Analysis

I began with a three-month audit of all outgoing customer messages across every channel. From that, I established four criteria for categorizing any message before it was sent: type (transactional, servicing, or marketing), format (the components needed for a customer to immediately understand what kind of message it was), placement (contextual, appearing close to the point of need rather than interrupting unrelated tasks), and order (the logic governing frequency and sequencing when multiple messages were queued for the same customer).

Solution

The resulting guidelines covered design standards, component specifications, and sequencing rules. Sequencing was the most consequential part — it introduced the concept of frequency caps tied to actual customer behavior rather than arbitrary limits. In-app interruptions, for example, were capped based on average visit frequency, ensuring that no customer would encounter an interruptive message more than 25% of the time they opened the app. For a customer who shopped weekly, that meant at most one interruption every four visits — a meaningful reduction from what had been effectively uncapped.

Guidelines without enforcement tend to drift. The third component of the plan was a governance structure: a review committee for any messages appearing on the homepage, a recurring audit process for other placements, and training sessions for every team responsible for customer communications. The goal was to shift governance from being bottleneck to a more moderated approach.

Outcome

Within six months of launching the new strategy, average interruptions per session were cut in half. The app store rating increased by 1.7 stars. Opt-outs dropped by 30%. Plus, there was greater consistency in messaging across channels.