TopCashback Emails

UK Welcome Email Series (2026) - In progress

The Email team approached us to improve TopCashback's welcome email journey after identifying a significant drop in member engagement during the first two months. While around 25–30% of new members complete a transaction within their first month, almost 70% of those members don't return to make a second transaction the following month. More significantly, 85% of members who don't return within that period never transact again.

Could we use the welcome email journey to encourage repeat behaviour and improve long-term member engagement?

Rather than simply redesigning the emails, we worked closely with the Email team to review both the content and timing of communications, ensuring members received the right content at the right stage of their journey.

The Email team had already carried out experiments targeting members who were predicted to lapse. One particular email, designed to reassure members about what happens after making their first purchase, achieved an 8% Email Conversion Rate (ECR).

Although these results provided valuable behavioural insight, they focused on a different audience. Our objective was to improve the experience much earlier in the onboarding journey.

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Before proposing any changes, I mapped the complete welcome email journey to understand every communication a new member could potentially receive, when they receive it, and how those messages related to one another. This was important to identify if some users receive too many emails, or we are missing communication at important points.

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Visualising the journey helped identify:

• Duplicate communication.
• Repeated content across several emails.
• No communication about the Cashback process - especially in terms of the members earned money.
• Unnecessary sends.
• Non-contextual information e.g. advertising our Browser Extension when the member hasn’t made their first transaction yet.

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The revised email journey focused on improving both relevance and timing, rather than simply adding more emails.

The revised flow aimed to solve the issues that we identified by focusing on improving both relevance and timing, and ensuring stronger and more useful communication. For example, members who had completed their first transaction would receive different communications from those who had yet to transact, while members who hadn't returned after their first transaction would also have different communications.

This ensured emails were driven by user behaviour rather than a fixed schedule, creating a more relevant experience throughout the onboarding process.

UK Newsletter Project (2024/25)

The email team approached us to improve the UK newsletters that are sent several times a week - to those who have opted in to receive emails. The UK newsletters have a large audience and one of the most valuable engagement channels, generating significant revenue through member activity and paid retailer placements. The challenge was to modernise the experience without compromising commercial performance.

Before building the design, I analysed the existing newsletters and stats. Key considerations included:

• Over 90% of newsletters are viewed on mobile devices.
• Revenue generated from a fully booked newsletter needed to be maintained or improved.
• Each newsletter needed to accommodate a minimum of 38 retailer placements.
• Gmail's 80KB HTML size limit.

Working closely with the Email team, we used a MoSCoW framework to define what the newsletter needed to achieve, this included:

• Supporting promotional copy alongside every placement.
• Allowing premium placements to feature a creative.
• Creating flexible areas to promote internal products.
• Introducing a stronger introductory section that clearly communicates TopCashback’s tone of voice.

Reviewing the existing newsletters revealed several recurring issues. Although newsletters were sent three times each week, they were visually almost identical, making each send feel repetitive despite containing different offers.

The retailer section also became a long, uninterrupted list, particularly on mobile devices - where, as mentioned, most members view the email. Internal promotions lacked a consistent visual style and often resembled third-party advertising rather than part of TopCashback.

These observations highlighted opportunities to improve hierarchy, create clearer visual separation, and make each newsletter feel more distinctive.

The redesign focused on increasing engagement while preserving the commercial flexibility required by the Email team.

I introduced distinct visual themes for each newsletter day. Using different colour palettes - in the top sections - while remaining recognisably TopCashback helped reduce the feeling of receiving the same email multiple times each week.

Premium placements were also given greater prominence through improved visual hierarchy and styling, which helped reinforce their value.

Internal product promotions were redesigned into a consistent component, making them feel like a natural extension of the newsletter rather than a third-party advertisement. At the same time, these inserts/component remained simple for the Email team to update without requiring design support.

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To keep newsletters feeling fresh throughout the year, I also designed a series of seasonal headers for key events such as Back to School and major holidays. Rather than introducing themed designs too frequently, we deliberately reserved them for moments where they would feel meaningful and retain their impact.

The redesigned newsletters successfully balanced UX/UI, commercial requirements, and technical constraints while introducing a more engaging and modern identity.

Within the first few weeks following launch, the redesign delivered a 48% increase in average total clicks, leading to higher member engagement and more interactions per newsletter.