Email Marketing Design Kit

Skills Applied

Design | Research | Cross-Team Collaboration & Alignment

Softwares Used

Sketch | Invision | Abstract

User/Consumer Base

B2B | B2C | Email Marketing

Industry Experience

Fashion | Retail

Context & Problem
Vans’ marketing emails weren’t performing—and it wasn’t just a design issue. The metrics team surfaced low engagement rates, and on closer inspection, we found deeper problems: full-image emails (including image-based CTAs), no alt text, and inaccessible fonts. From a usability standpoint, it was broken. From a brand standpoint, it felt generic—nowhere near Vans’ bold, energetic voice.
I was brought in to build a modular, accessible, and brand-forward design system for email from scratch. There was no previous framework—just outdated templates—and this was the first initiative to formalize and scale email design across campaigns.

Discovery & Research

The audit and research phase included:

  • Competitive analysis of high-performing brands in the space, revealing common standards: live text CTAs, succinct subject lines, mobile-first design, and full alt text support.
  • Generative testing showed users preferred personalized, clean emails that loaded quickly and weren’t image-heavy.
  • I also found that widths over 600px consistently broke across major email clients, impacting layout and readability.

Ideation & System Strategy

I proposed a 0→1 modular email design system, focused on clarity, consistency, and flexibility. The system would allow for creative freedom while ensuring performance, accessibility, and branding guardrails.

Key design decisions included:

  • A 1–2 column grid system to support both promotional and editorial-style content.
  • Background image support for campaign graphics while maintaining accessibility via live-text overlays and alt-tagged product images.
  • Eight flexible templates for primary, secondary, and tertiary messaging—built to scale across promos, rewards, reviews, and personalized product recommendations.

Prototyping & Validation

I worked closely with the email marketing team and developers using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, ensuring every component was implementation-ready and tested across major email clients.

  • Typography: Selected email-safe fonts—Helvetica with Arial fallback—and built a scalable type system for headlines, body, CTAs, and links.
  • CTA buttons: Redesigned with high-contrast brand colors, fixed height of 42px, and 16px padding, optimized for mobile tap targets.
  • Headers and footers: Stripped out top nav clutter to reduce cognitive load. New versions surfaced only essential links and messaging.
  • Visuals: Integrated Vans’ checkerboard motif and sample holiday skins to retain brand personality within accessibility boundaries.

ROI & Impact

Over 3 months, I built the system in Figma as a reusable component library with clear documentation. We launched it across Vans’ seasonal campaigns first, then shared it across the broader brand portfolio.

The new email design system created a foundation that was:

  • Modular — enabling teams to quickly compose on-brand emails across Vans, Timberland, and Smartwool without starting from scratch
  • Accessible — replacing image-based CTAs with live text, adding alt text, and improving contrast to meet WCAG standards
  • Brand-aligned — giving each brand a distinct visual voice while using the same underlying components

 

 

In the first 8 weeks post-launch:
  • Vans emails using the new system outperformed Smartwool’s by 18% in click-through rate
  • The build time for marketing emails dropped by roughly 30%, thanks to reusable components and clearer structure
  • The system was rolled out to 3 brands without increasing headcount or requiring a separate dev sprint

This project was a win not just for visual design — but for process, scale, and long-term usability across teams.

 

In line with Nielsen Norman Group’s guidance, the system improved usability for both customers and internal teams. By reducing ambiguity, accelerating production, and enabling scalable design across brands, it strengthened collaboration and consistency across every touchpoint.

Cross-Functional Wins

The system was built in close collaboration with developers and the email marketing team using Salesforce. By documenting patterns and providing usage guidelines, I reduced back-and-forth during handoff and empowered non-designers to assemble emails confidently. Marketing teams could now A/B test faster, swap modules without design support, and focus on messaging instead of layout — leading to a more agile campaign process and stronger alignment across brand and tech.

Reflections

This was a true 0→1 product design challenge—starting with a broken system and building a scalable, brand-aligned solution from the ground up. It taught me how to strike a balance between design creativity and implementation feasibility, and how modular systems can drive both efficiency and consistency at scale.

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