Effic is a data-driven CRM Marketing automation solution. I led the pivot of Effic that helps small/lean startup teams manage customer relationships without extra engineering support. Small business owners, operators, and marketers, Teams who need to manage customers and automate follow-ups without developers or outside support.
Product Designer
2023.10 - 2024.02
Product Owner, Front-end Developer, Back-end Developer
Landed enterprise contracts 60+ signed / 150+ new accounts within a month via Google Sheets integration / Cut send time from 5 min → 10 sec (96% faster) through data-processing refactor
EFFIC started as our own problem. At Team Sparta (an online coding education company), the marketing team had the CRM know how and the data, but couldn't send a campaign without engineering. We built the tool to fix that: a data driven SMS and CRM automation SaaS that lets marketers send, automate, and track, without developer.
[ Timeline ]
What began as a weak A/B testing tool lacked real value. Instead of scaling it, I stopped development, returned to users, and reframed the product around their actual decision-making needs. Within five months, the rebuilt version became the foundation of CRM campaigns for 50+ businesses.
[ 1st Launch ]
Our first idea was to build a simple A/B tester so teams could optimize message timing. It worked technically, but it didn’t solve the real problem. Teams didn’t need better delivery optimization, they needed autonomy from engineers.
Our First version of CRM tool was launched, but adoption stayed flat. And they told us this is a "Nice-to-have" feature, but not enough to be a standalone product.
[ Epiphany ]
We learned even our users are from totally different fields, Marketers, PMs, and developers each handled a piece of CRM, but no one could run the full process end to end. Every step required engineering, creating delays and breaking momentum.
Problem 1
Problem 2
[ Solution ]
I rebuilt effic around 1 principle, "Marketers should be able to launch campaigns whenever they want". To bring that in to a real life, Design goal was straightforward: Make CRM automation as eash as scheduling an email.
[ Solution ]
Step 1 : Define your audience
Segmentation was rebuilt to be visual and intuitive. Instead of SQL heavy dropdowns, marketers can pick audiences directly, new users, repeat buyers, inactive users.
Step 2 : Set conditions
I translated logical operators into plain language (“When this happens, do that”). This made automation accessible to beginners while preserving depth for advanced users.
Step 3 : Compose the message
Marketers previously jumped across tools to write and test messages. I combined message creation and preview into one flow to reduce cognitive switching.
Step 4 : Schedule & launch
Teams choose timing, frequency, and goals from a unified view. They see real time progress immediately, no dev handoffs or context loss.
[ Outcome ]
After the successful pivot, we signed 50+ customers in the first month, validating PMF. A year later, effic was acquired by a messaging provider.
What started as an internal pain point turned into something bigger: a product we could extend to other teams facing the same bottleneck. It confirmed the design goal I'd set out to reach: putting control back in marketers' hands and removing the dependencies that slowed them down.
