WEB / APP
CRM / TABLES / METRICS
PRODUCT DESIGN / RESEARCH
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1 SENIOR PRODUCT DESIGNER
OZON
2025

CRM Communication Flow for audience segmenttation & messages creation

Overview

This project focuses on designing an end-to-end CRM communication flow that helps sellers create targeted communications for different customer segments.

The system allows sellers to:

Understand their audience;
Choose the right communication goal;
Configure messages, banners, or bonus campaigns;
Safely launch communications with full control and validation.

The main challenge was to design a scalable, flexible flow that supports many scenarios while remaining clear and predictable for everyday sellers.

My role

I designed the full CRM communication flow:

Audience segmentation logic;
Step-by-step creation process;
Cusomers list;
Mailing page;
All UI states, validations, and edge cases.

My focus was on clarity, error prevention, scalability for future communication types and redusing cognitive load for sellers.

Entry Points into the Flow

Sellers can start creating a communication from multiple sections:

Customer Segments;
Customer List;
Communications (Mailings / Media Ads).

All entry points "Create a newsletter or banner" lead to a single routing page, where the seller selects the communication goal. This guarantees a consistent starting point and a unified mental model across the CRM.

Customers segments

Customer segmentation helps sellers move from generic communication to targeted, meaningful interaction with their audience. Instead of treating all buyers as a single group, the system groups customers based on their real behavior: how recently they purchased, how often they return, and how much they spend.

This approach allows sellers to understand not just how many customers they have, but which customers matter most for the business right now. Segmentation becomes a decision-making tool rather than a reporting table.

RFM segmentation

At the foundation of the system lies RFM logic (Recency, Frequency, Monetary). It helps distinguish customers who buy often and recently from those who purchase rarely or have stopped returning. These signals form clear behavioral segments such as returning customers, new customers, and potential buyers.

Key segment

In addition to showing overall metrics across all segments, the interface always highlights a key segment — the audience that currently brings the most value to a specific seller. This segment is calculated dynamically and can differ from one company to another. For some sellers, the key segment may be top repeat buyers; for others, it may be new customers with high growth potential.

Types of communication

We can see that different segments and sub-segments can be addressed with different types of communication. Depending on customer behavior and their stage in the funnel, the following communication formats can be launched:

Bonus campaigns to encourage repeat purchases and build loyalty among new or dormant customers;
Order-value discounts to motivate customers to increase their average order value;
Limited-time promo codes to convert interested but undecided customers;
Popular product promotions to highlight items that attract the most attention and demand;
Product banners for promoting specific products to highly relevant segments;
Store or brand banners to introduce the store, increase awareness, and build trust.

Understanding the Audience

All entry points "Create a newsletter or banner" lead to a single routing page, where the seller selects the communication goal.The flow is divided into three mandatory steps, always visible at the top.

Once the audience is defined, the seller moves to choosing what to offer. At this stage, the system shifts the focus from “who” to “what value” will be delivered. Sellers can select promotions, discounts, bonuses, or product-focused messages depending on the selected segment and available conditions. This step helps translate audience insights into a concrete business goal, while built-in constraints ensure that only valid and relevant options are shown.

As you can see, we always leave an option of creating promotional campaign from scratch, if a user doesn't want to follow the recommendations.

We also offer free promotion activities for potential customers so all users can try to communicate with their audience without buying a Premium Plus subscription.

Step 1: Selecting the Audience

Once the seller decides to create a communication, the first explicit step in the flow is audience selection. This step ensures that the seller always knows exactly who will receive the message. By separating audience choice from content creation, the system prevents one of the most common CRM mistakes: crafting a message before understanding the recipient. The selected segment remains visible throughout the entire flow, reinforcing context and reducing the risk of sending messages to the wrong audience.

Certain segments are shown or hidden based on conditions such as audience size, recent activity, or eligibility for specific formats. This prevents sellers from creating communications that would have little or no effect.

