Case Study Club
A product approach
to a product design newsletter.
UX
Content Strategy
Writing
Reader Engagement
Summary
Project Overview
In 2023, I was invited by Jan Haaland, the founder of Case Study Club, to write a weekly newsletter to support the growth of over 28,000 designer readers.
goal
Leveraging my dual expertise as a product designer and former content strategist, I introduced two additional goals to enhance our strategy:
2. To boost the reader engagement rate, fostering a more interactive and loyal readership.
Deliverables
UX research
Content strategy
Weekly newsletter writing
Weekly newsletter publishing
highlights
10.7% ↑ readership
7.3% ↑ engagement
8.2% ↑ open rate
Webflow sponsorship
Putting readers in the center
After a month of writing the newsletter, my first step was to deepen my understanding of our audience. To achieve this, I conducted a user survey to discover who our readers are, their reasons for subscribing, and the value they seek from the newsletter.
The initial attempt to gather insights was modest: the survey, included in the newsletter's final part, garnered only 3 responses. Recognizing the need for a more direct approach, I sent a separate email focusing on the survey. This strategy proved effective, resulting in 56 responses and a substantial completion rate of 55.88%.
Balancing business and reader needs
The survey distilled a lot of valuable information by incorporating both quantitative and qualitative questions. It enabled me to understand better our readers' career stages, needs, and motivations, including why they appreciate the newsletter and areas for improvement.
Balancing familiarity and novelty
1. Consistent structure
Given that the CSC newsletter already had an 80% consistent structure, I made minor iterations to enhance its consistency further.
2. Diverse theme
In terms of content, I aimed to infuse a sense of freshness, trendiness, and diversity, ensuring that our readers remain engaged and curious.
I also experimented with varying the newsletter's theme to cater to different segments of our audience, who were at various stages in their design careers.
3. Coherent content
Despite this variety, every section is thoughtfully linked to a central theme, making each newsletter a coherent, standalone 'mini-product' in its own right.
Balancing length and depth
The user survey revealed that 49.1% of our readers typically read each newsletter for 1-5 minutes. Given this limited engagement time, how might we maximize the value of our content?
The key lay in leveraging the editor's unique insights and discerning taste. It's possible to strike an optimal balance between brevity and depth by offering inspiring viewpoints, carefully choosing relevant case studies, and recommending high-value further reading.
This approach ensured that even brief interactions with our newsletter were enriching and thought-provoking for our readers.
The happiest moment in creating a “product”
Over six months of writing the weekly newsletter, I successfully expanded our readership from 28,000 to more than 31,000, increased engagement by 7.3%, and boosted the open rate by 8.2%.
The highlight for me was receiving heartfelt messages from readers who appreciated the effort put into each edition.
One more thing
During this period, the newsletter also received multiple sponsorships from Webflow. 🎉
Final thoughts
Product thinking is a versatile approach that can be applied to virtually any project, allowing most things to be viewed through a product-oriented lens. Similarly, the key to excellence in writing lies in originality, thoughtfulness, and sincerity. When writers invest their heart and soul into their work, it resonates unmistakably with the audience.
