A complete overhaul of our Academic Planner transformed this book into a more versatile planner for customers and increased sales by 31%
Background
Erin Condren’s suite of planners includes an Academic Planner for students. Popular with high school, college and post-grad students, the Academic Planner is a small, but mighty part of the overall assortment, but was in desperate need of a refresh.
After four plus years of the same layout and book structure, I lead a content overhaul strategy of the entire planner to create a more seamless, optimized and flexible Academic Planner that truly stands out in the market. That strategy also included add-on features that increased the value of this planner for the customer and the revenue for the company.


Opportunities
- Overhaul existing weekly planning layout to be more functional and supportive for our customers
- Optimize entire planner book experience based on customer feedback to make planning and staying on top of coursework even easier
- Simplify the amount of choices for the customer by exiting lower performing book layouts, sizes and formats
- Update product add-ons to serve a wider student audience, add more purpose and increase product sale price
Customer Needs I Addressed
- A new planning layout that could better keep track of a full course load for middle, high school or college
- More space in the planner to track projects and exams and a better way to do it from what we were currently offering
- Better notes section than what we were offering (dispersed throughout each month rather than a larger, dedicated section that could be used whenever
- Above improvements without a price increase


The overhaul strategy included:
Overall Sales Increase*
Overall Unit Increase*
Core Customer Increase*
Sales Increase for Planner Add-ons*
* Results from initial product launch selling window, full year selling in progress
My Contributions
Identifying customer need and conducting market research to confirm strategic action.
Collaborated with the Senior Director of Planning & Merchandising on Academic Planner assortment, product optimization and improvements.
Pitched assortment proposals to Leadership, which included: offerings to streamline, meaningful customer-driven improvements that maintain costs and margins, new features to add to support customer and drive sales
Led wireframing and execution on content and product updates for Academic Planner layout and product add-ons
Created, maintained and presented internal product guides to communicate updates and improvements for cross-functional use
Served as point-person for internal content-related questions and review other team’s assets to ensure product accuracy