UXfolio’s 39-email welcome campaign: evolution, structure, and impact

UXfolio’s welcome email campaign has a somewhat fabled history. It began in 2018 as a short, carefully crafted experiment and has since evolved through at least six major iterations without ever losing its original intent.

What started as a 12-day sequence eventually became a 39-day weekday campaign, shaped continuously by research, user feedback, and product evolution. Across these iterations, open rates climbed well above industry standards, and replies from users confirmed that the emails are read, saved, and applied.

This article documents how the welcome email campaign evolved, why it expanded, and what principles guided the process. It also captures the research findings, user feedback, and thematic foundations that shaped the campaign into a long-running onboarding system rather than a short-lived marketing to-do.

What is an email campaign?

An email campaign is a structured series of emails sent to a specific audience with a clear purpose and internal logic. Unlike one-off messages, a campaign is designed as a sequence, where each email builds on the previous one and prepares the ground for the next.

In UXfolio’s case, the welcome email campaign exists to guide new users through UX portfolio best practices while gradually supporting them as they explore the product. The value of the campaign lies not in individual emails, but in how the sequence works as a whole.

What is email automation?

Email automation is the mechanism that delivers emails based on predefined rules rather than manual sending. Emails are triggered by actions or timing such as signing up or reaching a specific day in a sequence.

For UXfolio, automation ensures that every new user receives the same guidance in the same order, at a consistent pace. This makes the campaign scalable while preserving continuity.

The hero’s arc: the campaign’s first version

The original welcome email campaign, written by Anett Jecan, was built around a single, deliberate idea: every email should contain one concrete, actionable tip that moves the reader one step closer to a finished UX portfolio. At the time, UXfolio’s value proposition centered on case studies, a direction influenced by early discovery research.

That research revealed a problem that remains true today: UX designers are not used to explaining their process end-to-end. Recruiters and design leads are rarely persuaded by polished screens or long lists of UX methods without context. They are looking for reasoning, iteration, and synthesis. They want to see how insights from research and testing shaped decisions over time.

This is where most portfolios fail. Designers work and present their work in stages, but portfolios require them to retrospectively tell a complete story. The campaign addressed this gap by sending one focused tip per day, each one nudging the reader further along the storytelling arc.

The emails were intentionally framed as a quest. The UX designer was cast as the hero, overcoming obstacles and riddles to save the day. This framing made storytelling feel tangible and learnable rather than abstract or intimidating.

How user feedback shaped the campaign

From the very beginning, the welcome campaign resonated with UXfolio’s user base. High open rates confirmed this quantitatively, while qualitative feedback came in the form of direct replies to individual emails. Users frequently shared how the tips helped them polish their case studies.

When I became the marketer of UXfolio’s, extending the campaign was one of my first tasks. We had more to say about storytelling, and the existing structure provided a strong foundation. The goal was not to reinvent the campaign, but to build on it by adding more depth around specific story elements such as introductions, reflections, and continuity between the sections of a case study.

As UXfolio grew and its feature set expanded, new feedback started to surface. During user interviews, we learned that while users loved the campaign, something was missing: on top of UX portfolio best practices they also wanted tips about using UXfolio.

Adding product-related tips to a well-established and already popular campaign was risky. We did not want to disrupt the flow or dilute the original message. Several constraints shaped our decisions:

• Sending more than one email per day was off the table, as it would feel spammy.
• Extending existing emails was off the table, since users valued their short, digestible format.

The solution was to create additional emails and place them strategically after conceptually related tips. For example, after explaining how to present wireframes or final screens, we followed up with a guide to UXfolio’s built-in device mockups and galleries, including a short GIF showing the process in the product.

We also introduced purely inspirational emails featuring real portfolios and case studies built with UXfolio. User interviews showed that many designers like to look at examples while actively working on their portfolios.

By the end of this update, the campaign had grown into a 39-day weekday sequence. On paper, that length felt intimidating. Who would want to receive an email every weekday for nearly two months? As it turned out, our users did. Open rates continued to rise, and feedback remained overwhelmingly positive.

Research insights from 2024

In 2024, we conducted in-depth research into the early stages of UXfolio’s customer journey, from discovery through initial product exploration. Dorottya Pála, a researcher at UX studio, led twelve semi-structured interviews lasting 45–60 minutes. The stated goal was to identify opportunities to improve marketing communication and onboarding in order to increase activation.

The welcome email campaign was one of the main focal points of this research. The findings can be summarized as follows:

• The majority of participants read the welcome emails.
• Readers appreciated the emails primarily for their tips and guidance.
• Faster-moving users felt some tips arrived late, but still used the emails as a checklist to confirm they had covered everything.
• Participants consistently noted that the emails were not pushy or sales-driven.
• Compared to other products, UXfolio’s emails were perceived as genuinely helpful.

Several direct quotes illustrate these points clearly:

“What kept bringing me back were the emails ... I read them and I started understanding [UXfolio better]. So that kind of makes things easier for me and kind of made the process easier for me as well.”

“I love your emails ... I like reading them. I actually been saving them so I can go back to them again. So it's been really helpful. There's days when I'm like I don't want to work on my portfolio but then when I do get that email I'm like that's a really good idea maybe I should do that. So it makes me more motivated.”

“I get messages on my mail with some information that are really quite helpful. So it's not just building a portfolio website. I can get a ton of information from them.”

“I don't tend to sign up for too many mailing lists or anything. So, this is probably an outlier really.”

Jobs to be done based on the findings

We got some constructive feedback regarding access. Some users move through portfolio creation very quickly, which means a tip arriving on day 38 can come too late. Compiling the emails into a single document or page that is immediately accessible remains an open opportunity.

Strong results do not mean the work is finished. As UXfolio continues to expand, the welcome campaign needs to evolve alongside it. Each new feature or update raises the same question: where in the sequence does this belong to remain useful and timely?

The main themes of the welcome campaign

Several core themes run through the entire sequence. Each one is grounded in research and hands-on experience.

What recruiters are looking for

Since UXfolio’s early days, we’ve been conducting numerous interviews with recruiters and design leads to understand how portfolios are evaluated. In addition, UXfolio’s mother company is a design agency, which means we have reviewed thousands of portfolios while hiring product designers.

The campaign translates these insights into actionable advice that helps users optimize their portfolios for a recruiter’s perspective. This focus sets the emails apart from generic portfolio advice found in articles or social posts.

What UX design leaders are saying

Through the UXfolio blog, we have interviewed UX legends such as Jared Spool, Susan Weinschenk, Jake Knapp, Pablo Stanley, and others. These people have shaped the UX field as it exists today.

Their perspectives are distilled into practical guidance and woven throughout the email campaign, grounding everyday portfolio decisions in wisdom and experience.

UX portfolio patterns

Since the beginnings of UXfolio, we’ve reviewed thousands of portfolios looking for recurring patterns associated with success and failure in a competitive job market. These patterns, both positive and negative, shaped many of the campaign’s recommendations and reinforced the importance of structure, clarity, and coherence.

Key takeaways

A 39-email weekday campaign often sounds excessive at first. Experience has shown otherwise. When emails are genuinely helpful, focused, and respectful of the reader’s time, users continue to open, read, and value them.

Our welcome campaign remains an iterative system shaped by research, strategy, and ongoing feedback. When helping users comes before selling, engagement follows naturally. When the product aligns with what the emails teach, trust does the rest.