The Effect of Visual Information Chunking-Based Marketing on Customer Engagement With Kompas One

Abstract

Background: Kompas One, a premium content bundle by KG Media anchored on Kompas.id, faced a wide engagement gap in its email marketing: open rates well above the media-industry average were not followed by comparable click-through activity. 
Purpose: This study identifies the root causes of low interaction with text-heavy email design and empirically tests whether a Visual Information Chunking (VIC) layout improves customer engagement. 
Design/methodology/approach: A mixed-methods sequential exploratory design was applied. Fishbone Diagram and 5 Whys analysis, validated through interviews with three Growth and UI/UX informants, identified root causes. Thirty baseline text-heavy email campaigns (September–October 2025) and 30 treatment Visual Information Chunking email campaigns (November–December 2025), representing a four-month dataset across randomized, non-overlapping cohorts of prospective, at-risk, and churned subscribers, were compared using descriptive statistics, Shapiro-Wilk normality tests, and Mann-Whitney U tests on Open Rate, Click-Through Rate (CTR), and Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR). 
Findings/Results: Root causes centered on a mismatch between dense narrative layouts and audiences' need for scannable content, compounded by clipped-message risk. VIC significantly increased CTR (+71.43%, p = 0.007, effect size r = 0.347) and CTOR (+61.54%, p = 0.008, effect size r = 0.345), while Open Rate showed no statistically significant change (p = 0.802, r = 0.032). 
Conclusion: Reducing text density and strengthening visual hierarchy lowers cognitive load and drives post-open engagement. 
Originality/value (State of the art): The study extends Cognitive Load Theory and the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework to bundled-product email marketing within the Southeast Asian digital news sector.

Keywords: cognitive load, customer engagement, email marketing, product bundling, visual hierarchy