In 2008 Mailchimp was just another email service provider. That was until they decided to hire user experience designer Aarron Walter and logo designer Jon Hicks to overhaul the website.
Mailchimp’s Mascot Freddie von Chimpenheimer got a very fun redesign and started popping up in different areas of the site, giving funny quotes in the dashboard, making 404 pages more humorous, sharing jokes. Bringing this friendly, welcoming experience to the forefront was the catalyst for Mailchimp’s substantial growth spurt.
After focusing on the customer’s emotional experience, they grew from 10,000 customers to 60,000 customers in 2009, then from 60,000 to 350,000 in 2010, and eventually to the point where they were adding tens of thousands of new customers a day. Today Mailchimp has 3.5 million users that collectively send out over 4 billion emails a month.
Aarron wrote the book on designing for emotion called, er, “Designing for Emotion”.