Geoff Bell

Project Overview

I was tasked with creating an End of Season Review email design for Sunderland AFC. Following the success of this email, Sunderland were keen to also get new email templates designed for their Pre- & Post-Match comms.

My Contributions

I was the only designer on this project, so designed the email mock ups to present to the customer, as well as then building the emails in the Communicator platform. Whilst logos & other imagery were provided by SAFC, I created the icons that are used in the templates.

Ideation

Being a football fan, this was a project that I was quite excited to get involved in. I began by seeing if there were any other 'End of Season' reviews emails out there, but there wasn't a great deal that I could find. Sunderland has quite a strong brand, so it was important that this be incorporated in to the design. I began to sketch out some rough ideas - I really wanted the season year to be front and centre and alongside the club's crest. I also really wanted to include some stats in an eye-catching way, so thought about putting the stats in some kind of colour-block element. It was important that some positive stats be chosen, but I had to think about what these could be. I ended up coming up with the following stats; Goals Scored - Sunderland were the joint-third highest scorers in the league, so this was a godo stat to include. Miles Travelled - Sunderland usually have a large away following, so it was good to highlight how many miles the team had travelled over the course of the season as it was likely that a large number of fans had travelled the same distance. Minutes Played - this was another good stat to highlight as it showed just how much football the club had played and finally Trips To Wembley - everyone football fan wants to see there team end up at Wembley in a final and Sunderland fans had been 3 times.

The Design

Using the club's branding and website as my basis, I designed the End of Season Review email to be quite eye-catching with the large blocks of colour for the stats that I wanted to highlight.

Following the success of the End of Season Review design, Sunderland wanted a new template designing for their pre- &ammp; post-match emails as well.

Following an extensive review, 2 designs were presented to the football club using the End of Season Review design as a starting point, I tweaked the design to include information around the opponent, kick-off time, location and competition. The email would have links to news stories that were relevant to the match, included a countdown timer, as well as some image personalisation to show a SAFC shirt with the subscriber's name on the back.

For the Post-Match design, a large section was added to display the final score, as well as sections for a news stories for the match highlights and the manager's thoughts on the game. A Match Stats image would also be included to show statistics such as posession & fouls, etc. Finally, there was to be a brief section around the next match which included a link for tickets.

Feedback & learnings

The new designs saw an improvement in engagement from fans, with the average open rate for the Pre-Match email rising from 17.4% to 32.4%, whilst the average click rate increased from 2% to 4.39%.

The emails also received praise from supporters on social media.