Onboarding Email Sequence

The first 14 days decide whether a new user stays or churns, and most onboarding emails are written as if the new user is studying the product. They're not — they're evaluating it. The Onboarding Email Sequence is built on that distinction: every email has one job, one CTA, and one micro-outcome the user can experience inside five minutes. No feature tours. No origin stories. No six-link welcome emails where every CTA dilutes the others.

The Day 0/1/3/7/14 spacing isn't arbitrary — it tracks the engagement decay curve. Day 0 is peak motivation, so it gets the single most important action and nothing else. Day 1 is the quick-win recipe: not "explore the dashboard" but "click Reports, select Last 7 Days, look at your top source." Day 3 splits between celebrating activated users and rescuing stuck ones with the single fix that unblocks 80% of the stalls. Day 7 is value proof — if your product can show them their actual data ("you've already done X, that's ahead of 70% of new users"), this is the email where personalisation earns its keep. Day 14 locks the habit.

Reply invitations are deliberate, not decoration. At least two of the five emails explicitly invite replies, because real conversation reduces churn more than any automation. The skill flags where to put them — usually the Day 0 ("reply if stuck"), and the Day 3 rescue path ("reply and tell me where you're stuck, I'll personally help"). Both convert at meaningfully higher rates than help-centre links, because the friction is lower and the reciprocity is real.

Upsells stay out until Day 14 at the earliest. Premature upgrade prompts in onboarding signal that you value the wallet more than the success, and they convert worse than waiting. The Day 14 email is the right surface for one — and only one — next-level CTA, framed as unlocking the value they've already experienced rather than as a sales pitch. And the timeline adapts: B2B services with longer implementations extend to Day 21 and 30; physical products align to delivery; courses front-load the first micro-win. The framework stays the same — the cadence stretches.