Email & Lifecycle: Signup to Expansion

The framework

Four steps,
keyed to account state

01 · Map the journey

I chart the real path from signup to expansion before I touch a template. Where users actually stall decides what gets built, and the campaign calendar doesn't get a vote.

On the cross-border payments funnel, journey mapping showed users confused right after registration and KYC progressing painfully slowly. It also exposed the platform underneath: one shared MailChimp account serving three regions, no owner. The fix started there.

The map decides what gets built

Revenue engine, the funnel this map came from Rebuilding our onboarding email system: the rebuild, step by step

02 · Segment by state

I cut segments by where the account stands right now. A pre-KYC user and a verified one need different emails, whatever the calendar says.

The onboarding rebuild ran three cadences keyed to real-time account status: orientation before KYC, progress support during verification, activation after compliance approval. Product-usage and intent signals move accounts between them, so nobody sits in a sequence they've outgrown.

Where the account stands beats how long it has been there

Rebuilding our onboarding email system, the three cadences in detail A referral-driven lifecycle: state logic applied to referrals

03 · Trigger on behavior

I fire sends off what the account just did: a document submitted, a verification stalled, a first payment pending. At 100–300 new registrations a day, anything that waits on a human is already late.

The journeys run as real-time automation built in Zapier, Make.com and Salesforce Flow, with no weekly list pulls and no one 'running' the sends. Going silent counts as behavior too; a user who stops after submitting documents triggers their own re-engagement path.

A system runs the sends without anyone pressing send

Email chaos to calm operation: intake and cadence governance Marketing ops, 200+ workflows behind the triggers

04 · Sync back & iterate

Email that doesn't report back is half a system, so every open, click and stall feeds CRM scoring. I want an account manager to spot a stalled account without asking marketing for a list.

Engagement syncs into HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive, and the weakest cadences become the A/B queue, with AI-assisted segment refinement and lead scoring tightening the loop. On the payments funnel that loop moved KYC submissions from roughly 10% to 35–40% and completion time from 140 hours to 24–48.

A journey that cannot report back cannot improve

Revenue engine: KYC 10% → 35–40% AI lead scoring assistant, the scoring side of the loop

Journeys I have built and kept running:

✉

Journey design

✓ Onboarding & activation flows

✓ Nurture & re-engagement

✓ First-payment journeys

◉

Triggers & segmentation

✓ Behavior-based triggers

✓ Cohort & firmographic segments

✓ Product-usage & intent signals

⇄

CRM automation

✓ HubSpot · Salesforce · Pipedrive

✓ Engagement → lead scoring

✓ Real-time status sync

⛨

Deliverability & governance

✓ List hygiene & validation

✓ Sender-reputation protection

✓ Intake & cadence governance

What these journeys run on:
CRM, sending and state sync

Email &
campaigns

Mailchimp

GetResponse

HubSpot

Braze

Marketo

CRM &
measurement

Salesforce

Pipedrive

GA4 ▤Cohort analysis

Automation
& flows

Zapier

Make.com

Dify

Salesforce Flow

HubSpot Workflow

AI in
the loop

✦Content personalization ✧Segment refinement ◆Lead scoring & routing logic

Proof

One shared MailChimp account, three regions, no owner, rebuilt around real-time account status

The cross-border payments line was taking 100–300 new registrations a day through a broadcast tool with no CRM sync and no lifecycle automation. I rebuilt onboarding around account state, with orientation, KYC progress, activation and first-payment journeys. KYC submissions went from roughly 10% to 35–40% and completion time from 140 hours to 24–48 hours, with every engagement signal synced back to Salesforce.

Read the full case ›

From the blog Rebuilding our onboarding email system

35–40% KYC submission rate, up from roughly 10% before the rebuild