Local Guides is a global community of explorers sharing their discoveries on Google Maps. Local Guides contribute valuable user-generated content by writing reviews, sharing photos, adding or editing business information, and checking facts. Today there are over 165 million Local Guides.
Users in the Local Guides program receive a series of emails, such as onboarding emails and recognition for adding content. However we discovered through user research that the emails were not always valuable or effective.
I worked with a cross-functional team to improve the designs and content of our email experience. Within one month of launching the new emails that I designed, we saw 3.4 million incremental contributions to Google maps.
Our goal
How might we communicate with Local Guides at the right moments to make contributing more habitual?
Ways we could improve our email program
To kick off this project, I facilitated a two day workshop with a cross functional group of designers, data analysts, and engineers. By analyzing user feedback surveys and email data, we determined our top email opportunity was re-engaging users that had lapsed or not contributed to Google Maps in the past 28 days.
As of January 2018 when this project started, more than 300k Local Guides lapsed everyday.
Diving deeper into survey research around re-engagement, I found the following themes for why users lapse.
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It isn't clear how the program works
67% of users didn’t digest emails because they’re too long and complicated.
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They forgot they were enrolled
60% of Local Guides explicitly forgot about the program and cited not getting reminders or being told what to do.
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No motivation to contribute
Belongingness, which consists of connecting with others and making new friends, is a mid-level motivator for Local Guides.
24% of contributors overall are motivated by connecting with others
I designed several email concepts and presented them to the team for feedback. After refining the designs, I worked with a researcher on a concept review with actual Local Guides. Here are the concepts we moved forward with:
These emails launched as A/B tests in March 2018. Within 1 month of going live, we saw 3.4 million incremental contributions with an annualized projected impact of 42.4 million incremental contributions. Join the Local Guides program to see these and other emails I designed in action.