LOYALTY PROGRAM

LOYALTY PROGRAM

Role:
UX Manager

Brand:
Victoria’s Secret

Objective:
Concept & Launch a new omni channel Loyalty Program

Victoria's Secret has long been a leader in the women's lingerie industry and collegiate apparel under the PINK brand. In response to the evolving digital landscape and the growing importance of customer retention strategies, VS&Co. brands introduced a loyalty program aimed at enhancing the shopping experience. This initiative is designed to offer customers added value, fostering deeper connections and engagement throughout their journey with the brand.

As the manager overseeing this initiative, I led my team in the development of a best-in-class web and app experience, ensuring seamless integration of user-centric design and compelling brand storytelling. I oversaw the strategic direction of key concepts, working closely with marketing, brand creative and tech teams to create a cohesive strategy that enhanced customer engagement and supported long-term brand growth.

OVERVIEW

  • Project Overview: Launch the inaugural omni-channel loyalty program spanning web, app, and in-store, involving a large, cross-functional team in the conception, execution and brand development.

  • Role & Responsibilities: I was responsible for the design excelence and customer success, driving strategic thinking, design direction, resource management, planning & managing cross-functional partnerships from concept to launch. I managed a talented team of designers and lead alignment between key stakeholders through regular work sessions and reviews to track progress, address challenges, and ensure smooth collaboration across teams while maintaining an agile and autonomous design environment.

  • Strategic Definition:

    • UX strategy: We defined our long term customer vision and tenets to create a product that rewards loyalty through a personalized approach to rewards and incentives, aligned to their individual needs and shopping habits. Ensuring our strategy and customer definition of a loyalty program aligned and merged successfully with marketing & business objectives to drive higher customer retention, new customer acquisition and overall customer satisfaction. Our mission was to create a valuable and functionally elevated program with that added layer of design magic that made a customers’ shopping experience exceptional.

    • Content Strategy: To create the appearance of simplicity for our customers around a deeply complex rewards program, we mapped out and iterated around optimization of the information architecture to enable most effective way to absorb and understand the complexity of our pro

    • Design Strategy:

    • Brand Strategy:

METHODS

  • Think: During the discovery phase of this work, We approached discovery across two different focus areas, deep diving into understanding both business objectives and customer needs around loyalty programs.

  • Make: I was responsible for the design excelence and customer success, driving strategic thinking, design direction, resource management, planning & managing cross-functional partnerships from concept to launch.

  • Break: Managed and guided a talented team of designers, fostering an environment of creativity and collaboration, providing constructive feedback and opportunity for autonomy.

This work spanned the duration of a year and with that came a ton of unknowns. From understanding technical constraints, building brand storytelling, legal and creating content, to reaching overall alignment between stakeholders, this work required an agile approach. I was involved in key planning meetings to align on timelines and milestones, set expectations and communicate blockers, which in turn translated to clear actionable outputs for the UX team. 

As with any large initiative, remaining flexible both in process and execution was vital to support the regular shifts in objectives and priorities as well as the discovery of technical constraints during the development of POCs. This translated into an agile design process with a phased approach, tons of iteration and regular cross-functional syncs to retain visibility and alignment.

The result of this incredible collaboration was a seamless blend of business objectives and user-centric design that focused on meaningful engagement and personalized features.

Patterning

Patterning

Journey Mapping

Journey Mapping

Userflows

Userflows

Design Explorations

Design Explorations

RESULTS

Key Features: 

  • Zip Code Gate to support the beta launch in limited locations

  • Elegant native app & web account hubs with point and reward tracking capabilities 

  • Simple way to engage with the Loyalty Program in store through the app (eg. Member ID QR) 

  • Personalization for account and non-account holders 

  • Unique interactions for web and app users 

  • Complex user flows simplified to create a seamless user experience across the shopping funnel

  • Beautiful branding and storytelling though strong visuals, language and animation 

SUCCESS

  • Strong collaboration between UX and the Visual Design team to align user goals with brand storytelling and visual language - key workshops enabled us to partner on branding and provide a strong UX pov on design decisions 

  • Effective partnership with Marketing partners in aligning business goals to best user practices and needs - key workshops provided us with the opportunity to influence marketing decisions

  • Successful phased approach to reviewing and handing off design work to development partners - this helped facilitate batched deliveries that kept everything on track and organized

  • Incredibly collaborative and fun working environment between the UX designers - our team was engaged, passionate and energetic, leading to an incredible team athmosphere

OPPORTUNITIES

  • Shifting priorities meant the team had to make on the fly adjustments and revisions at a quick turn around, making hand-off and progress more challenging - I provided support during this by keeping in sync with partners on updates and ensured communication channels remained open and my team had clear goals and deadlines

  • Technical limitations restricted certain features that would have elevated the user experience - encouraging collaborative iteration, helped the team problem solve for these limitations in creative ways

  • Program rules being developed as the project went along, lead to some challenges in creating informed and thorough UX decisions - I introduced a phased approach to handoff in order to parallel path strategic decisions with final designs