Vocus Marketing Cloud: Unifying a Fragmented Suite into a Cohesive, Data-Driven Platform

Vision, leadership, and innovation across a multi-product SaaS ecosystem

Starting Point

After multiple acquisitions, the Vocus Marketing Cloud had become a set of siloed PR, Social Media, Analytics, and Email Marketing modules with inconsistent interfaces and fragmented workflows. Teams lacked a unified KPI dashboard to track sentiment, engagement, and campaign performance—resulting in high training costs, frequent support tickets, and manual reconciliation.

• Fragmented ecosystem with inconsistent patterns across legacy and new modules.
• No unified KPI dashboard to provide at-a-glance performance metrics.
• High training and support costs due to disjointed workflows.
• Lack of a cohesive design system and shared UX vision across teams.

Vision & Objectives

Establish a scalable UX practice to integrate PR, Social, and Email into a single coherent suite—anchored by a unified KPI dashboard—to streamline workflows, drive cross-sell, and deliver measurable operational efficiencies.

• Unify PR, Social, and Email with a single KPI dashboard to reduce support and training costs.
• Create seamless workflows with consistent authoring, scheduling, and publishing patterns.
• Deliver two MVP-level releases in 12 months using Lean UX sprints.
• Build a centralized design system to support continuous research and data-driven decisions.

Leadership Moves

• Build UX from the ground up: Started as a solo UX lead, scaled to four designers, and embedded UX into product development processes.
• Align cross-functional teams: Facilitated workshops to bring acquired teams under a shared design language and roadmap.
• Balance speed and quality: Applied Lean UX sprints to meet aggressive delivery goals while maintaining usability and research rigor.
• Institute design-ops: Created component libraries, specifications, and review processes to ensure consistency and scalability.

Innovation in Action

• Discovery & Prioritization: Conducted 15+ interviews and 8 workshops to produce personas, user journeys, and a prioritized 30-story backlog.
• Lean UX Sprints: Two-week discovery–design–validate cycles to manage scope and iterate rapidly.
• Iterative Ideation: Progressed from low-fidelity sketches and whiteboarding to high-fidelity Illustrator and Photoshop blueprints.
• Design-Ops Integration: Established centralized design file management, naming conventions, and specification templates for developer handoff.
• Scaling the Practice: Integrated an acquired design team into shared processes, growing UX capacity from 1 to 4 designers.

Key Solutions

• Single KPI Dashboard: Customizable “pane of glass” view with sentiment, engagement, and campaign performance widgets.
• Unified Navigation: Global header with Plan / Publish / Analyze mega-menus, breadcrumbs, and in-app search.
• Streamlined Authoring: Single Create modal for press releases, social posts, and emails with guided, component-driven forms.
• Real-Time Insights: Header alerts for mentions/spikes with one-click drilldowns to analytics.
• Design-Ops Handoff: Illustrator/Photoshop specifications and component sheets reviewed weekly to keep delivery aligned.

Impact & Results

• Rapid Delivery: Two MVP releases in 12 months, meeting aggressive roadmap targets.
• Operational Efficiency: Support load reduced; training shifted from multi-day sessions to self-serve in-app guidance.
• User Satisfaction: Positive feedback citing smoother workflows, fewer context switches, and clearer handoffs.
• Organizational Growth: UX recognized as a strategic function; Lean UX embedded across product lines.

Lessons Learned

• Align stakeholders early to prevent late-stage pivots.
• Use lightweight governance to enforce consistency without slowing delivery.
• Embed continuous research and analytics in every sprint to maintain alignment.
• Keep sprint cycles tight to protect both scope and quality.
• Foster a collaborative culture through peer reviews, critiques, and rituals.
• Leverage modular design systems to accelerate delivery and onboarding.

Forward Look

• Define and track KPIs for adoption, support tickets, and task completion rates.
• Maintain a 2-week discovery–design–validate cadence with ongoing tests and analytics.
• Host quarterly stakeholder workshops to review performance and reprioritize needs.
• Invest in scaling UX through onboarding, design-ops automation, and training initiatives.