Collective Welcome:
Registration Email
Overview
Role: UX Manager, Content Designer
Team: Product Designer (Catherine Wang 2018-2019 and Jess Bronson 2020), Product Manager (Leo Chang 2018-2019 and Krishna Patel 2020), Engineer (Yin Li)
Timeframe: Iterations over 3 send cycles
Okay, here’s what you need to know: Technically, Collective Health is a benefits administrator. But our mission is to make it easier for our members to find, understand, navigate, and pay for their health benefits.
And the start of that journey for members is Collective Welcome: a four-part program designed to help members learn about Collective Health, choose a plan, register for their account, and onboard onto the platform.
Problem
Let’s dive into that third part: the Registration Email.
Each year, we get the joy of welcoming new members to Collective Health—and actively encouraging them to register their account so they can use our product. We have really good engagement on this email (like 65% click through or higher), and the name of the game each year is Do. Not. Mess. With. Engagement. Numbers.
Believe it or not, we always wind up with 20+ variations of this email to send, based on the type of benefits a member had, and their status with us. Which means, we design components that can mix and match.
2018 Process
Our goal for 2018 was simple: encourage members to register, and provide value props to support why they should register.
We also wanted to give members a heads up on what to expect next: so, we included a “card” component that lets them know their benefits cards are on the way. (Ask me about the unboxing experience of those cards sometime!)
2019 Process
Fun fact...come 2019, we learned something interesting: members were accidentally throwing away that ever important piece of mail with their benefits card in it because to them, it kinda looked like junk. (Whoops.) For this revision, we decided to hammer home the idea that cards were coming in the mail by putting a photo of the actual piece of mail they would receive on the message.
We also updated the design of the actual envelope that members would receive to include their employer’s logo, which we expected would make it more appealing to open.
2020 Process
Add one thing one year, and you’re sure to run into challenges the next. 2020 was no exception, as this year we had our first digital-only client, who would not be sending physical cards to their members. But…we could only send one email to all clients (because backend).
Which meant we had a few options. We could:
a. use vague language around cards, e.g. you may receive cards in the mail (and risk spiking call volume as we didn’t have a way to for members to know if they were one who “may”)
b. omit the image of the piece of mail and omit mention of the physical card (and risk members throwing the mail away)
c. leave everything as it was and send the wrong info out (jk)
We went with option b. Why? Because it was the most clear option, we were keeping the client logo on the piece of mail, and because we wanted to tighten the focus of the Registration Email to just registration.
Reflection
I’d love to see us continue to move toward “one touchpoint, one action” throughout Collective Welcome. This email got bloated over the years. If we do our job right in Open Enrollment, we don’t need value props to get people to register; and I don’t believe this is the right place for card info. I think we need to find a better way to help members understand what’s coming next (like maybe in a first time experience when they open their account).