How the Yale School of Management Effectively Organizes Communication with an Email Design System
Reusability and setting variables etc., and using components (including data components) is fantastic. - Rémi Moët-Buonaparte, The Yale School of Management
The Yale School of Management (SOM) is globally recognized for its innovative approach to management education. If you haven’t heard of Yale, they are most well known for being the school that Rory Gilmore attended in Gilmore Girls. Jokes aside, they are also recognized as one of seven prestigious Ivy League schools in the US that many aspire to attend every year for university.
As the Associate Director for Digital Communications, Rémi Moët-Buonaparte is the primary product manager for email across the school, in addition to focusing on UX/UI improvements and championing accessibility for the school’s various websites. With this role, Rémi needed to manage email creation via MJML, which, he previously accomplished using several different tools — Mailjet, Confluence, Litmus. However, this approach was not without its challenges. Looking for an inclusive tool that could manage multiple capabilities was a difficult feat (without the three tools they already leaned on)— Rémi needed live email code previews, a simple hub for housing code and the corresponding emails, and a way to gather feedback from other coworkers effectively.
Rémi discovered Parcel from Parcel Unpacked’s session on design systems, led by Megan Boshuyzen, and saw the potential for their own design system. Originally drawn by the seamless capbilities of creating an email design system, Rémi soon came to realize that Parcel could cover other needs that they sought out. Parcel offers live code previews, so that Rémi could make updates and see them reflected in real-time. As well as a single source of truth for collecting all stakeholder feedback.
Once using Parcel, Rémi began to see positive changes in their own workflow, email creation, and overall efforts. Parcel's flexibility and ability to create components, set variables, and reuse code was a game changer for the email program.
With Parcel, Rémi created a design system as part of an email redesign for several degree programs at the school. They were able to create a system that allowed them to easily manage and reuse code across multiple email campaigns, resulting in more efficient and effective communication with their audience. All while maintaining core tenants of accessibility to ensure that all subscribers are able to consume the content sent by the school.
Overall, Parcel helped the Yale School of Management overcome its email creation challenges and improve its digital communications strategy. With Parcel's flexibility, reusability, and ease of use, the Yale School of Management is now delivering better communication in a more streamlined way to those like Rory Gilmore (and every other hypothetical famous actor/actress who sets foot on these renowned grounds), in addition to the everyday students that attend the school programs IRL of course.