Stores bought edrone to send emails and mostly did it with automations. Newsletters can bring as much value again, but only 5% of stores sent them on their own. The rest asked Support, who built each newsletter for them.

Newsletters were split into 5 separate features, from static and dynamic to category and A/B, which differed in where the products came from and who got the email. A new store waited 14 days on average for its first newsletter, and Support's workload grew with every new customer.

I ran 10 user interviews and a UX audit of the 5 features, checked usage data in Tableau and reviewed competitors.

The main finding was simple. Newsletters were split into 5 features, each behind a 10-step wizard that opened with language and sender. Stores did not know which feature to use or where to start, so they asked Support.

Two smaller ones came up too.

• Choosing the audience was hard. There was no simple way to leave out contacts who stopped opening, or to resend to those who did not open.
• Sending felt risky, so stores wanted to be sure everything was ready before they clicked.

I merged the 5 features into one Newsletter section with 4 steps. They follow the order stores think in, content first, then the audience, then the details.

Template and design. A store starts from a template in its own branding and goes straight to the content. Products are picked in the email builder, by hand or from browsing history, so what used to be two features is now one switch.

Audience. Engaged and Subscribed are set by default, which leaves out contacts who stopped opening and keeps the store out of spam. Smart re-engage, also on by default, brings back a different 10% of them each time, so nobody is dropped for good.

Details. Every setting is one block with a check, so a store sees at a glance that everything is ready. The date says how long until it goes out, Smart resend to non-openers is on by default, and an undo shows for a few seconds after scheduling.

Dashboard and results. Every newsletter lands on one list with its status and revenue. One click opens its results, compared with the store's average newsletter.

With 2 frontend and 2 backend developers, we shipped it in 3 weeks.

Within 3 weeks, 78% of stores were sending newsletters on their own, while the old features were still available. Over the following year most kept sending every month.

Support stopped building newsletters for customers, so it could serve a growing base without growing itself. It was also edrone's first step towards the self-serve product that later became freemium.