Microsoft Subscriber Engagement Campaign
Re-designing Microsoft’s traditional email with something a little more fun and eye-catching to engage with our subscribers while maintaining the company’s branding
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted some information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Microsoft.
Product Type
(New pilot) Email campaign design
Time Frame
1st campaign: Nov – Dec 2022
2nd campaign: Dec 2022 – Deb 2022
Team
PMM, RMM, other designer
Other stakeholders:
Director of Consumer Marketing – Subscription retention team
My Role
I led the design direction in creating a more fun and “current” Microsoft email layout and collaborated with my design partner, PMM and RMM to develop the content and create the redlines for the engineering team.
Microsoft 365 is an all-inclusive subscription that grants users access to powerful productivity tools such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more. However, most users only know the basics of each program and there is currently no teaching hub that lets subscribers discover the numerous capabilities of each app.
Furthermore, Microsoft is often associated with serious matters like work, productivity and task completion.
How might we inform our users of the other things Microsoft 365 apps can do while keeping things light and engaging?
Hypothesis
Engaging our subscribers in nontraditional and creative ways during their subscription period will grow engagement and eventual renewals
Experience
Current subscribers will receive an email with fun and new ways to use their M365 subscription.
Targeting
Current Subscribers
Segment based on
- users who have used M365 apps vs those who haven’t in the last 60 days
- Personal vs Family subscriptions
Objectives
- Increase MAU (monthly active users)
- Keep customers from churning by changing their minds with new benefits and offers or offer SKU switching instead
- Identify gaps and opportunities by auditing retentions communications across all teams
- Discover new ways to engage current subscribers and trialists during the days leading up to their expiration
- Inspire new ideas, spread fun and joy when using Microsoft products
Exploring different visuals
Part of the research for this campaign involved understanding the way our current Microsoft emails look and feel, versus the feelings we wanted to evoke in our new emails, especially since they were going to be released before or after the holidays.
Holiday visuals (for the December email)
Many of these companies utilize large images or gifs with minimal copy and CTA buttons.
With our engagement campaign, part of our goal was to move away from the usual, rigid and boxy email design to something more dynamic and fun. Similar to the psychology principle: the aesthetic-usability effect, users will be more likely to read and engage with a message if it looks aesthetically pleasing!
As the December email was set to launch around the holidays, we wanted to make that email look more festive. We also really wanted to implement gif elements into it to really differentiate this email from those old ones in the past!
We created several iterations of high-fidelity mockups – some that were purely illustrative and had the “hand-drawn” feel to it, and others that utilized stock photos.
December PowerPoint Party email
January Excel email
Some small gif animations were also created by my design partner to add playfulness to the design.
Final Designs
Outcomes
The subscriber engagement emails, particularly PowerPoint parties, generated significant discussions on various social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and tech blogs.
Impact
- PowerPoint email increased PPT MAU
- Increase in personal subscribers upgrading to Family
Next Steps
Our next steps would be to continue collecting more data on the January Excel email and how the MAU was affected, as well as capture impressions about this campaign and compare it to the PowerPoint party email.
Our long-term goal is to create a library or system where we can more frequently and efficiently send engaging content to our subscribers, similar to this campaign pilot.