PROJECT OVERVIEW

Teams: Marketing, Strategics and Analytics, Design
Stakeholders: Chief Marketing Officer
Role: User Experience Designer, Visual Designer
Tools: Sketch

WHY FOCUS ON RE-ENGAGEMENT?

• It is less costly and easier to keep current lenders than to acquire new ones.

• Engaged users are more likely to spread the word (and Kiva gets at least 50% of new people through word of mouth)
  

project Goals

• Provide a holistic assessment of re-engagement to understand drivers of repeat behavior.

• Establish the building blocks for a successful email re-engagement program.

• Conduct and analyze several email tests to build repeatable processes going forward.

• Identify initiatives (email and other) that can increase repeat rate.

MY ROLE

As the Design Intern at KIVA, I’ve worked with the Sr. Product Designer and CMO to help create Kiva’s User Journey Email Flows. I had the opportunity to take the role of the design lead 2 weeks into the project where I set up weekly meetings with stakeholders and other team members to help gather information.

JOURNEY FLOWS PROCESS

Email User Journey Goals

• To provide an overview so that Kivans can easily understand  typical user experiences after initial sign-up.

• To simplify the complex and show important details without the clutter of extraneous information

RESEARCH

• Set up in person and video meetings with Digital Marketing Manager and Lifecycle Marketing Manager to learn more about Kiva’s email system.

• Gather metrics and data regarding different types of emails delivered, click rates, open rates, and engagement.

Mood Board

In order to gather inspiration on how to visually show all the information I’ve learned regarding Kiva’s email system, I created a mood board of some existing journey flows that I found appealing and useful.

WHITEBOARDING

In order to fully understand the cadence and email frequency a core lender with 2 loans (one 8 month term, and one 14 month term) receives, the senior designer and myself initiated a whiteboarding session with the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to brainstorm and decide what is needed to be shown visually, that is both simple and easy to digest.

WIREFRAMING

We then created some wireframes and discussed the data and information needed to show in our journey maps to reflect our goals.

RE-ITERATions

• Weekly meetings were set up with the CMO and design department to gather any feedback and changes needed to re-iterate on regarding the information

• Weekly design critiques were set up with Kiva’s design department to gather feedback regarding visual design.

DESIGN THINKING WORKSHOP

The Team then met to discuss and review the findings as a cross-functional team and participated an all day design-thinking workshop where we came up with some:

1. User + Need

2. Ideation: How might we …

3. Lo-res prototypes & Sharing

FINAL JOURNEY FLOW DELIVERABLES

1) Overview: A Lender’s Year in the Life

Below is an overview that diagrams the typical frequency of Kiva’s emails during a 14 month cycle for both a new lender with a $25 deposit and a regular lender with over 6 loans. We learned that after the final welcome email on Day 17, our cadence is light.  If a person doesn’t receive marketing emails, he/she will get only one repayment email a month for the first 5 months.

2) Prospect Email Flow

3) Welcome Email Flow

The most important period for engagement is the first 90 days.  Below, we can see that Kiva send 1 email every 3 days for the first 17 days and have found that, by improving the frequency and content of our emails and limiting the CTA per message to just one, we can create a clearer path to action to drive engagement.

Specific actions recommended by Team Real based on our analyses and learnings to incorporate into the design of the prototype in order to show Kiva’s vision on how to drive engagement.

PROTOTYPE DEMO

Prototype Project Goals

• Contextually collecting lender demographic and interest data to help personalize Kiva.

• Infusing the experience with stories and celebratory moments to help lenders feel impactful.

• Managing lenders holistically across web, email, social, and mobile so that they have an integrated experience.
  

FINAL THOUGHTS

Being part of Team REAL and working on this project was a huge accomplishment. I was able to see the project from start to finish, learning more about Kiva and its users was an extreme eye-opener. My biggest challenge for this project was coming up with solutions to simply the complexity of Kiva’s email flows so that it is easily understood. As someone completely new, and an intern, it was another challenge for me to find the right person to gather information and setting up meeting times to learn more. I was also very happy to have support from my senior designer/mentor who provided me confidence and great feedback in order to successfully complete the project. Working one on one with the stakeholder, I was very proud to receive recognition from her, as she was very happy with the outcome and deliverables.