Case Study
How A Better Design Increased Central Oregon’s Email Audience Engagement and Click-Through Rate
CLIENT NAME: Visit Central Oregon
SCOPE: EMAIL MARKETING
CAMPAIGN: Email Marketing to Drive Website Visitation
AWARDS/RECOGNITION: 2026 eTourism Awards Finalist on Best Email Marketing Campaign for Visit Central Oregon
The Situation
The KHM team inherited a well-established audience, consistent monthly email cadence and healthy audience segmentation. Our goal was to increase the subscriber’s click-through-rate to the website without increasing the volume of emails sent or creating audience fatigue with content irrelevant to their interests. The question became how do we increase email audience traffic to the website while maintaining audience trust and interest?
The Approach
With a well-established audience and cadence already in place, KHM began redesigning the existing template designs. These updates improved readability and efficiency, with a strong focus on calls-to-action. Using strategic design the KHM team was able to strengthen the user journey from inspiration to action. Visit Central Oregon’s smart segmentation approach was paired with these new designs to ensure that subscribers were receiving content relevant to their interests to improve engagement and eliminate inbox fatigue.
Summary
Taking Email Marketing From Good To Great
With a well established audience and send cadence, the KHM focused on how design could help move VCO closer to their engagement and web traffic goals. We leaned into a strategic, data-informed template redesign rather than relying on increased send frequencies, and reformatted VCO’s email structure to make the path from email open to website click as smoothly flowing as a Central Oregon stream.
Design Done Right
The new mobile-first template paired bold destination imagery with a stronger visual hierarchy, flexible content blocks, and clear calls-to-action; making it easier for readers to move from dreaming about sunrise at Smith Rock or a powder day at Mt. Bachelor to planning their next trip. By pairing this intuitive, scannable layout with smart audience segmentation, we successfully delivered relevant content that guided readers toward tangible next steps without overwhelming inboxes or causing subscriber fatigue.
Results
SITE VISITS PER 1K EMAILS (26% INCREASE)
BOOST IN AUDIENCE ACTIVITY
INCREASE IN CLICK-RATES
INCREASE IN ENGAGEMENT
