Developing a Holistic Communications Strategy
Aligning customer touchpoints to drive engagement, adoption, and retention at Storyblocks.
Overview
Storyblocks’ lifecycle communications were previously fragmented and inconsistent, creating gaps across the customer journey. As the stock media market became increasingly competitive, the company recognized the need for stronger retention efforts to maintain a long-term advantage. In Q2 2023, Storyblocks launched a company-wide initiative to map and refine customer touchpoints across the entire customer experience. The goal was to establish a consistent, user-centered communication framework that aligns teams across the organization and supports stronger customer engagement, satisfaction, and long-term loyalty. The early results from the implemented Adoption and Retention phase email campaigns demonstrated strong improvements in user activity and search success, and positive early retention signals—validating the impact of a more cohesive, lifecycle-driven communication strategy.

Company
Storyblocks is a subscription-based stock media platform offering a large library of royalty-free video, audio, templates, and images, along with editing tools and plugins that streamline content creation for individual storytellers, video creators, and businesses.
My Role
As Lead Product Designer on the initiative, I partnered cross-functionally with Marketing, Product, and Customer Success to identify key gaps and opportunities and define a vision for an improved communication ecosystem. I led both the strategic definition and execution of the initiative, including:
  • Synthesizing research and stakeholder input into an end-to-end customer journey map
  • Defining a full-cycle communications strategy
  • Designing and implementing adoption and retention email campaigns using the Emailify Figma plugin
  • Conducting user research, wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing

Tools
Figma, Google Analytics, Zoom, Usertesting, Emailify.
Focus Audience
Over 85% of Storyblocks subscribers are small and medium-sized businesses, drawn to the affordability and flexibility of an unlimited subscription model.
  • Individual Experts
    Freelancers, content creators,
    and YouTubers producing work
    for clients or online audiences.
  • Emerging Creators
    Small business owners, nonprofits, hobbyists, students,
    theater designers, teachers.
Mapping out a Holistic User Journey
Before defining how we could improve our holistic communication strategy and strengthen user engagement, we first needed to understand the existing end-to-end customer experience — mapping how users engage with our products (Stock media, Maker video Editor, and the Adobe Premiere Pro Plugin), identifying friction points, what caused them, and where we could make the most impact. The process included:
  • Gathering and consolidating existing artifacts documenting parts of the customer ecosystem;
  • Conducting stakeholder interviews to fill knowledge gaps;
  • Analyzing analytics to identify popular entry points and the most common user journeys across the full lifecycle: Awareness → Exploration → Consideration → Purchase → Adoption → Retention → Churn → Reactivation;
  • Mapping existing communications (emails, pop-ups, on-site messages) at each stage to understand current touch points and gaps.
Key pain points:

  • High share of inactive users - over 50% of the subscriber base was inactive, with the average user downloading assets less than four months out of the year.
  • Lack of proper onboarding: New users lacked a clear introduction to the breadth of content and tools available.
  • Lack of Personalization: Communications were "one-size-fits-all" rather than tailored to creator needs.
  • Low Feature Awareness: Users were unaware of the Adobe Premiere Pro plugin and "Maker" video editor.
  • High Barrier to Entry: Users couldn't try the plugin before committing to a plan.

These insights directly informed our onboarding, personalization, and feature awareness strategies.
Holistic Customer Lifecycle Communications Map
Next, building on the journey map, we created a Customer Lifecycle Communications Map to visualize when and how users interacted with communications across channels. We documented existing touchpoints—such as emails and in-product messages—and overlaid them with lifecycle stages to identify gaps and opportunities, then defined desired future-state communications for each phase.
This map served as a living document to align cross-functional teams, guide initiative prioritization, and track progress across omnichannel communication improvements.
Establishing the infrastructure foundations
In parallel, we built a centralized Member Preference Center and an Unsubscribe Page. This made it easier for members to manage their preferences—including opting in and out of Storyblocks emails — and established a scalable foundation for personalized email campaigns and product-triggered alerts.
Adoption Phase Communications
Next, using existing communications as a baseline, we designed a structured onboarding experience to guide new customers from sign-up to activation. Through coordinated lifecycle emails and onsite messaging, we helped users explore the full breadth of the product in their first month, access high-value content, and realize value faster—driving early engagement and adoption while setting the stage for long-term retention.

Onboarding emails

Retention Phase Communications
During the retention phase, we focused on boosting ongoing engagement through personalized content and recommendation functionality. For example, users who engaged with the After Effects plugin received tailored After Effects recommendations, while those interacting with the Premiere Pro plugin were served relevant Premiere Pro content. We also introduced discovery features such as “Search Similar” and “More Versions” for audio assets, enabling users to find related content more seamlessly.

Retention emails

Impact & Key Takeaways
The launch of the adoption and retention communications delivered strong early results, including:

  • Over 35% Increase in Engagement: Data indicated a significant rise in user interaction across the product ecosystem and core creative tools.
  • Improved Search Success: Personalized communication messaging led to more efficient asset discovery and higher search-to-download conversion.
  • Positive Retention Trends: While long-term data continued to normalize across annual subscription cycles, early indicators showed a strong upward trend in user stickiness.

Beyond immediate metrics, this initiative served as a critical proof of concept, providing the business justification needed to secure further investment in lifecycle communications and personalization across all customer touchpoints.

This work also created a stronger, shared understanding of the end-to-end customer experience and product ecosystem, and established a scalable framework that later enabled additional lifecycle enhancements—such as upgrade, churn, and reactivation—to be addressed by other teams, ensuring sustained impact beyond the initial release.