Use cases
The same engine,four different definitions of "the goal".
Nothing changes between these except what counts as a trigger and what counts as success. A shop wants a second order. A clinic wants the appointment kept. A SaaS wants the feature used. An agency wants all three, twenty times over, without twenty copies of the same funnel.
E-commerce and retail
Welcome, abandoned basket, post-purchase, review request, replenishment on a date field, and a win-back for the ones who have gone quiet. The goal is nearly always the second order, and the reason a goal node matters is that nobody should be told "we miss you" the day after they came back.
Service businesses
A salon, a physiotherapy clinic, a garage, a studio, a restaurant. The diary is already a marketing engine; it simply has nobody working it. Confirm, remind the day before, follow up on a no-show, ask for the review while it is fresh, and notice the regular who has not been in since spring.
SaaS and product teams
Your product knows who activated, who stalled at step three and who has not logged in for a fortnight. Post those as events and the sequence writes itself — and, more importantly, stops itself the moment the person does the thing you were nudging them towards.
Agencies
One funnel, built once, running in twenty projects with twenty sets of sending credentials — each on the client's own domain and reputation. A report per client that does not need a phone call to explain it, and an API to build whatever your account managers actually want.
The shape underneath
Six funnels cover most of what any of them need.
Whatever the business, the same half-dozen shapes come up. It is worth recognising them, because the difference between businesses is usually one node.
Welcome
Somebody joins. Two or three messages over a fortnight that say who you are and what to expect, then stop. The most valuable funnel almost nobody builds, because it is the one that decides whether the next hundred are opened.
The nudge
They started something and did not finish it. A basket, a booking, a form, a trial step. One reminder, one incentive, then leave them alone — with a goal node so the second message is cancelled the instant they finish.
After the thing
They bought, visited, attended. Thank them, ask how it went, and suggest what usually comes next. This is where the review request belongs, at the moment the memory is still warm.
The date
A birthday, a renewal, a service interval, a year since the last visit. A date_field trigger with an offset — three days before, thirty days after — and no spreadsheet of dates that somebody has to remember to look at.
The quiet ones
A segment finds them: three orders, none in ninety days. They enter, they get two messages, and either they come back or they are tagged as dormant and left in peace. Sending forever to people who stopped listening is how a sender's reputation dies.
The announcement
Not a funnel at all — a campaign. An audience, materialised once, throttled so a small mailbox is not overwhelmed, counted from delivery events afterwards. It is a different shape and it is kept as one.
Four kinds of business, one question:
who has gone quiet?
What is different here, in practice.
Three things come up again and again once people have run this for a month, and none of them is the thing they signed up for.
The goal node changes behaviour. Once a sequence reliably stops when somebody converts, you write braver sequences — because the embarrassing failure mode, chasing somebody who has already bought, is gone.
The consent record changes what you dare do. Knowing exactly where a list came from means you know which parts of it you can write to, and the answer is usually "more than I thought, and not that one".
Filtered reporting changes decisions. The first month is uncomfortable, because the numbers are smaller. The second month is better, because the tests start telling you things that turn out to be true.
- 1ShopTrigger
payment_made. Goal: a second order. - 2ClinicTrigger
booking_made. Goal: the next appointment booked. - 3SaaSTrigger
api_event—signup.completed. Goal: the first real use. - 4AgencyAll three, in three projects, from one funnel definition they maintain once.
- iEverything else is identicalSame waits, same quiet hours, same goal semantics, same reports.
The engine does not care what business you are in
None of these quite you?
Describe what you send today and to whom. We will tell you what it looks like here, or that it does not need us.
Talk to a person Every trigger and action