OVERVIEW
effic is a no-code CRM automation platform that lets marketers or business owners send customer messages instantly - without waiting for engineers.
How it works
How it works in real workplaces
When a marketer comes up with a campaign idea, they want to send it right away - but without a developer, they can’t.
And, effic makes campaign ideas instantly actionable with its 4-step builder. Whenever marketers come up with a new idea - or need to send a message right away - they can set the right conditions, launch immediately, and track results in real time.
Timeline
From first launch to failure, pivot, and wide adoption - all in just 5 months.
I owned design across the entire journey of effic - from the first MVP launch, through listening and rebuilding, to adoption by over 50 companies.
Start point
So, Why CRM? It was the hardest task, but the most critical in ed tech business.
Running an education business meant more than just acquiring students.
Acquisition was expensive. Retention was fragile. Students churned easily once a course ended. Growth came only from re-enrollment and referrals.
Team sparta is an ed tech company in South Korea.
That made CRM the core of survival. Every relationship mattered - but managing it across campaigns, messages, and data was one of the most painful tasks for lean teams
Noticing Problem
However, for lean&small teams, CRM was the cost of survival - too heavy, too expensive, but impossible to ignore.
In our mid-sized edtech startup, sending over 1M CRM messages a month showed how critical CRM was for survival. But managing it was overwhelming - and our research confirmed it wasn’t only us.
Across lean teams in education and early-stage startups, the same three pain points kept surfacing:
1.Impact took too long to measure
manual spreadsheets, insights arrived too late.
2.Experiments stalled
Even simple tests required heavy tools and engineering support.
3.Execution dragged
Campaigns were stuck in queues instead of reaching users fast.
THe 1st attempt
So we made a 1st bet, What if we made lightweight A/B testing tool for team like us?
First internal A/B testing tool we built in early 2023.
This was the first internal tool we built - to run A/B tests, track performance, and send messages at the best time. We thought optimizing delivery would unlock better CRM.
The 1st result
But…adoption was flat. The product was technically complete - yet it didn't solve the real problem.
After launch, we even hosted a webinar to gather feedback from CRM marketers and business stakeholders. That’s when it became clear - A/B testing was just one of many needs. It wasn’t enough to build a solid tool around.
Our team hosted Webinar in mid 2023 to promote effic's 1st launch
Pivot through failure
What were we missing?
What 20+ marketer interviews revealed :
"I just want to send this message now"
We spoke with teams across industries - sports, finance, education, and DTC.
Each had different goals. But the same blockers kept coming up.
They just wanted to send a message to the right customer and see results right away -but in reality, it meant juggling multiple tools and waiting in the developer’s queue.
Important finding
Broken CRM ownership slowed lean team's overall growth
We spoke with teams across industries - sports, finance, education, and DTC.
Each had different goals. But the same blockers kept coming up.
Ask Developer to pull
target audience
⚠️ Bottle neck
⏳ Wait in Dev queue
1-2 Phase
Among all the interviews, one story stuck with us: CRM work kept getting passed around - from marketing to ops to developers - with no clear owner, no clear system, and no end in sight.
A startup growth team where even a simple reminder became a full-on dev ticket.
And Here’s what their week looked like :
DEFine problems
In short, Even small CRM tweaks required developer help. For startups and small teams, the existed tools were too costly - and too hard to even get started.
From interview reminders to campaign tweaks, one blocker kept surfacing : CRM couldn’t move without a developer. This slowed down marketers, drained dev time, and stalled decisions.
After uncovering the real hidden pain points in the entire CRM workflow, we formed a new hypothesis to pivot the direction of the product.
Target reframing
We got it wrong at 0 to 1. But that's how we found who we were really building for !
At first, we misread our audience. We thought teams needed smarter testing and better dashboards.
But what they really needed was simple, reliable CRM - without developer help.
Target indicators we discovered
And based on this, we re-framed effic's target
Previous wrong target
We assumed users needed better analytics. But most were still stuck just trying to send a message - without a developer.
Re-framed target
We realized our real users were lean teams, juggling CRM tasks without tools, and hungry for speed and simplicity - not a only dashboards.
And once we redefined our audience, we re-built the product to match the way they actually work.
