Growth Frameworks
Jobs To Be Done

How to Use Jobs To Be Done to Improve Email Campaign Strategy

Qualitative Exploration

How to Use Jobs To Be Done to Improve Email Campaign Strategy

Introduction

In today’s crowded inbox, email marketing has a tough job: standing out, staying relevant, and delivering real value. Yet many email campaigns still focus too much on product features or generic updates, missing what matters most to the customer – their real-life goals and struggles. Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) offers a better way. By focusing on the reason a customer seeks out your product or service in the first place – the actual job they’re trying to get done – marketers can craft smarter, more personalized email strategies. Rather than guessing what will engage, you’re connecting with what your audience truly needs. When applied to email marketing, this customer-first mindset can lead to higher open rates, better conversions, and longer-lasting customer relationships.
This post is for marketers, content strategists, and business leaders who are looking to improve their email campaign strategy with a more customer-centric approach. If you’ve ever wondered why your email efforts aren’t landing or why your audience isn’t taking action, the Jobs To Be Done framework might be the missing link. We’ll walk through how to use Jobs To Be Done in email marketing by helping you shift your focus from product promotions to the real-world outcomes your customers care about. You’ll learn how to uncover these insights and align your messaging with key moments in the customer journey – especially points of frustration or hesitation. Whether you’re building a welcome sequence, nurturing leads, or re-engaging past customers, this guide will help you: - Understand the 'job' behind every customer action - Align email timing and content with customer behavior - Build a more thoughtful and effective email sequencing strategy By the end, you'll be equipped to create emails that feel more like helpful nudges than interruptions. And that small shift can lead to big improvements in engagement and long-term loyalty.
This post is for marketers, content strategists, and business leaders who are looking to improve their email campaign strategy with a more customer-centric approach. If you’ve ever wondered why your email efforts aren’t landing or why your audience isn’t taking action, the Jobs To Be Done framework might be the missing link. We’ll walk through how to use Jobs To Be Done in email marketing by helping you shift your focus from product promotions to the real-world outcomes your customers care about. You’ll learn how to uncover these insights and align your messaging with key moments in the customer journey – especially points of frustration or hesitation. Whether you’re building a welcome sequence, nurturing leads, or re-engaging past customers, this guide will help you: - Understand the 'job' behind every customer action - Align email timing and content with customer behavior - Build a more thoughtful and effective email sequencing strategy By the end, you'll be equipped to create emails that feel more like helpful nudges than interruptions. And that small shift can lead to big improvements in engagement and long-term loyalty.

Why Jobs To Be Done Improves Email Campaign Performance

For many marketing teams, improving email campaign performance often starts with A/B tests, refreshed subject lines, or enhanced visuals. While these tweaks can help, they don’t always address the deeper question: Why isn’t this email resonating with the person receiving it?

This is where the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework makes a powerful difference. JTBD is a marketing framework that shifts the focus from the company’s goals to the customer’s goals. Instead of asking, “How can we get our product in front of more people?”, it asks, “What job is the customer hiring our product to do?”

Shifting from Product-First to People-First

Traditionally, email campaigns are structured around the business: new product features, monthly newsletters, or promotional offers. These might be important updates, but they don’t always align with where the customer is in their journey or what problem they’re trying to solve.

For example, imagine a small business owner signs up for a budgeting software tool. Instead of receiving emails about advanced analytics features right away, what this user really needs in the beginning is help managing cash flow – a job they’re urgently trying to get done.

By aligning your emails with the customer’s goal (not just your product’s feature set), you improve relevance, usefulness, and engagement.

Benefits of Using JTBD in Email Campaigns

  • More meaningful personalization – You’re tailoring content to actual needs, not just demographics.
  • Improved segmentation strategy – Grouping based on jobs, not just age or industry, gives deeper insight.
  • Higher engagement rates – Emails arrive when your customer is struggling and searching for answers.
  • Stronger loyalty over time – Customers feel understood, not sold to.

Supporting the Entire Customer Journey

Since the JTBD approach focuses on outcomes and struggles, it’s incredibly effective for crafting email sequences tied to specific stages in the customer journey. Whether it’s onboarding, usage, or renewal, each phase of your email campaign can speak directly to a job your customer is trying to complete.

In this way, Jobs To Be Done doesn’t replace traditional tactics – it adds a layer of context and meaning to them. And when used alongside behavioral triggers, data, and segmentation, it creates a far more empathetic – and effective – email marketing strategy.

Identifying the ‘Job’ Your Customer is Trying to Get Done

The heart of the Jobs To Be Done framework lies in understanding why someone chooses your product or service in the first place. What problem are they solving? What goal are they aiming to achieve?

