Multi-touchpoint Design Strategy with Cure MN
Dive Right In!
CURE is a Minnesota-based non-profit whose mission is to empower rural Minnesotans to engage in the active improvement of their communities and future through environmental awareness, education, and activism. CURE MN currently has a solid base of foundational members- older constituents who have worked with or supported the organization since its beginnings as a clean water organization. In their 30 years of growth, they’ve expanded beyond clean water to also include clean energy, climate change, and civic involvement in the rural communities. They’re looking to connect with younger generations who have recently entered adulthood, but have limited amounts of time and money to donate.
The Solution
Understanding that CURE MN struggled to reach a younger audience, the team wanted to find a balance between broadening CURE’s reach and improving access to resources across CURE’s website. In order to grow their audience with the Gen Z demographic, the team suggested three key areas of improvement.
My primary focus was revamping the welcome email and newsletter. Changes included visually engaging graphics, which has been shown to help users remember the organization, increasing subscription retention. Additionally, a more prominent call-to-action was necessary to encourage users to follow up on CURE MN’s website.
Aiming to gain new users and make it easier for existing users to stay informed, the team also recommended increasing CURE MN’s social media presence. especially with short-form videos and advertisements. Additionally, the team adjusted the hierarchy of actions on the website using high-fidelity wireframes. These revisions guide users more easily to their primary action of learning more about how to become involved with their community and environment.
Project Length: 1 week
Team Size: 4 members
My Roles:
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Tools:
Figma
Miro
Procreate
Google Suite
Zoom
Methods:
Heuristic Analysis
Competitive Analysis
Touchpoint Map
Strategy Map
Secondary Research
Marketing Research
After our stakeholder meeting, the team evaluated CURE MN’s website, and the ways they interacted with their users, both digitally and in person. We then compared our findings with similar organizations in a competitive audit, to see if we could identify the best ways to improve CURE MN’s user experience.
Our findings, along with our secondary research into business and marketing strategies led us to understand how important email and social media interactions were.
“Email marketing is the most effective way of nurturing leads. 31% of businesses cite newsletters as their highest-performing tactic in this area.”
— Content Marketing Institute
The Welcome Letter
Emails turned out to be the most important entry point for new leads. I was excited to head the revisions to CURE’s welcome letter and newsletter. The current welcome letter is mostly text based, and a dense read, overloading users’ cognitive workload. Their only picture is at the bottom of the email. The team was unable to obtain an example of the existing newsletter, but a high-fidelity wireframe was created to maintain a consistent look across emails.
Key Research Findings
Adding a Call to Action button in your emails instead of text can lead to a 28% increase in click-throughs.
-Campaign Monitor
Segmented email campaigns earn 100.95% higher clickthrough rates.
-Mailchimp
Including social media sharing buttons in emails increases clickthrough rates by 158%
-Disruptive Advertising
Early Wireframing
Logo which links to website, improving subscription retention.
Call to Action to encourage users to follow through on website, increasing web traffic.
Engaging graphics, improving user recall of brand.
Links to social media to increase user engagement.
Picture of director to increase familiarity with organization
According to OptinMonster, the top 3 reasons users unsubscribe from emails are:
-Too many emails
-Users don’t recognize the brand
-Info is irrelevant
The Redesigns
Welcome Email
I decided an exciting image for CURE MN’s border would make the welcome letter feel more alive and increase brand recognition. Remembering CURE’s roots in clean water conservation, I chose images reminiscent of Minnesota’s lakes behind a clean white foreground.
Two buttons were added to the top of the email, indicating the primary and secondary actions to the user. As buttons, these increase clickthrough rates by 28% percent.
Increasing traffic to CURE’s website was a high priority given that the website is the largest touchpoint to users. To increase click rates, according to research, I broke up the welcome letter into segments, first by category, then into smaller sections where possible. In this example, user resources are broken into their own resources.
Since we had discovered how important social media was to reaching younger generations, I added social media links to the bottom of the email so users had an additional opportunity to engage with CURE MN before leaving the email. The team also provided CURE MN with strategies to improve engagement across these platforms, including short-form videos, and user-generated content.
Newsletter
The newsletter was found to be important in retaining users and would increase brand recall. Although we were unable to obtain a copy of CURE’s newsletter, it offered me an opportunity to demonstrate what visual consistency across CURE’s communication forms would look like, so I took on the challenge of creating the email based off other nonprofit examples. The newsletter keeps the same elements as the welcome letter, such as the call to action buttons and the segmented information.
Conclusion
A non-profit organization, CURE MN is dedicated to fostering the empowerment of rural Minnesotans in actively improving their communities and shaping a sustainable future through initiatives focused on environmental awareness, education, and activism. As part of its ongoing efforts, CURE MN seeks to engage with the younger demographic that has recently entered adulthood. Recognizing their limited time and financial resources that often characterize Gen Z and Millennials, the team devised a strategy to better reach a younger generation, which included revisions to the welcome email and newsletter. The emails were given a clear call to action in order to increase click through rates. The emails were also given dynamic graphics to appear more visually appealing and increase brand recall and recognition, while segments used to break up the email and relieve the cognitive load.