Building Lifecycle Programs That Work

Choosing which lifecycle programs to build first

New lifecycle lead, empty Braze account, a laundry list of programs you could build. The question nobody trains you for is which to build first. This is the selection framework — by business type, by team size, by data maturity, and the programs I'd actively wait on.

11 min read

Onboarding flows: signup to activated

Most onboarding programs fail in the same three ways — no activation metric, no awareness of what the user just did in-product, and a sequence that won't stop once the user has clearly activated. Fix those three and the program starts moving signups to activated users in numbers you can actually defend.

10 min read

Abandoned cart emails: what actually works

Cart abandonment is the easiest program to get wrong because the defaults work well enough to hide the problem. Here's the structure that actually moves incremental revenue — timing, sequencing, and the discount policy most teams have backwards.

9 min read

Win-back flows: 12 patterns that earn their place

Win-back is the highest-ROI program most lifecycle teams underbuild. Twelve patterns that work, when each one fits, and the sunset policy that stops the program quietly eating your sender reputation.

11 min read

Post-purchase emails: what to send after the receipt

Post-purchase is the highest-engagement window in the entire customer relationship and most lifecycle programs spend it sending a receipt, a generic welcome, and then silence. Here's the 30-day sequence that actually earns the second purchase.

8 min read

Holdout group design: the incrementality tool most lifecycle programs skip

Without a holdout, lifecycle ROI is attribution-model guesswork with a spreadsheet. With one, you get a defensible number you can actually put in front of finance. Here's how to size, run, and read a holdout — and the three mistakes that quietly invalidate the result.

9 min read

Personalisation that doesn't feel creepy

There's a line between personalisation that earns trust and personalisation that breaks it. It's not where most people think it is — it's about how you signal what you know, not what you know. Here's the line, how programs cross it without noticing, and the patterns that keep you on the right side.

9 min read

The lifecycle metrics dashboard: what to track, what to ignore

Most lifecycle dashboards show 40 metrics and answer zero questions. A good one shows 8 and tells you what to do next. Here's the eight-metric dashboard that actually runs a lifecycle program.

8 min read