One line for new version of effic
That's when we reimagined effic:
No code, no waiting, no handoffs.
We set out to reimagine CRM automation from the ground up -
making it affordable, intuitive, and fast enough for lean teams to use without help.
What if setting up CRM automation was as simple as scheduling an alarm?
What if marketers could create and run automated campaigns on their own, without writing a single line of code or waiting on developers?
What if marketers never had to wait on engineers again?
UI building phase
With the solution in place, I started building the UI from scratch - refining each step to bring it to life with clarity and quality.
I started from scratch - sketching flows, mapping data, and defining what true self-serve CRM should feel like. Through iteration, we built the product layer by layer: from whiteboard to wireframe to launch.
But the biggest breakthrough came from user interviews.
PMs and marketers weren’t just writing CRM messages - they were designing logic.
Core point of Effic's ui structure
A UI that mirrors how CRM marketers think.
During interviews, we learned something important: While our team originally assumed that send-time should come first in campaign setup, marketers actually think in this order:
Who should get this?
Under what conditions?
What should we say?
And when?
So we flipped the flow. We made the left side about organizing thoughts step-by-step - and the right side about taking immediate action. This way, the UI mirrors how CRM marketers naturally plan messages -reducing friction and matching their mental rhythm.
UI walkthrough
Now, let’s see how Jessica - once overwhelmed by CRM tasks handles it effortlessly with effic.
Before Effic, CRM marketer Jessica spent hours combing through spreadsheets and waiting on developers - just to target users who signed up but hadn’t purchased within 7 days.
With Effic, she can set the target, filters, message, and schedule in minutes - no SQL, no delays.
UI walkthrough
Step 1 : Select Recipients
Who should get this message ?
AS-IS
Export data from Google Sheets, then sort and filter manually to identify users who signed up but didn’t purchase within 7 days.
TO-BE
In Effic, Jessica simply selects the “Signup within 7 days” audience preset and toggles the “No purchase” condition - all done in under a minute, no spreadsheet needed.
UI walkthrough
Step 2 : Add filters
Who should we avoid sending this to?
AS-IS
Ask a developer to write and confirm SQL to exclude irrelevant users (e.g., those who made a purchase or canceled)
TO-BE
Jessica adds filters like “Purchase count = 0” and “Signup date within last 7 days” using plain-language chips, seeing the resulting user count update live.
UI walkthrough
Step 3 : Write the message
What do we want to say?
AS-IS
Manually rewrite messages using Notion or email docs, risking outdated templates and formatting issues.
TO-BE
She uses a built-in message editor with smart variables like {{first_name}} and preview mode, so she can personalize the message and ensure it looks right for each user - instantly.
UI walkthrough
Step 4 : Set the timing
When should it go out?
AS-IS
Upload final user list to another tool like Sendgrid or Braze and schedule separately, often needing help from devs or PMs.
TO-BE
Jessica sets “Send exactly 7 days after signup” with a dropdown. Effic handles the logic behind-the-scenes and ensures each user receives the message at the right time, no extra tools or coordination needed.
UI walkthrough
After launch CRM :
Track performance in real time
AS-IS
Jessica had to ask the data team to pull reports days later - and wait even longer to get meaningful insights. By the time the data arrived, it was often too late to act.
TO-BE
Jessica opens the Conversion Dashboard and instantly sees how her campaign is performing -from send → sign-up → purchase - all visualized in a clean funnel. She can also download the raw Excel with one click or adjust key metrics without waiting for anyone.
Designing effic's ui system
Behind the Scenes: Establishing the Confidence Layer for Complex B2B Tools
Beyond that, as a sole proudct designer, I established Effic’s design language to make hard things feel simple. In the world of clunky B2B tools, our target users wanted something that felt clear, approachable, and genuinely usable, especially for people wearing multiple hats.
By simplifying the UI flow, visual hierarchy, and interaction patterns,
I helped break down what initially felt overwhelming into something users could trust and move through with ease.
The Effic logo combines two geometric shapes to form a subtle “E,” visually capturing the brand’s core promise: turning complex automation into clear, forward-moving action.
To shape Effic’s overall interface, I developed a cohesive design language through key UI components - gradually building a distinct visual system that made the product feel intuitive, approachable, and uniquely ours.
