Win-back: relevance or silence, never a blast. After day 60 of silence nobody owns the dormant customer and almost nothing reaches them; this journey builds the missing win-back: entry by hand-off at day 60, the churn band setting who and how hard, every message anchored to a trip the customer actually takes, two touches then a genuine end, and a launch gate that has shrunk from a whole model to one sync payload extension.
After day 60, nobody owns the customer.
“Show me it's relevant to a trip I actually take, make coming back effortless, and if you can't do either, leave me alone.”
Why it happens Churn is an event, not a fade: a specific unresolved grievance, a feels-rigged conclusion, or price drift against remembered cheap upgrades. A generic miss-you message answers none of them, and the return door itself sometimes fails.
The behaviour we are driving Tap through to their own route with a live price and bid within 14 days; or walk back in unaided and be recognised. Either way a transaction closes the episode and hands the comeback to Journey 1.
| The moment | The change | Phase | Who builds it |
|---|---|---|---|
| The route-anchored win-back the next Friday-to-Sunday window after entry | New After day 60 of silence nobody owns the dormant customer and almost nothing reaches them. | Phase 1 | BrazeAnalytics |
| The welcome-back landing real time, in session; at most once per 30 days | New A returner stops landing on the same generic cold start as everyone else: the card recognises the absence, restates the account is as they left it, and lands them on… | Phase 1 | Braze |
| The comparison anchor day five to seven of the episode, on the strongest remaining channel | New One concrete reason to look again: the walk-up fare on their route today against what their last upgrade cost. | Phase 1 | BrazeAnalytics |
| The final attempt, then a genuine end once, ever; then hard suppression | New One last try that says so: the best welcome-back deal, one time only, and after this we stop asking. | Phase 1 | BrazeAnalytics |
| The anniversary message once a year: an email and push pair | New A year on, the one owned reminder of what they liked: the same trip, this year’s real prices, against the walk-up fare. | Phase 1 | BrazeAnalytics |
1 live sends continue unchanged across these moments. The words, today beside proposed, are on the journey map above. New: nothing exists today. Changed: a live send is reworked into the proposed message. Retires: a live send stops.
| The treatment | Who gets it | What stops it: caps and suppression | When nothing is sent |
|---|---|---|---|
| The route-anchored win-back | Day-60 hand-offs from the first-slip journey, and the one-time metered backfill, band-gated | Two touches per episode, hard. Quiet hours apply. Suppression Any session in the last 30 days (a returner needs recognition, not a win-back); an active trip; the first-slip journey’s open episode (one lapse owner). A win-back never carries a data-capture ask. | The low band gets nothing: the suppression is the treatment, and blanket contact of likely returners measured minus 11.8% in a holdout. |
| The comparison anchor | Episode holders whose first knock went unseen for five to seven days | Two touches per episode, hard. Suppression As row 1. An app re-open pauses outbound and hands the session to the welcome-back card. | Seen and not acted means silence: the episode closes dormant after this knock either way. |
| The welcome-back landing | Anyone opening the app after 61 or more days away | Once per return. Suppression Never beside a win-back send in the same session: the card supersedes it. | Nothing else fires at re-entry: outbound pauses the moment they open the app. |
| The final attempt, then a genuine end | Episodes closed dormant, 90-plus days with no engagement, band-gated | Once, ever, per customer. Suppression The full post-end suppression list ships with the send, as a deliverable of equal rank. | After it: hard suppression. Opt-out semantics without asking the customer to do the work. |
| The anniversary message | The whole consented pool, once a year, on the anniversary of their purchase | Once a year, exactly. Suppression Suppressed inside any open episode, active trip, or the post-final-attempt end state. | Nothing else: the beat is the promise. |
| The live incentive card | Inactive push-only customers from 365 days: the card’s current audience | Today: the card’s own. Suppression None today. | Ruled at Gate 1 or folded by the build: never left running unowned beside the new episode. |
| The question | Owner |
|---|---|
| The first knock waits for the next Friday-to-Sunday window after the day-60 hand-off. The trigger is behavioural (day 60 of the slip, handed over by Journey 8) but the send is held to a calendar window with no recorded rationale. Keep the window (a leisure planning slot), or send at the hand-off, or in the customer's own usual travel window where one is known? | Sheran, at Gate 1 |
| Rule the welcome-back owner: this journey fires and measures the card; the returning-customer home journey renders the surface. One owner, decided. | Blocks launch Sheran, at Gate 1 |
| Rule the £5 card’s disposition: fold into the welcome-back card’s offer state, narrow to the final attempt, or retire. | Blocks launch Sheran, at Gate 1 |
| Rule the final attempt’s offer depth and the high-band cut-off, with Finance, on Analytics sizing. | Sheran, at Gate 1 |
| Size and meter the one-time backfill wave per band, with the double-read holdout design. | Blocks launch Analytics: Ivi and Ben |
| Restate the 1.5% reactivation objective’s denominator, and reconcile the pool counts across sources (279,876 verified against the circulating figures). | Analytics: Ivi and Ben |
| The 24-month email deep-tail rule: confirm the working assumption (no engagement and no consent refresh in 24 months means no email). | Legal |
| # | The ask | Hand back | Start here |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The churn band and propensity score into the daily sync, on the standing pattern. The score is live in the warehouse; this one extension is the whole phase 2 gate. | The band in the sender, refresh cadence stated. | The Engineering brief’s plumbing band. |
| 2 | The route, from-price and anniversary traits, nightly, for this cohort. | The traits live, coverage stated. | The traits band on the Engineering brief. |
| 3 | Size the backfill waves and the double read: holdouts within bands (journey lift) and banded waves against a batch arm (targeting value), with the underpowered-band risk stated. | The wave plan and test design. | The measurement position on the Campaign brief. |
| 4 | Restate the 1.5% objective’s denominator and reconcile the pool counts across sources. | The restated objective and one pool number. | The hero figures on the Campaign brief. |
| 5 | Deliverable-reach counts per channel: consent is not reach (roughly 1.8x overstatement; warehouse push consent three months stale). | Reach ceilings per band and channel. | The suppressed rows on the Decisioning matrix. |
Every read must clear organic return: about 33,000 lapsed customers a month come back unaided and convert at new-customer rates.