%

iPod Touch 0.81%

Microsoft Outlook 20.14%

Outlook 2000, 2003, Express 7.68%

Outlook 2007 6.51%

Outlook 2010 5.96%

Hotmail 13.57%

Apple Mail 11%

Apple Mail 5 4.31%

Apple Mail 4 3.75%

Apple Mail 6 1.70%

Apple Mail 3 1.04%

Apple Mail 2 0.20%

Yahoo! Mail 9.85%

Gmail 8.43%

Android 4.74%

Windows Live Desktop 2.34%

Thunderbird 1.03%

AOL 0.91%

AOL Mail 0.79%

AOL Desktop 9.1 0.12%

Sparrow 0.19%

Windows Phone 7 0.14%

Lotus Notes 6 & 7 0.07%

Blackberry 0.05%

Excite 0.02%

Palm WebOS 0.01%

Entourage 2004 0.01%

Spam Filters

• If Area of image content > Area of Non-image content then Email goes in SPAM.• String Check (for specific words)• Email service providers• 1px transparent graphics• Forms & Content

(http://www.lyris.com/us-en/contentchecker)• JavaScript

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Email Layout Structure

Testing Environments

> Litmusapp.com A/c> IP checker> Adobe Browser Lab

Next steps in the process

Persona CreationHaving the user research going side by side, a solid archetype of the user is being created, which shall be referred to and used for further design decisions of thecampaign editor’s User Interface.

AnalysisThe findings of research will be put to analysis and important insights shall be worked upon.

User researchMore number of actual user of the products in the market need to be consulted to gather pain points, a competitive analysis of different platforms.

Interface Wireframe iterations-The prototypes of editor platform-Interaction storyboards-Visual Design