Update & Go: Themed Email Template Library

MY ROLE
As an Email Design Specialist I worked alongside a Product Manager to build a pre-designed themed template library for Klaviyo customers to easily update and use with minimal effort.

WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO SOLVE

Klaviyo wants to make a more approachable/faster way to design emails without sacrificing valuable time.

RESEARCH

There are 4 main areas that we want to gain more insight on:

1. What is your role on your team?
   We would like to understand “who” is creating email templates in Klaviyo. Is it a one-person show, or are they on a large creative team with a designated designer?

2. What industry are you in?
   This helps us define aesthetics that matches their industry type.

3. What “type” of emails do you send regularly? Abandoned Cart, Welcome Emails, Newsletter, etc.
   We are looking for a variation of email types to ensure we are properly building a diverse template library.

4. Where does your audience open their emails - Mobile or Desktop more; does it vary?
   Understanding if end-recipients are interacting on Mobile or Desktop allows us to focus on optimizing for specific devices.

We started by interviewing users that had just created a new account vs. others who have been using Klaviyo for at least 6 months to understand their skill level and find any patterns of where they get “stuck” the most when designing emails. In addition to understanding what tools if any are being used to design these emails (ie. Photoshop, Canva, Pixlr, etc.)

Majority of interviewees “wear multiple hats” where they are part of a small marketing team and are responsible for all digital marketing projects, not just email. This information helps us understand that the amount of time spent on an individual email design is crucial as they have other responsibilities. Most organizations were bucketed into the Apparel & Accessories, Beauty, and Electronics industry.

“Types” of emails was something that most users did not prioritize or really think about. Just like web design, the structure of an email is important depending on the topic. Designing for larger events and holidays such as Black Friday/Cyber Monday was discussed. Variation of email types was vague, so we thought it would be best to start out with a generic list that users typically send.

Mobile optimization was a larger topic of the interviews. Users wanted to understand how to optimize their template layouts for mobile users for higher conversion.

PLAN & DESIGN
After collecting a bit of information from a variation of users, we first planned out the “types” of emails we were going to design.

• Subscriber Welcome

• Post-Purchase Follow Up

• Customer Loyalty

• Product/Sale Announcement

• Abandoned Cart

To cause less confusion since “types” of emails was not a topic most users thought about, we kept it to a less detailed list. In addition to that, there is a roadblock of creating templates with dynamic event variables because those are dependent on their e-commerce integration and the event tags that get passed in. Below is the final result.

While conducting interviews we did look into the current designs Klaviyo users are creating as well as resourcing from other external sites such as reallygoodemails.com.

Keeping Mobile Optimization in mind, some of the Newsletter templates have Mobile or Desktop Only elements that cater to the device that is being used. For example, a button may be higher up above the fold on Mobile view, but on the Desktop version it is located below some image placeholders and sample content.

Some wireframes of these templates can be found below:

TESTING & FEEDBACK

We released the themed Email Template Library to a small group of test users which helped determine which templates were being used the most and conducted 1-1 calls with customers to talk about specific structures and blocks that they found the most useful within those templates.

One main concern that was brought to our attention was not knowing about the Mobile or Desktop Only blocks.

REFINE & THE FUTURE

In the next phase, we are planning to revisit customer behaviors and preferences when using these templates. What we are most interested in is which templates/layouts are being used the most and how efficient are they in regards to time spent.

We will be also looking more into advanced users who are looking to work more closely with dynamic content (Abandoned Cart, Replenishment Emails, etc.) and how to design for those “types.”