Designing the Customer Experience with Justine Jordan


September 28, 2015

justine jordan

“So many marketers have never walked a mile in their user’s shoes.” While we joked about playing “buzzword BINGO,” Litmus’ Justine Jordan and I spent a lot of time talking about mapping the customer journey and designing intentional experiences. Before she joins us in Iowa next month at the Social Brand Forum, I wanted to take a few moments and chat with Justine about email, lists, landing pages, and everything in between.

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About Justine Jordan

Justine Jordan is an email critic and popular industry speaker. After mastering table-based HTML in college, she fell in love with the unruly art of email design, helping some of the world’s biggest brands build and manage their email campaigns. A designer masquerading as a marketer, Justine currently directs all things marketing at Litmus, educating and inspiring fellow marketers to create better email. The recipient of the 2015 eec Email Marketing Thought Leader of the Year award, you can find her organizing The Email Design Conference, editing Litmus’ latest blog post, and on Twitter.

Episode Highlights

Design thinking is among the most important brand-building skills. As marketers today, we have to design experiences. “I remember the HBR article on IDEO and thinking this is what I want to do with my life.” Justine’s advice for designing customer experience comes down to a simple practice: walking a mile in your customer’s shoes. That’s why she goes back and signs up for Litmus’ emails and programs once a quarter. To re-enter and evaluate the customer experience.

Why now is the time for email? “Email is the red-headed stepchild of digital.” While it’s easy to get distracted by all of the shiny new things of social media, Justine made the case for why email matters now more than ever. “You get $45 back for every dollar spent. It’s a work horse.”

“Judge Justine’s” email pet-peeve? A self-described email critic, Justine does Live Optimizations at Litmus’ Email Design Conference where she earned the nickname “Judge Justine.” What does she pass judgement on most often? Slapping the social media icons in email with no context. Why should they bother to connect with you?

How can you grow your list? For starters, buying lists never works. “You can’t buy permission. The inbox is very personal.” Instead, Justine encourages businesses to experiment with Twitter cards and lookalike audiences. Another secret? “Put your (sign-up) form everywhere!” Speaking of form pages, check out litmus.com/subscribe. “We show our email archive. It helps us build trust. It’s intentional marketing.”

What brand has made Justine smile recently? “StichFix. The whole experience feels so well thought out. They really care. It’s a beautiful box with cards.” A fitting brand smile for an episode on design and experience.

To learn more about Justine you can follow her on Twitter or check out her site at justinej.com.

As We Wrap …

Before we go, I want to flip the microphone around to our listeners … Recently Jeff Echols gave us a shout on Twitter about our recent episode focused on brand constraints inspiring creativity featuring Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute. Thanks for listening!

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Until next week, I’ll see you on the Internet!


Email Brand Driven Digital

is a strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Brand Now: How to Stand Out in a Crowded, Distracted World and Get Scrappy: Smarter Digital Marketing for Businesses Big and Small. He is the Chief Brand Strategist at Brand Driven Digital, an educator at the University of Iowa, and host of the On Brand podcast. More about Nick.