Campaigns Modernization
Allow marketers to create, manage, and deploy targeted messaging across multiple channels
Overview
Campaigns allow marketers to create, manage, and deploy targeted messaging across multiple channels within the Iterable platform. As one of the most heavily used features, it plays a pivotal role in a marketer’s workflow, enabling them to drive engagement and revenue through personalized outreach.
This design work transformed the campaign creation experience by making it more intuitive and efficient for marketers, reducing friction in their workflow while simultaneously addressing the necessary shift from AngularJS to React.
The project ran 11 months, from June 2022 to April 2023, with a public beta from March to May 2023 and general availability in mid-May 2023.
The challenge
Business Drivers
Security concerns drove the transition from AngularJS to React
The Iterable product was getting an updated design language with the Aurora Design System, and this was a key feature
User Pain Points
The multi-step flow forced marketers to select an audience list before designing a campaign, creating friction for creative teams
The campaign experience was inconsistent with the template design flow, making it harder for marketers to QA and adapt
The fragmented UX required marketers to learn different workflows for similar tasks
My role
From June–September 2022 I was the lead designer on this project. My work started by conducting observation sessions with customers, redefining the information architecture of a campaign, and mapping the jobs to be done with the feature.
In July 2022, a principal product designer was hired to oversee this area of the platform, and we shared responsibilities such as:
Research & Testing:
Conducted user interviews, surveys, and usability testing
Defined key workflows and structured unmoderated usability studies
Design:
Campaign page information architecture and layout
Designs for the campaign experience inside and outside of the Journey Studio experience
Finding opportunities to unify the campaign and template experiences to reduce change management friction
Note: the principal designer left the company in Mar of 2023, before the project was completed, so I took over the design responsibilities for implementation and release.
Reviewing product usage heatmaps, and evaluating how the users scans through the interface as they work through the campaign creation flow.
Conducting unmoderated user tests via Maze to push a one-page concept, that was originally descoped, but tested very strongly with customers.
Explorations
Initially the project was to be considered a simple reskin while keeping the same backend to minimize development effort and reduce user disruption. However, we recognized that even minor UI updates would still introduce friction to change management for marketers, and a more meaningful update was necessary to improve usability and efficiency.
This pushed us to propose and test a single-page flow where marketers could edit any step at any time, removing the mandatory list selection before designing content.
What we learned from our testing
Pros
Perceived as easy to use based on feedback gathered using the UMUX scale to determine usability success.
Liked the consolidation of steps and improved flow order
Appreciated list selection happening later in the process
Thought the new overlay for list selection provided better context
Cons
Lack of an "advance" button confused some users that were used to a multi-step flow
Some struggled to find the preview button
Results overwhelmingly supported the single-page approach, leading to a full redesign of the campaign creation experience
Exploring using progressive disclosure and making the creation experience feel more like a "cart checkout" flow rather than a heavy, comprehensive process.
Perhaps as certain selections are made, new portions of the flow are revealed.
A very early initial exploration that placed all of the necessary items to create a campaign in a single view. We didn't know it yet, but this would ultimately be the catalyst that drove the final solution.
Solution
The redesigned system introduced a modular, user-centric approach to campaign creation. Key enhancements included:
Flexible Workflow: Users could begin with any step—whether audience, content, or design—eliminating dependencies that had previously hindered productivity.
Streamlined Interface: A single-page layout reduced cognitive load and allowed users to track their progress easily.
New Features:
Improved scheduling capabilities for campaigns.
Performance alerts for tracking key thresholds.
A review step designed to support approval workflows in the future.
Seamless integration with Journey Studio, enabling campaigns to be created within broader marketing workflows.
The solution coalesced into a single-page campaign creation interface, allowing marketers to complete the work they're responsible for, at any step in the process.
Previously, this content was parsed across individual pages—now condensed into cards all visible in one view.
We vastly improved the clarity on the Review page—a critical piece of this inteface. Imagine sending a million messages blindly!
In the spirit of leaving things better than we found it, we also made some improvements to the scheduling interface, which was very positively received by marketers.
Results & Impact
Security & Technical Success:
100% of campaign creation was moved to React
No rollbacks requested by clients
User Adoption & Feedback:
Marketers responded positively to the flexibility of the single-page flow
Reduced campaign creation time on average by 15 minutes
Doubled the monthly average of campaign creation
Key Data Points:
Campaign creation views increased significantly post-launch
The campaign review process saw a 30% reduction in time spent per session
750K monthly visits to the template edit page indicated the importance of seamless editing within the campaign workflow. This insight drove design decisions such as improving the visibility of editing tools, ensuring a smoother transition between templates and campaigns, and reducing the number of clicks needed for frequent tasks
Reflections & future Considerations
Even though this project started out with some level of thrash due to unclear direction around updating UI or overhauling the experience, introducing new designers in the midst of the project, and being a very complex feature with many contextual permutations, it was a rewarding project that has been well received by marketers.
Challenges & Learnings:
Even reskins of a product will feel 'new' to some users; respect the time they've spent learning the existing system
If you're going to overhaul the interface, find ways to introduce small new features—like an updated scheduling mechanism that can help drive adoption or necessity
Maintain patterns for consistency; but, if UX improves by deviating, do it.
Future Enhancements:
Improve the campaign review page hierarchy to highlight critical send details
Reduce unnecessary clicks by enabling direct inline edits over dedicated save/edit modes (an inherited experience from the updated Templates UX)
Find ways to let Iterable AI suggest things like Audience, Content, or Conversions
Conclusion
Campaign Modernization not only improved security and scalability but also created a more intuitive and efficient workflow for marketers. By embracing a more flexible and unified approach, we enabled marketers to focus on what matters—creating impactful campaigns without unnecessary blockers.
Credits
Collaborators: Caroline Ford, Principal Designer who joined and supported me through the second portion of this project; Melissa Beyle, Senior Product Designer, who's template research and design patterns informed much of the new campaign flow
