New Drag and Drop Email Letter Builder
Opportunity
In 2024, we embarked on a mission to transform Carta’s internal email newsletter tool into a more powerful, collaborative, and user-friendly experience. The initiative coincided with a complete recode of the editor in ProseMirror, opening the door to rethinking every aspect of the Letter Builder. Rather than doing one-to-one redesigns of the existing 11 content elements, I approached each from scratch—questioning assumptions, simplifying workflows, and adding meaningful enhancements.
Goals
Eliminate legacy pain points in the existing editor
Improve usability and reduce errors
Add flexibility and empower users to create without developer support
Enhance content creation speed, consistency, and control
Approach
Designing a new, easier to use, drag and drop letter builder had been on the docket for literal years. It was no secret that both our Marketing and Newsroom teams were unhappy with the previous design and functionality. This project started out with years of feedback and survey results. To really make this a letter builder our users would love to use, I went through every one of our content elements and both shadowed and surveyed our users for each. I documented current features of each element, pain points for each, as well as possible new features that could improve each element. Where could I simplify workflows, where could I make it easier to bring in content. This was an opportunity to reinvent and improve our builder elements.
Every single content element received a UI refresh as well as removing irrelevant fields, and new functionality. Two new elements were added as well. I made sure to user test with both Marketing and Newsroom users along the way. I held workshops with our best email developers to come up with plans for a new custom content element, slated for design late 2025.
As I designed I also made sure to think about how other areas of our letter builder would look and function. While the composer was the only area of this project in scope, I also proposed designs for updated Settings and Template Options features, reworked the IA of the actions in the top of our editor, as well as how our emails would be previewed.
In addition, I collaborated closely with our Washington Post Ellipsis (article composer) designer to ensure a smooth visual transition between Newsroom tools and hosted weekly meetings with the developers to ensure we were on the same page and suss out possible development issues before they could impede our progress.
New Features
Target Audience Element
In order for Carta users to target specific audiences - from subscribers to international readers - newsletter editors and marketing team members had to drop in complicated blocks of code. Much of the time requiring developer help from our engineering team. This code was difficult to read, impossible for non-technical users to edit, and easy to break. I had been championing this feature for years and finally received a green light to create it.
Version one would target content to subscriber status or geolocation with an imagined V2 being allowing for more specific targeting.
Our previous Import Feed element only allowed users to import a feed. The current feed builder in Carta, while robust and powerful, is difficult to use and requires developer help. Thus the new Import Content element was born.
This new element still allows for feed uploading, but also gives our newsroom users the flexibility to import article collections that are built in our other newsroom tools as well as standalone articles. Both features will add a level of independence and flexibility not previously afforded.
Result
We've been ramping up adoption as features have been rolling out. During early testing, newsroom users rated the new letter builder a 4/5, with the largest complaints being small code bugs, and missing content elements in queue for development. Users appreciate the streamlined interface, added flexibility, and less reliance on developer involvement. Ultimately, the new experience will empower teams to focus more on content and collaboration, and less on troubleshooting or technical barriers.
