Overview
As a product designer at SeatGeek, I introduced a modular email template system generating millions of dynamic, AI-driven listing confirmation emails seen by thousands of fan sellers every day.
Team: Patrick Delaney (PD), Serge Derby (PM), Ankit Tyagi (EM), April Loeb (Engineer)
Duration: 6 weeks
Highlights
Problem: Why did emails need a redesign?
SeatGeek’s listing confirmation emails were static, plain text, and only displayed one ticket listing at a time. The new emails needed to handle multiple new features:
1. Bulk listing multiple games simultaneously, which is especially useful for season ticket holders.
2. Smart Pricing, which helps users automatically set and adjust their ticket prices using SeatGeek's proprietary AI-assisted pricing tool.
3. Dynamic CTAs, like adding a payout method for ticket sale proceeds.
Introducing a modular, flexible email system
The new email system needed a refreshed, modular design that could swap, rearrange, and remove content easily.
Designing individual, flexible building blocks ensured that engineers could create equivalent components in the codebase to support a variety of listing confirmation emails at different screen sizes. These components also served as a scalable foundation for other future email redesigns.
By using modular content blocks instead of static templates, engineers could create a toolbox of components used to build responsive, flexible emails. This also mean that future tracks of work could be spun up faster and re-use existing components.
High-level audit
I broke up the existing email into its key components first, identifying areas to improve or reorder. Notably, certain sections couldn't be removed within this project’s scope, so I had to work around them.
I formulated a revised component hierarchy, including room for optional CTA banners above and below the main email content area. I also crafted a strategy for including Smart Pricing and Bulk Listing in the email.
Improving visual design
With this initial audit, I did a first pass improving a standard listing confirmation's content and UI, ensuring all essential information could be seen above the cut. I split the original Listing Details section into two separate, more easily scannable components.
Feature 1: Bulk Listing
The redesigned ticket list component can display up to 10 different season ticket holder events, with a "View more" button link guiding users to their additional listed tickets online.
Feature 2: Smart Pricing
It was crucial that the listing confirmation email inspired seller confidence and trust in SeatGeek's AI Smart Pricer. Thus, I designed a unique banner treatment for smart priced emails using our new AI brand icon. I also included additional trust signals and an equivalent deactivation email state.
Feature 3: Add payout method prompt
Sellers listing tickets that fall below a certain monetary threshold can skip adding a payout method until their tickets have sold. However, adding a payout method later can be a frustrating process that delays sellers from quickly receiving their funds. By prompting sellers in listing confirmation to add a payout, SeatGeek ensures sellers get paid faster, understand to how to access payouts, and reduce their chances of leaving unpaid funds on the table".
Initial explorations of this feature relied on an existing banner component placed up top, but further iteration proved an integrated solution distracted less from the main email content and took up less space.
Feature 4: NFL/secondary CTA banners
When season ticket holders create a ticket listing for an NFL team using SeatGeek's enterprise account manager feature, the listing will only appear on the NFL Ticket Exchange run by Ticketmaster and not on SeatGeek's consumer site. This banner encourages people to cross list their NFL tickets on SeatGeek and provides a template for future secondary email CTAs.
Reflection
Every day, thousands of SeatGeek ticket sellers receive a listing confirmation email that I designed. Owning a crucial communication tool often overlooked by UX teams was extremely rewarding; I got to leverage my UX background in creating consumer-centric designs that directly complement the work of SeatGeek's amazing customer experience team. My work created a scalable foundation for future, more customer-obsessed SeatGeek email redesigns.