To build email campaigns that reflect these motivations, you need to uncover this deeper context. That starts by asking one simple question: “What is the customer trying to accomplish in their life or work by using our solution?”

Steps to Find the Customer’s ‘Job’

Here’s a practical approach to identifying your customer’s JTBD:

1. Talk to your users

Customer interviews or surveys are one of the most reliable ways to gather customer insights. Ask open-ended questions like:

  • What made you start looking for a solution like this?
  • What task or situation were you dealing with?
  • What would success look like for you after using our product?

2. Review behavioral data

Look at when and how customers engage with your product, support team, or content. Are there common usage patterns or trigger events that happen before a purchase or sign-up? These often reveal moments of struggle – the ideal time to send a targeted, helpful email.

3. Segment your audience by jobs, not just demographics

Instead of grouping your audience by age or industry, consider segmenting based on the job they’re trying to get done. For example, both a freelancer and a small business owner might use your accounting software, but if one is trying to invoice clients and the other is doing quarterly taxes, they each have different email needs.

From Insight to Email Strategy

Once you’ve pinpointed the job, use it as the foundation for your email personalization strategy. Each message in the sequence should help move the customer one step closer to completing their job. Instead of highlighting random features, highlight how specific features help them overcome real challenges.

Let’s say a marketing manager signs up for an email design platform to save time creating campaigns. Emails that showcase time-saving templates or automation tips will resonate, while general news about platform updates might not.

By applying the JTBD framework to your email strategy, you’re not just communicating – you’re guiding. And in today’s busy world, that support makes all the difference.

Mapping Email Sequences to Struggling Moments and Job Progress

One of the most powerful ways to apply the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework in email marketing is by aligning your email messaging to specific moments in the customer's journey – especially when they are struggling to make progress.

Shortcomings in email performance often stem from focusing on features or routine updates instead of the real-world challenges that your customers are trying to solve. JTBD helps marketers switch this mindset by identifying the emotional, functional, and social steps people experience while pursuing their goals – and where they struggle the most.

Understanding Struggling Moments in the Customer Journey

Struggling moments are key decision or friction points that slow your customer down or stop them completely. These can appear as questions, hesitations, or unmet needs, such as:

  • “I’m not sure if this product will fit my specific use case.”
  • “I’m curious how this service compares with what I’m already using.”
  • “I want to avoid making the wrong decision and wasting time/money.”

By mapping these moments across the customer journey, you can design email sequences that directly acknowledge and address each barrier – creating stronger emotional relevance and improving click-through rates.

Using JTBD to Sequence Emails Around Progress

Email sequencing with JTBD starts by plotting how customers evaluate, consider, try, and succeed with your product or service. You can then align each touchpoint with the type of message they need at each stage:

  • Aware but unsure: Emails should empathize with the challenge and validate the underlying job they’re trying to do.
  • Researching options: Provide content that helps compare, clarify, or simplify their decision-making.
  • Ready to act but anxious: Use social proof, reassurance, or limited-time offers to reduce friction.
  • Post-purchase: Support adoption by helping customers realize success and avoid potential setbacks.

This method turns standard drip campaigns into high-performing trigger-based email marketing sequences informed by real consumer insights. It leads to higher conversion because your messaging feels personalized and helpful – not just promotional.

Don’t Just Guess – Use Research

Customer interviews, ethnographic studies, or surveys can uncover where customers feel stuck or uncertain. This insight is the foundation of any jobs-based email campaign planning, especially for complex or multi-step offerings. Over time, you can refine these sequences using behavioral triggers, such as clicks, downloads, or inactivity to send the right email at just the right time – advancing the customer toward successful job completion.

Examples of Jobs-Based Email Campaigns in Action

Sometimes, the most effective way to understand a framework is to see it in action. Here are two simplified examples of how brands can use JTBD principles to build stronger email campaign strategies by aligning messaging with real customer needs.

Example 1: Online Learning Platform – "I want to upskill while balancing my job"

Job to Be Done: “I want to grow my skillset for a promotion, but I don’t have a lot of time to spare.”

Email Sequence Strategy:

  • Email 1: Highlight flexible course formats (e.g., “Finish in under 30 minutes per day.”)
  • Email 2: Share a success story from a working professional who got promoted post-course.
  • Email 3: Provide a downloadable weekly study schedule template to remove planning friction.

Why it works: The campaign focuses on the customer's core progress goal (career advancement with time limits), not random course features.

Example 2: Meal Kit Brand – "I need fast, healthy meals on busy weekdays"

Job to Be Done: “I want nutritious meals that save time and reduce weeknight stress.”

