Email DEsign
System
Objective:
Crowd Cow’s email marketing channel needed a scalable design solution to balance consistency with creativity. The goal? Build an intuitive design system that streamlined production, empowered cross-functional teams, and elevated the brand experience—all while saving time and resources.
Responsibilities: Creative Direction & Design
The Challenge:
When I joined Crowd Cow, the email production process was fragmented and inefficient. Each campaign required custom development, leading to inconsistent branding, lengthy QA cycles, and limited creative bandwidth. The marketing team was spending more time troubleshooting than storytelling. This fragmentation was not only costly in terms of resources but was hampering our ability to deliver timely, impactful campaigns to our customers.
Approach:
I led the design and creative direction of a plug-and-play email design system built in Figma. This system standardized components and modules to ensure high design quality while staying simple and accessible for non-designers.
The journey began with a proposal to leadership where I advocated for a design systems approach to solve our scalability challenges. After securing buy-in from our Head of Marketing and CEO, I conducted a comprehensive audit of existing emails, created a component taxonomy balancing flexibility with brand consistency, and designed modular building blocks that could be assembled into countless layouts. The entire system was built in Figma with clear documentation to empower cross-functional adoption.
By collaborating closely with marketing, engineering, and the CEO, my team and I created a flexible toolkit that made it easy to craft on-brand, engaging emails. The system freed up resources for creative storytelling—like selecting strong imagery, refining color palettes, and writing copy that connects with customers.
This system standardized components and modules to ensure high design quality while staying simple and accessible
Component Library:
The email design system was built on three levels of components. Foundation elements established our visual language through typography, color systems, spacing, and grid guidelines. Core components like buttons, headings, product cards, and imagery treatments formed the building blocks of each email. Modules combined these components into pre-built sections for specific purposes, creating ready-to-use elements. This hierarchical approach allowed for consistent brand expression while providing enough flexibility to create unique campaign experiences that didn't look templated.
Welcome Flow:
Using our new design system, we were able to completely overhaul our entire welcome sequence internally - consisted of five carefully sequenced emails connecting new subscribers with both immediate value and brand education. Each email maintained consistent brand elements while telling a unique part of our story, from welcoming new members to showcasing our sourcing practices, benefits, and products.
This implementation proved that our design system wasn't just about production efficiency - it enabled us to accomplish in-house what external partners couldn't deliver, while creating a more cohesive and effective customer journey.
Content Strategy:
While the email design system provided the structure, creating entirely new visual content was equally important. When I joined, Crowd Cow's imagery was outdated and failed to showcase the quality of their products. I led the creative strategy and built an entirely new content approach, to produce fresh, impactful visuals that resonated with customers.
All of this new creative aligned perfectly with our modular design system, providing high-quality assets for every email component. This visual approach clearly communicated quality, transparency, and connection to producers. The design system thrived because we were able to establish a strong new visual foundation to populate its framework.
Results:
The impact was immediate and measurable - development time was cut by 50%, QA process time reduced by 30%, and design consistency improved across all email communications. The team gained bandwidth to focus on meaningful creative work, while engineering resources were freed up for more strategic technical initiatives. Non-creative departments were empowered to collaborate in Figma, contributing valuable input. Open email rates peaked at 70% after the new approach was introduced, and most importantly, one of the brand’s main customer touchpoints became consistently recognizable. This streamlined approach not only enhanced efficiency but also strengthened Crowd Cow's brand integrity and customer engagement, driving better connections and higher conversions.
Beyond The Numbers:
This project demonstrated the transformative power of design systems thinking applied to marketing channels. By bringing structure to creative work, we paradoxically enabled more creativity where it matters most - in storytelling and customer connection.
