Restructuring transactional emails

Jet.com had thousands of retail partners who sold products on its site, but not all of them always did things by the book. As Jet’s UX writer, I refreshed, revamped, and restructured a batch of 20 of the most commonly sent emails to remind partners to do things like ship their products on time and refund customers.

Team Product | Jet.com

 
 
 
 

Project summary

Challenge

Refresh 20 of the most commonly sent transactional emails to retail partners.

Solution

Confirm whether the emails contained the most up-to-date information, and restructure them to increase their actionability or response rate.

What I did

  • Identified issues in the original emails

  • Developed a new structure with content guidelines

  • Refreshed all email content

 
 
 

Process

Performing an audit and analysis

A retail partner manager reached out to me with a request to refresh the content as well as the look and feel of their partner emails, and I was immediately interested — not only would this improve communication and benefit the customer, but it would also help our growing brand build new relationships and increase our credibility.

We decided to focus on a batch of around 20 of the most commonly sent emails to start, and looped in the art director to help. I compiled all the emails together to analyze how they were structured, what each email’s goal was, and what kinds of topics were being covered.

Once I knew what we were dealing with, I had a better sense of what direction to take for the voice and tone, as well as the overall structure.

 
 

I identified a number of issues with the original emails in both voice and clarity — the latter which was likely contributing to decreased actionability.

 
 
 

Gathering information

I deciphered most of the emails despite the stilted language, but some of them contained phrases or terms I was unfamiliar with. I scheduled a few sessions with the retail partner manager to go over each in detail and make sure I was understanding them correctly.

I wanted to identify the purpose of each email, what action the retail partner had to take to correct the issue, and what info was absolutely essential to include. I also checked on whether we were using industry standard terms or jargon, and how much experience and knowledge the person receiving these emails would have.

 
 
 

Developing a new structure and guidelines

Armed with a full understanding of each email, I worked with the art director to develop a new structure, design, and formatting. We prioritized communicating the immediate action to take as well as why, and used styling to draw attention to important info that was both actionable and non-actionable.

Since these were our partners we were talking to, I also wanted to close each email by thanking them for their continued partnership.

 
 
 
 
 

Refreshing content

Once we had a structure in place, I could start the editing and rewriting process. The original emails didn’t include subject lines, and they ended up being a pain to hunt down, so I made sure to write and include new ones.

The refreshed content was clearer, shorter, and easier to digest. I also maintained the seriousness of the situation, but in a friendlier, more empathetic way that kept the emails on brand.

 
 

Before

After

 

Before: This one put a slightly menacing line about you not getting paid below a list of up to 20 items.

After: Important info about payments, cancelations, or refunds appear higher up to increase visibility.

 
 

Outcome

The retail partner manager was thrilled with the new structure, and while we developed it specifically for the partner emails, we were also able to apply it to other areas of the business. This helped set a new standard for all transactional emails from Jet, and paved the way for us to introduce a new template for submitting briefs that highlighted the email’s purpose and immediate action.