| Sector | Startup, Telehealth, Women's Health |
| Challenge | The organisation wanted to create awareness of their changed B2B to B2C strategy, by creating a newsletter that supports women and families through lifestages through technology |
| My Role | Ideator, Content Editor, Copywriter, Designer |
| Project Time | Ongoing since September 2020 |
Brand & Strategy Kickoff
After being tasked to develop Caia’s newsletter through HubSpot, I spent some time deciding what we wanted to achieve in terms of our brand, mission, target groups and goals. It was important to have a solid strategy laid out before getting the newsletter up and running two weeks later, marking the launch of Caia’s rebranding.
Brand Attributes & Mission Statement
By brainstorming and prioritising which brand attributes we wanted to communicate through the newsletter, I out together a mission statement.
With Caia’s goal of becoming the go-to source for expertise on a given topic, our main goal was:
"To provide high quality, curated women's health content to promote self-advocacy and empowerment in women."
This would be achieved through convenient, easily read and digestible pieces communicated in a casual way – like having a conversation with a friend.
Definition of Target Groups
In order to empathise with the different types of potential readers, we developed user personas based on research and experience. I received a great crash course in user journeys and personas by our CFO, Rob, and learnt about what they have done in the past and which users they have targeted.
Our team developed two personas, which served as the fundamental base off which we would create content based on the needs, wants and challenges of users and how we could create solutions for these through our newsletter.
The user personas we created were:
Nathalia
A 31 year old, young working professional woman. Her career is her priority and she finds herself too time-poor to care about her mental and physical health.
Prisha
A first time mother who only wants the be the best for her child, while keeping in balance her marriage, professional and social life. She is looking for support with whom she can share her challenges with.
Setting Goals
Through considering the above, and prioritising efficiency and awareness we created a number of goals which would serve as the basis of each newsletter, and dictate the next steps we needed to take in this process. Having these goals proved to be extremely important, especially in hindsight as the searching and choosing of content proved to be difficult – there’s just so many pieces of gold out there! Having goals to fall back on was very helpful in determining whether an action, task or article was useful, or whether it was a waste of time and resources.
Finding a Visual Style
Now onto the fun part – designing!
After discussing the look and feel of the newsletter that we wanted, I researched and compiled a few examples that could inspire our design. I specifically chose designs that were earthy-toned, and quite femme and minimalist – characteristic of Caia’s brand.
We decided to take on elements from all three templates to create our own, specifically the visual appeal and use of images to enhance the content. I learnt how to use HubSpot while creating the newsletter design, and also used canva to source different graphics. This is what I came up with: https://bit.ly/2IYD98z.
However, after sending out the first newsletter, we ran into a few problems. These included:
- Clunky layout on mobile
- Clipped email length
After consolidating with our designer to create a more streamlined template, we collaborated to make our new and current design here: https://bit.ly/3pMdYH3.
Curating Content
To create an enjoyable and content-rich newsletter, I decided to create a number of categories that would be included in each send out. The aim was to share updates in women’s health, and any noteworthy things happening e.g. cultural musings end events.
The newsletter starts with a letter from the CEO, updating our subscribers on what is currently happening in Caia, as well as the latest in the women’s health space.
The body of the newsletter would then include content of all forms – from informative articles, upcoming events, practitioner spotlights and book recommendations. I strived to have a balance of topics that people could come back to, to read more. After each month’s send out, I’d look at the analytics such as click-through rate to see what kind of topics and content were the most and least popular, which would then inform the next newsletter’s content. This is important as in order to prevent a high unsubscriber rate, it is critical to provide the most relevant content that your readers want.
Conclusion
Due to the collaboration and guidance that I received at all stages of this project, I learnt such a high amount about the world of email marketing and design.
As for what I would change for next time, keeping organised in terms of having timelines for when certain tasks needed to be done was important. I spent way too mornings anxiously making changes and trying to figure out a new HubSpot feature just minutes before the newsletter was supposed to be sent. This would also be helpful in having the relevant people available to run through what I had created, and given their opinion on what works/doesn’t. However, this was difficult as in a startup you’re always putting out the next fire!
Nevertheless, I really enjoyed working on this project and loved seeing it’s evolution each month, getting better and better. It was also incredibly rewarding hearing feedback from subscribers who loved the content each month, particularly industry professionals!
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