Redesigning a core email creation experience within Salesforce Marketing Cloud for large enterprise marketing teams.
Used daily by enterprise marketers, the email creation workflow in SFMC plays a critical role in how teams plan, build, and send campaigns at scale. Over the course of this project, I led research and design efforts to reduce workflow fragmentation, improve clarity and confidence during message creation, and modernize a complex system without oversimplifying the needs of advanced users.
Impact
What drove our strategy...
Goals
- Reduce costly user errors by designing workflows that surface validation at the right moments, not buried in separate tools
- Unify fragmented creation paths into a single, predictable flow that scales across enterprise use cases
- Increase adoption of underused platform features by integrating them contextually into the creation experience
User Frustrations
- Multiple entry points and creation paths had evolved independently over years, each with different capabilities and mental models
- Enterprise customers relied on advanced features that could not be simplified away, requiring us to manage complexity rather than eliminate it
- Critical validation tools (link checking, rendering previews, test sends) lived in separate parts of the product, disconnected from the creation flow
- The existing editor lacked the canvas space and flexibility that modern email builders offered
Personas
- Content Creators - Build and design email content, often without visibility into send configuration or audience targeting. They need canvas space, real-time feedback, and confidence that their work is production-ready.
- Marketing Managers - Configure delivery settings, audiences, and schedules. They inherit content from creators and need clarity on what has been validated before launch.
Where do we start?
Business and product knowns
Partnered with product owners to understand the business drivers behind this work, including red account issues and long-standing customer pain points.
Review existing research
Synthesized years of qualitative and quantitative data — CSAT, NPS, surveys, and feedback tools — to build a clear picture of customer sentiment and how we got here.
Taxonomy reconciliation
Audited overlapping workflows where identical features had different names across teams, then proposed unified terminology to reduce confusion.
Whiteboard brainstorming
Translated our discovery insights into early solution concepts through collaborative brainstorming sessions.
Early Concepts
Used low-fidelity designs to validate our hypotheses about layout and new features.
Standard Wizard
Flexible Left Nav
Left Nav Breakdown
Conceptual Nav
What did we
learn?
Separate Creation and Sending
Research confirmed that content creation and message sending serve different user needs and levels of cognitive load. Attempting to unify them into a single workflow increased complexity rather than reducing it, especially in enterprise environments with distinct roles and responsibilities.
This required treating creation and sending as separate experiences, while still designing them to feel connected and cohesive within the broader system.
Centralize Validation Features
Validation emerged as a critical moment in the workflow rather than a peripheral task. Users needed a clear, centralized place to confirm links, rendering, and test sends before moving forward, instead of navigating to features scattered across the application.
Bringing validation into a single, visible area helped reduce uncertainty and increased confidence before sending high-impact messages.
Balance Navigation and Canvas
Users consistently prioritized canvas space while building content, but not at the expense of losing orientation or access to key actions. The challenge was not choosing between focus and navigation, but finding a balance that allowed both to coexist without overwhelming the user.
This insight directly informed how navigation and controls were structured around the editing experience.
Design Buy-In Spike
As we progressed, there were concerns from leadership that the proposed workflow still involved too many screens and that the changes were not bold enough to stand out in a competitive market. To ground the discussion, I created detailed user journey maps comparing the current and proposed experiences across screens, context shifts, and required actions.
This visual comparison made the tradeoffs explicit. It demonstrated that while the number of screens had not been drastically reduced, cognitive load and unnecessary transitions had been meaningfully simplified. It also reinforced that a certain level of complexity was not only unavoidable but necessary to support enterprise-scale use cases. Framing the conversation around user impact rather than visual reduction helped align the team and move the project forward with shared clarity.
Wireframes
Navigation Screen Flow
Select Layout
Edit Content
Validate Content
Moderated validative research was being run before and after release (and more as needed) from here on out with a segment of representative customers.
What did we
learn?
Centralized Validation Was Strongly Reinforced
Participants responded positively to having link checks, test sends, and rendering previews consolidated in a single, visible area rather than distributed across the platform.
Navigation and Canvas Balance Remained a Tension
While users valued maximizing editing space, they still needed consistent and accessible navigation to complete required actions without losing context.
Onboarding and Entry Points Needed Clearer Affordances
Some participants felt uncertain when beginning the workflow, signaling the need for stronger guidance and clearer system language at the start of the process.
Wireframes - Final Version
Get Started
Define Email Properties
Add Content
Preview and Test
Following the final wireframe iterations, we continued moderated research sessions before and after release to validate refinements and identify any remaining friction.
What did we
learn?
Autosave Reinforced Confidence
Clear visual indicators of save states helped reduce uncertainty during editing. Participants consistently responded positively to knowing their work was preserved, while also expressing interest in future enhancements like version history and reversion.
Subject and Preheader Required Stronger Emphasis
These fields were still occasionally overlooked, signaling the need for continued refinement in positioning and visual hierarchy without disrupting the overall information architecture.
Fullscreen Editing Supported Focus Without Sacrificing Structure
Providing an option to expand the canvas addressed the ongoing tension between workspace and navigation, giving users more control while preserving access to key system actions.
Final Visual Designs
The final designs addressed all the key pain points identified in research while maintaining the advanced functionality enterprise marketers need.
Get Started
Define Email Properties
Add Content
Preview and Test
Measuring and Validating Designs
We measured success through both usability signals and business impact. Following release, we saw meaningful reductions in time on task and overall interaction steps, alongside measurable improvements in NPS and CSAT tied to the email creation experience.
These improvements reflected more than visual updates. They indicated that users could complete complex workflows with greater clarity and confidence.
Research Feedback
Post-release research reinforced that the redesigned experience felt more modern and more predictable. Participants consistently noted that validation tools being centralized reduced friction and uncertainty, allowing them to focus on content rather than navigating the system.
Stakeholder feedback also highlighted the impact of clearer structure and stronger workflow boundaries. By separating creation and sending while maintaining cohesion, the experience better aligned with how enterprise teams actually operate.
Results and Reflection
This project required balancing leadership expectations for bold simplification with the practical realities of enterprise complexity. Rather than removing depth, the solution focused on clarifying structure, reducing unnecessary transitions, and strengthening validation at key moments.
Design played a central role in translating research into shared understanding across teams. By grounding tradeoffs in observable user behavior and measurable impact, we were able to align stakeholders around a solution that improved usability without compromising capability.
The work reinforced an important principle for enterprise products: clarity does not come from stripping away complexity, but from organizing it intentionally.
"The new email creation flow finally feels like a modern tool. I can focus on the content instead of fighting the interface."
"Having all the validation tools in one place has saved us countless hours and reduced our error rate significantly."
"This redesign shows Salesforce is finally listening to what enterprise marketers actually need."
