UNICEF Parenting Hub brings together leading experts to help parents give children the best start in life. Within the Hub, Pregnancy Milestones offers trimester-by-trimester guidance on how babies develop, what parents can expect and how to prepare for birth. The content is available in English, Arabic, French and Spanish and is widely referenced by governments, health authorities, universities and the media.
From one-time visits to ongoing engagement
The Pregnancy Milestones pages were already performing well. They ranked highly on Google and attracted a steady stream of organic traffic. User surveys showed that around 90% of visitors found the content useful, while engagement metrics such as time on page and bounce rate were consistently strong.
The data also revealed an important gap. Most parents entered the journey during the first trimester, but far fewer continued to the second and third trimester content. As a result, many missed timely advice later in pregnancy, and UNICEF had fewer opportunities to introduce parents to the wider Parenting Hub.
The challenge was to create a maternal health email campaign that would encourage parents to stay engaged throughout their pregnancy.
Learning from the best parenting platforms
We began by reviewing pregnancy and parenting platforms from around the world. We examined how they encouraged sign-ups, structured their email journeys and maintained engagement over time.
The research informed recommendations for UNICEF’s own approach. Rather than creating a generic newsletter, we designed a journey that reflected the Parenting Hub’s trusted editorial voice while delivering practical guidance at the right moment.
Designing a pregnancy journey parents would follow
Building on those insights, we developed the concept for the complete email journey. This included sample copy, an illustration approach and a user journey that mapped each step, from discovering Pregnancy Milestones to receiving scheduled emails throughout the second and third trimesters.
Each message was designed to be concise, practical and reassuring. Parents could quickly find relevant advice while easily exploring related resources across the Parenting Hub.
Once the concept was approved, we produced the complete set of email assets and refined them through two rounds of feedback. We also created reusable materials that UNICEF and its partners could adapt across other communication channels.
Delivering an end-to-end maternal health email campaign
Our work extended beyond content. We designed the subscription process, built the automated journey and tested the complete experience to ensure every email was delivered at the appropriate stage of pregnancy.
The result was an end-to-end maternal health email campaign that transformed a series of high-performing webpages into an ongoing relationship with parents. By combining content strategy, user experience and behavioural thinking, the project helped UNICEF provide trusted guidance throughout pregnancy instead of at a single point in time.
