Frontiers Media | Author Journey Communications Redesign

Author Journey Communications Redesign

About:

I led the redesign of Frontiers’ automated author communications, covering the journey from manuscript submission through to completion. Working with the Customer Experience and Product teams, I reviewed each touchpoint and rewrote more than 70 email variants reaching 12.5 million authors annually—approximately 68% of the total email volume.

Needed:

The existing emails were often long, inconsistent and unclear about what authors needed to do next. Many tried to communicate several messages at once, making important actions difficult to identify. The journey needed clearer, more supportive communications that strengthened trust while giving each email a single purpose.

Work included:

Mapped and evaluated email touchpoints across the complete author journey.

Identified unclear objectives, competing calls-to-action, inconsistent terminology and unnecessary content.

Rewrote more than 70 email variants around a single objective and clear next action.

Developed a messaging library reinforcing quality, rigour, speed, transparency and collaboration throughout peer review.

Worked with Customer Experience and Product teams to align the new communications with user needs and operational requirements.

Presented the work across four senior-leadership review sessions and incorporated feedback into the final approach.

Introduced UTM tracking to measure engagement and identify opportunities for further optimisation.

Scoped and prioritised the remaining 40+ email variants, representing approximately six million annual messages.

Outcomes:

Created a clearer, more consistent experience across 12.5 million annual messages - approximately 68% of the complete author email journey.

Reduced average email length by 35% and gave 100% of redesigned messages one primary objective and call-to-action.

Increased click-through rates on key author actions by 18%.

Improved completion rates for priority author tasks by 12%.

Reduced support enquiries associated with unclear emails by 15%.

Increased author-rated clarity and helpfulness by nine percentage points.

Introduced UTM tracking across all redesigned email journeys, enabling performance to be measured and optimised for the first time.

Secured senior-leadership approval and created a scalable framework for redesigning the remaining 40+ email variants.