Email as a channel was showing a lot of success with customers and the strategic decision was made to increase email volume. I led the effort to fund a new pod and draft a new process leveraging design thinking. The increased email volume as a result of the new process and the additional pods resulted in a 30% increase of application volume, which accounted for $1.4 billion in originations.
The customer problem to solve
Customers were familiar with Capital One and with the concept of seeking financing for an auto loan, but they were less familiar with what refinancing an auto loan was or what the process would entail. To drive customers to the product, we would need to take proactive steps to make customers aware of the product offering.
The business problem to solve
Our line of business was sharing an email delivery pod with another group, which was limiting our monthly email volume. We needed to gain clarity on what the expected output of a pod should be to determine if we needed additional resources to meet our goals or if we needed to be more efficient with our existing resources. If we did need to secure funding for an additional email delivery pod, the return on investment would need to be clear.
Discovery
I conducted stakeholder interviews to gain clarity on how the email pods were structured, their current process and their pain points.
With that baseline of information, I facilitated a combined retro with the email pod team, business analysts, marketing creatives and product teams to gain a better understanding of what was working well and wasn’t working.
Define
Based on the discovery synthesis, I determined that there were 2 keys opportunity areas to make the existing pods more efficient…
- The working model between the email delivery pod, business analysts, marketing creatives and product teams was broken. Frequent miscommunication was leading to inefficiency and frustration. I needed to improve the current working models by drafting a new work flow process and lead across teams to improve alignment, efficiency and communication.
- Engineering was working siloed from the email marketing efforts and was primarily focused on product specific improvements. The ask of engineering was a small level of effort to launch an email campaign, but if engineering missed the deadline, it would often require a significant amount of rework and at least a month in delays. I needed to gain alignment from engineering leadership to ensure email marketing items were being prioritized appropriately and worked on in a timely manner to keep the email marketing efforts consistently on track and on time.
Build
I drafted a new workflow process based on the session with the teams. I gained alignment from leadership on the email delivery pod, business analysts, marketing creatives and product teams to implement the new process with my oversight.
In addition, I worked with the engineering and product leadership to gain alignment on the level of effort and priority needed for email marketing efforts.
Measure
Once the improvements to the working model were implemented, I was able to gain an accurate understanding of what the return on investment per email delivery pod would be and presented this data to the executive leadership team. Based on the goals for the year, my recommendation was to fund two dedicated email delivery pods.
The executive team funded the two email delivery pods. Within the first year, email marketing resulted in 30% of funded application volume, which accounted for $1.4 billion in loan originations.