Step 2. Choosing What to Offer

After the seller defines the audience, the flow moves to the strategic core of the system — choosing what kind of value will be offered. This step exists to help sellers clearly answer a simple but critical question: why should this audience pay attention to the communication?

Instead of starting with content or visuals, the system first asks sellers to select an offer type. This separates intent from execution and prevents random or unfocused messaging. Each offer type represents a different business goal and is designed to work best for specific audience behaviors.

Existing promotion

In addition to creating a new promotion from scratch, the system allows sellers to use a ready-made promotion that was previously created in the Promotions section. This option is designed for situations where the seller already has active or scheduled offers and wants to reuse them in CRM communications without duplicating setup.

Discount from the order total

One of the most common options is a discount from the order total. This type of promotion encourages customers to increase their basket size by offering a discount once a minimum order value is reached. It works especially well for upselling and increasing average order value. The seller defines the discount percentage, the minimum order amount, and the promotion period. The system clearly explains that while the promotion itself applies to all buyers on the platform, the CRM communication will be sent only to the selected audience segment. This distinction helps sellers understand the difference between offer visibility and message targeting.

Promo code discount

Another option is a promo code discount. Unlike automatic discounts, promo codes require the customer to actively enter a code at checkout. This mechanic gives sellers more control over distribution and allows them to create a sense of exclusivity. Promo codes can be configured as single-use or multi-use, depending on whether the seller wants to limit redemptions per customer or allow repeated use. The system guides the seller through code creation, enforces character limits, and explains how different settings affect customer behavior and campaign reach.

Installment plans

A different pricing scenario is interest-free installment plans. This promotion type is designed for higher-priced products and focuses on reducing the psychological barrier to purchase rather than lowering the price itself. By allowing customers to split payments into equal parts without additional cost, installment plans make expensive items more accessible. In this flow, the seller does not configure the discount manually. Instead, the system explains the conditions of the installment program, such as the duration and eligibility rules, and clarifies how the financial mechanics work behind the scenes. This approach reduces complexity and ensures compliance with platform and legal requirements.

Bonus Campaigns

Bonus campaigns are designed for scenarios where the goal is not to push an immediate purchase, but to build long-term engagement and encourage repeat behavior. Instead of lowering the price, sellers reward customers with bonuses that can be used toward future orders. This makes bonuses especially effective for retention, reactivation, and loyalty-focused communications.

The seller configures how many bonuses each customer will receive, how many customers can participate, and how long the bonuses remain valid. As these values change, the system immediately recalculates the total cost of the campaign and displays it in a dedicated summary block. This transparency helps sellers understand the financial impact before committing to the campaign.

Product-Focused Communication

Product-focused communication serves a different purpose than discounts or bonuses. Instead of offering a financial incentive, this type is designed to increase visibility and awareness. It is used when sellers want to draw attention to specific products, collections, or their entire store without changing prices.

This option is especially useful for promoting new arrivals, bestsellers, seasonal assortments, or curated selections. By separating product promotion from price mechanics, the system supports scenarios where maintaining price integrity is important.

Step 3. Configuring the Communication Format

Once the value is defined, the flow transitions from strategy to execution. Step 3 is where the selected offer is turned into an actual communication that customers will see.

At this stage, sellers choose the delivery format. The system supports several formats, including direct messages, media banners, and bonus campaigns. Each format serves a different purpose and comes with its own rules, limitations, and level of effort. The available formats are dynamically determined by the choice made in Step 2, the selected audience, and the seller’s subscription level.

Banner-based communications

Banner-based formats emphasize visibility and reach. In these scenarios, the system often generates content automatically based on the selected offer and target link. Banners are created only after the seller selects a valid destination, ensuring that the communication always leads to a meaningful outcome. Sellers can review and adjust generated content within allowed boundaries, while the system ensures compliance with advertising requirements.

