Author · Founder, Orbit
Justin Williames
10+ years at the intersection of product, growth, and lifecycle marketing. Based on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. Founder of Orbit. Author of every guide in the Orbit library.
Connect with Justin on LinkedIn
5K+ followers · short-form writing on lifecycle, CRM, and AI-first marketing.
The short version
Justin grew up in a small country town in Australia, moved up to Queensland to study marketing at the University of the Sunshine Coast, then headed to Melbourne to start his marketing and lifecycle career properly.
From Melbourne he moved to London for a few years, working in fast-paced growth and tech — Deliveroo during its early growth phase, Trainline, then Depop (pre-Etsy acquisition). That's where most of the decade of lifecycle experience that shows up in the Orbit guides actually happened.
He came back to Melbourne to join Linktree as Head of CRM, building the CRM function for a 50M-user consumer product. Then relocated to the Sunshine Coast, where he now lives in Currimundi with his wife, two kids, and a groodle, working remotely for scale-up and start-up businesses.
Orbit is the extension of that arc: a way to codify the lifecycle methodologies he's watched work across a decade of consumer-scale programs, and hand them to the next operator who needs them.
Career
CRM & AI Workflows · Sophiie AI
Current — building AI workflow systems for trades SMBs.
Feb 2026 – present
Sunshine Coast, QLD
Fractional Head of CRM · Whering
Consumer fashion resale app.
2025
Remote
Fractional Head of Growth · The Grants Hub
Australian grants advisory.
2024–2025
Remote
Head of CRM · Linktree
Built the CRM function for a 50M+ user consumer product.
2022–2024
Melbourne, VIC
CRM Manager · Depop
Fashion marketplace, pre-Etsy acquisition.
2020–2022
London, UK
CRM / Marketing · Trainline
UK rail ticketing at scale.
2018–2020
London, UK
CRM / Marketing · Deliveroo
Lifecycle marketing during Deliveroo's early growth phase.
2016–2018
London, UK
First 100 Days Team · Telstra
Worked on lifecycle programs for new enterprise customers.
2014–2016
Sunshine Coast, QLD
Certifications
- Braze Marketer Certification (Feb 2021)
- Dynamic Personalisation with Liquid — Braze (Jun 2019)
Education
Bachelor of Business (Marketing) with IT minor — University of the Sunshine Coast (2011–2014)
Recent guides
All 80 guides →Reputation recovery: the 90-day playbook for dropping from High to Low
Domain reputation at Low or Bad isn't recoverable in a week. It's a 6–12 week project of disciplined sending to engaged users only, while the reputation signals slowly reset. Here's the structured recovery plan.
Review request emails: the timing that actually produces reviews
A review request sent at the wrong time gets ignored. Sent at the right time, it converts at 15–25% into a submitted review. Here's the timing logic, the message pattern, and why incentivising reviews almost always backfires.
Product launch email sequence: the five emails that actually sell a new product
A product launch with one big announcement email captures a fraction of the addressable audience. A proper five-email launch sequence catches multiple attention windows, builds anticipation, and converts the users who needed a second or third touch. Here's the structure.
Subscription churn saves: the three-moment intervention that retains 20%+ of cancellers
A user cancelling a subscription is three discrete moments — pre-cancel intent, the cancel action itself, and post-cancel. Each moment has a specific save intervention. Most programs address only one and miss the other two.
Lifecycle for startups: the three flows to build before anything else
Early-stage programs waste months building the wrong lifecycle flows. Here are the three that compound value at every stage — welcome, trial-to-paid (or first-repeat), and winback — and why everything else can wait.
Reporting lifecycle to executives: the monthly update that actually lands
Most lifecycle reporting to execs is a deck of campaign-level charts that nobody remembers a week later. Here's the format that actually lands — three numbers, two decisions, one ask — and produces ongoing investment.