Email Sequence Strategy:

  • Email 1: Address the struggle: “Tired of 6 pm chaos? Let us simplify dinner.”
  • Email 2: Include a 4-step dinner prep video showcasing minimal effort and cleanup.
  • Email 3: Feature a family’s testimonial balancing health and convenience.

Why it works: Messaging is anchored in the emotional stress and logistical barriers of family weekday dinners – not just recipes or savings.

General Takeaway

In both cases, the marketers used consumer insights to determine what job the customer truly cared about and what was getting in their way. Rather than leading with product announcements or feature lists, these emails function like a helpful guide – walking the customer through the path to progress. This is the heart of JTBD-driven email personalization and segmentation strategy.

Tips for Getting Started with JTBD in Email Marketing

Adopting the Jobs To Be Done framework for your email campaigns may seem complex, but you don’t need to overhaul everything to start seeing benefits. Here are some approachable ways to begin integrating JTBD into your email marketing strategy:

1. Start with One Core Job

Pick a single product or service and ask: what job is our customer really hiring this for? Think functionally and emotionally. Avoid guessing – pull from customer interviews, surveys, support calls, or even reviews. This initial clarity is the first step toward building high-impact email personalization using JTBD insights.

2. Identify the Struggling Moments

Map out key phases in the customer journey where confusion, doubt, or hesitation exists. These are ideal places for email content to support education, reassurance, and confidence. Struggling moments often occur during:

  • Initial awareness (e.g. “Is this right for me?”)
  • Decision-making (e.g. “What if I make the wrong choice?”)
  • First-time use (e.g. “How do I get started quickly and see value?”)

3. Align Your Email Sequencing Strategy

Rather than designing emails around sales goals or product launches only, build campaigns around the steps your customer takes to complete their job successfully. Each email should nudge the user toward meaningful progress – whether that’s a guide, testimonial, checklist, or reminder.

4. Use Simple Triggers to Personalize

You don’t need a sophisticated tech stack to start making your emails feel more relevant. Use basic behavioral triggers – such as email opens, website browsing, or purchase pauses – to time your JTBD-based messages when they’re most needed.

5. Keep Testing and Learning

JTBD works best when it’s paired with continuous learning. Review email metrics alongside qualitative insights to see where messaging lands and where customers still need help. Over time, refine both your segmentation strategy and content design using what you learn about customer needs.

By starting small and building iteratively, marketing teams can use the JTBD framework not just to improve email campaigns, but to foster deeper relevance and trust throughout the entire customer journey.

Summary

The Jobs To Be Done framework offers a fresh, insightful lens into what really drives a customer to engage with your brand – and how to meet them where they are through email. By shifting the focus away from surface-level marketing and towards the underlying problems and goals your customers are trying to solve, you unlock smarter strategies for email personalization, behavioral triggers, and ultimately, conversion.

We’ve covered how JTBD clarifies what customers are trying to achieve, how to align email content with their moments of struggle, and how real brands personalize their messaging around these jobs for impactful results. By integrating these insights into your marketing strategy, you’ll not only improve email performance, but also build stronger customer relationships grounded in real value.

Summary

The Jobs To Be Done framework offers a fresh, insightful lens into what really drives a customer to engage with your brand – and how to meet them where they are through email. By shifting the focus away from surface-level marketing and towards the underlying problems and goals your customers are trying to solve, you unlock smarter strategies for email personalization, behavioral triggers, and ultimately, conversion.

We’ve covered how JTBD clarifies what customers are trying to achieve, how to align email content with their moments of struggle, and how real brands personalize their messaging around these jobs for impactful results. By integrating these insights into your marketing strategy, you’ll not only improve email performance, but also build stronger customer relationships grounded in real value.

In this article

Why Jobs To Be Done Improves Email Campaign Performance
Identifying the ‘Job’ Your Customer is Trying to Get Done
Mapping Email Sequences to Struggling Moments and Job Progress
Examples of Jobs-Based Email Campaigns in Action
Tips for Getting Started with JTBD in Email Marketing

In this article

Why Jobs To Be Done Improves Email Campaign Performance
Identifying the ‘Job’ Your Customer is Trying to Get Done
Mapping Email Sequences to Struggling Moments and Job Progress
Examples of Jobs-Based Email Campaigns in Action
Tips for Getting Started with JTBD in Email Marketing

Last updated: May 25, 2025

Curious how SIVO Insights can help uncover the jobs your customers are trying to get done?

Curious how SIVO Insights can help uncover the jobs your customers are trying to get done?

Curious how SIVO Insights can help uncover the jobs your customers are trying to get done?

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