When a seller chooses to upload a custom banner, the flow shifts from generation to validation. Instead of creating content automatically, the system focuses on ensuring that the uploaded creative meets all platform requirements. Sellers are guided through clear rules for file format, size, and resolution, which are communicated directly at the moment of upload.

Message-based communications

For message-based communications, sellers configure the core elements of the message: headline, body text, optional images, and sending date. The system enforces content limits through contextual validation, such as character counters and inline errors, which appear only when necessary. This helps sellers focus on content without being distracted by rules upfront.

Throughout this step, the system continuously validates inputs and explains constraints. Disabled actions, tooltips, and inline hints ensure that sellers understand why certain configurations are unavailable. Importantly, validation does not interrupt exploration — sellers can freely experiment with settings and receive guidance only when approaching an invalid state. Step 3 concludes with a final review, where all decisions made across the flow are summarized. This moment reinforces confidence and gives sellers one last opportunity to verify their choices before submission.

Why Steps 2 and 3 Matter Together

Step 2 and Step 3 work as a pair. The first defines what value is offered and why, while the second defines how that value is delivered. By separating these decisions, the system reduces cognitive load, prevents premature design decisions, and ensures that execution always aligns with strategy. Together, these steps transform CRM communication from a trial-and-error process into a deliberate, predictable workflow that supports both simple and advanced use cases.

Final overview before submission

After the seller finishes configuration, the flow doesn’t immediately launch the communication. Instead, pressing “Send to moderation” opens a final overview popup — a deliberate checkpoint that helps sellers confirm the full setup before the action becomes irreversible.

Inside the popup, the seller sees a clean, structured recap of what has been configured: the selected audience segment, the chosen offer type, the communication format, key content elements, the destination link, timing, and budget or limit parameters (depending on the scenario). Instead of forcing sellers to go back through multiple screens to double-check details, the system makes the final state visible at once.

From a UX perspective, this checkpoint functions as a trust mechanism. It gives sellers a final moment to pause, verify, and feel in control — without adding a new step to the flow. The seller can either confirm submission or return to editing, but the system never makes them guess what exactly is being sent.

Buyers List

The Buyers List section is designed as the seller’s operational workspace — a place where they can move from aggregated segments to real people and real context. While the Segments page explains audience groups in a strategic way, Buyers List lets sellers see the customers behind those segments and understand who exactly they are communicating with.

The Buyers List also naturally supports preparation for campaigns. By filtering and exploring the audience in detail, sellers can build confidence that they are selecting the right segment before launching a newsletter or banner. This reduces the risk of sending irrelevant messages and makes CRM usage feel more intentional.

Newsletters

The Newsletters section acts as the control center for everything a seller has launched through CRM communications. It is designed to answer two practical questions: What is happening with my campaigns right now? and Did they work?

The section is built for scanning and filtering. Sellers can search campaigns by offer type (for example, promotion, bonuses, or product), filter by segment, status, and date, and quickly find relevant campaigns from the history. This matters because CRM communication is not a one-time action — it’s a repeated workflow, and sellers need a reliable archive of what they have already done.

Results

Shortly after launch, the CRM communication flow was rolled out to 8 000+ sellers. 44% of them entered the CRM section, showing strong early adoption and clear interest in audience-based communication.

334 sellers actively created campaigns, launching 722 mailings in total — more than two per seller on average. Despite higher complexity, 26 sellers also launched 92 media campaigns, several of which were approved and went live, confirming support for both simple and advanced scenarios.

On the buyer side, scale became visible quickly. Over 2 million buyers received CRM messages in the first measurement window. Nearly 18% opened the messages, and more than 35% of those who opened clicked through. Push notifications showed similarly consistent engagement.

As the feature matured, CRM communication became part of sellers’ regular workflow. Today, around 1 million buyers receive messages daily, 15% of sellers visit CRM sections monthly, and the average open rate remains stable at 13%.

Overall, the results show that the system scales effectively while preserving clarity and control, helping sellers confidently reach the right audience with the right message.

ANASTASIA VIKHAREVA