From generic newsletters to 1.9 billion targeted sends for Microsoft
COMPANY: Microsoft INDUSTRY: Search Engine Marketing ROLE: Senior Graphic Designer REACH: 250M+ Daily Active Users
Overview
From 2014 to 2021, I was a Senior Graphic Designer on Microsoft's International Marketing team, supporting MSN and Bing. My title was design-focused, but after several years embedded in the organization I had developed a real understanding of how Bing was monetized, how email performance was tracked, and how regional teams operated across very different markets. Surprisingly, our team usually ran with zero budget for paid ads, so everything we did to drive traffic and ad sales was built with internal tools and owned media. We got really good at being scrappy.
That being said, Bing's advertising business ran on engagement. The more users clicked into Bing experiences, the more inventory the sales team could sell. Email was already reaching a massive audience. It just wasn't working hard enough.
Goal
Open rates were low and content was generic. Newsletters went out to broad audiences with little regard for who was receiving them or what they cared about. We need to bolster that top-of-funnel audience approach to get them to curated pages on Bing.com where our sales team could then sell ads to companies to. For example, if we drove a travel campaign where we knew 100M users across Europe would have a CTA to a specific Bing experience, brands that sold suitcases,
Microsoft Accounts already held anonymized demographic and behavioral data on millions of users. The goal was to use that data thoughtfully, to make email feel relevant and useful rather than noise, and in doing so drive stronger engagement into Bing and give advertisers better signals.
My Role
During a global marketing summit at Microsoft's Paddington office in London, I was working with regional market leads to plan upcoming campaigns. While discussing a Mother's Day send with the UK & Ireland lead, something clicked. We had the data infrastructure to do something far more sophisticated than a single generic email, and nobody was using it that way yet.
I proposed shifting to persona-based targeting. Using age, gender, geography, and behavioral data already available through Microsoft Accounts, I mapped six audience segments and worked through the motivations of each. The question we kept coming back to wasn't what we wanted to say. It was what would make someone open this email.
From there I developed creative concepts, messaging, and email structures for each persona. Every email was built as a modular experience with multiple engagement paths: shopping recommendations, travel inspiration, sports content, and a free option for families who wanted something personal without spending money. That last idea came from a simple observation. Not everyone has a budget for gifts, but anyone can print a coloring page. I used Bing Image Search filters to surface black-and-white Mother's Day illustrations so kids could color and give something handmade. It added real value for users and still drove engagement and behavioral signals back into the system.
Every click told us something. A user who engaged with sports content got tagged for future sports sends. Someone who went straight to the free activities got different follow-up than someone who clicked through to premium gift ideas. The feedback loop meant each campaign made the next one sharper.
When we presented the framework to the broader global team, every regional lead adopted it, localizing the timing and messaging to fit their own cultural calendars. What started as a single Mother's Day campaign became the foundation for a year-long targeting system built around holidays, sporting events, shopping moments, and seasonal beats across markets.
Outcome
Persona-driven sends consistently outperformed the generic newsletters they replaced. Open rates climbed from roughly 2% on broad sends to 10–15% on well-targeted campaigns as the system became more refined. Not every send landed perfectly, but each one produced learnings that fed directly into the next.
Within a year, the approach had expanded into a global annual marketing calendar. Over that period the team sent approximately 1.9 billion targeted emails worldwide.
To put the stakes in context: Bing's advertising business was generating between $5 and $7 billion annually during this period, growing year over year, with search engagement directly tied to ad revenue. Email was one of the primary channels driving users into those experiences. Better targeting meant better engagement, and better engagement meant more inventory the sales team could sell.
More than the numbers, the work was proof that design thinking applied to systems rather than just surfaces can change how people experience a product and how a business performs.
Targeted Mother's Day hero modules
MALE 13-24
FEMALE 13-24
MALE 25-50
FEMALE 25-50
MALE 50+
FEMALE 50+
Localized hero modules
EN-GB
FR-FR
DE-DE
IT-IT
