Designing SMS Marketing for Allē Provider
Designed an end-to-end SMS marketing feature within a complex compliance-driven ecosystem, connecting aesthetic practices with their most loyal patients via text.
The Problem
Providers on Allē wanted a faster, more direct channel than email to reach loyal patients. The catch: US marketing SMS requires explicit opt-in consent, which meant designing both a B2B campaign tool for providers and a B2C opt-in flow inside the consumer Allē app.
My Approach
- Provider interviews reframed the use case away from "SMS for every email campaign" and toward offer-based, time-sensitive messages.
- Mirrored the scheduling + automation patterns from the beloved email product to reduce learning cost.
- Co-designed contextual opt-in moments inside the consumer app with the B2C product team, so consent felt natural rather than intrusive.
- Pre-approved language templates kept practices compliant at scale.
Full case study — flows, opt-in UX, and launch metrics — is password-protected. Reach out for access.
The Opportunity
When joining the Allē Provider team at Allergan Aesthetics, providers consistently requested higher-engagement tools to connect with loyal patients. The existing email marketing platform was well-loved, but email alone wasn't enough; providers wanted a faster, more direct channel for time-sensitive promotions.
Adding text messaging turned out to be more nuanced than expected, involving legal compliance, patient opt-ins, and rethinking which campaign types would actually add value over text.
My Role
I led end-to-end design for the SMS marketing experience within Allē Provider. Beyond UX/UI, my contributions included shaping product specifications, influencing the overall roadmap, and collaborating with legal, product marketing, strategy, and field sales teams throughout the process.
Research and Discovery
Discovery phase involved interviews and working sessions with providers, internal field reps, product marketing, and legal and compliance partners. The initial idea was to enable every email campaign to be sent as a text. Provider interviews quickly surfaced a different reality.
Providers didn't want long, content-heavy campaigns via text; they wanted highly transactional, time-sensitive messages: flash offers, exclusive promotions, and appointment availability alerts. Rather than enabling SMS for every email campaign type, I pivoted to prioritizing offer-based campaigns as the core use case for initial launch.
Designing for Familiarity
The key design principle: reduce cognitive load on busy practice managers, small business owners who wear multiple hats,. The SMS workflow feels immediately familiar to anyone who used the email marketing product. The same core scheduling system, a simple template gallery focused on high-performing offer types, pre-approved language to keep practices compliant while feeling personalized, and the ability to run SMS campaigns as daily automations, mirroring a beloved email feature.
Navigating Legal and Compliance
The most complex part was the opt-in experience. US marketing text messages require explicit opt-in consent; being on a provider's email list or loyalty program isn't enough. Patients had to actively opt in for marketing texts.
The B2B2C challenge: designing a tool for providers while creating a compliant opt-in process for consumers. I collaborated with the consumer product team to design multiple opt-in points within the Allē consumer app, during onboarding and contextually when consumers interact with promotions. By integrating opt-in requests into moments of active engagement, the process felt natural and value-driven rather than intrusive.
What Shipped and What Didn't
The complete design was delivered end-to-end: the provider-side campaign tool, the consumer-side opt-in experience, compliance-approved templates, and the scheduling/automation patterns. The feature did not ultimately ship as a paid channel, as the organization determined the cost structure wouldn't support charging providers for SMS. The case study focuses on the design work and the cross-functional process, not launch metrics.
Reflections
SMS isn't just faster email; it's a different form of communication that requires channel-specific design decisions. Compliance-driven challenges, with the right collaboration and user-centered mindset, lead to better solutions. Cross-functional alignment with strategy, product marketing, legal, and field teams isn't optional; it's essential.