Journey 9, recover and activateWorking draft

The seasonal wave engine

Seasonal waves: reach me when a trip is relevant. The dormant pool is reached by calendar, not by behaviour: one governed wave engine (an announcement, an open offer window, one second knock, then rest) replaces the blast graveyard, wave 1 is already in market carrying the estate's only true broadcast holdout, and the headline change is that waves now stand down for any customer inside a live journey episode.

The problem, and the customer’s job

The dormant pool is unreachable by behaviour.

“Reach me when there's a trip I'd actually take: commuter September, New Year, my anniversary. Between waves, leave me alone.”

Why it happens No current reason to think of Seatfrog at all, plus stale or negative priors from the lapse period. The blocker is absence from mind, not objection.

The behaviour we are driving A never-transacted prospect: a first bid. A transacted customer: an add-trip or bid on a real occasion trip. Anything else: back to rest until the next calendar wave.

The numbers that decide

554,710the audience: in the wave-eligible audience
TBCthis journey's metric: Incremental transaction rate per wave, against a no-contact holdout, the baseline is sized with Analytics

The journey, today and proposed

channels down, moments across; a card keeps its place between Today and Proposed, so the change is the only thing that moves. Open a card for the words, the trigger and who builds it; filter by phase, builder, outcome and the channels held. Opens on the new customer, never-transacted prospect
State
Phase
Show for
Outcome
Channels the customer holds
Reworked, replaces the live sends it namesNewRetires, struck through in placeUnchangedWaits for Phase 2Engineering fix, nothing to writeApp engineeringBackend engineeringBrazeAnalyticsDesign

What changes

one row per moment: what ships now, what waits for engineering, and who builds it, with the change type in the engineering board’s words
The momentPhase 1, ships nowPhase 2, waits on engineeringWho builds it
on the map: 1 · The wave announcement
The wave announcement

email, braze push One destination email a week to the broad base becomes a tiered wave: new customers get occasion and the safe first try, returning tiers get their own re-anchor, claims are substantiated per route, and every wave carries a no-contact holdout. Push joins where held,…

Engineering rows D1, D4, D6, D8, D9, D10, D11

Nothing waits

Braze · Braze buildAnalytics · new modelDesign · words and mock
on the map: 2 · The offer window
The offer window

Nothing ships in Phase 1

native screen or modal, braze in-app message The wave stops dying at the door: an in-app card carries the offer for the window, the routes one tap away. The card slot is arbitrated: one card, the wave’s or the win-back’s, never both.

Engineering rows D8

Braze · logic changeDesign · words and mock
on the map: 3 · The one second knock
The one second knock

braze push, braze in-app message The live weekly sends once and stops; the legacy second touches are archived. The new knock is earned and forked: unseen earns the knock, seen-but-idle earns the nudge, and the wave then rests.

Nothing waits

Braze · Braze buildAnalyticsDesign · words and mock
on the map: 4 · The rest between waves
The rest between waves

The per-customer rest becomes real: two touches spent means silence until the next wave or their anniversary, whichever the cycle’s exclusion rule picks. The August 2025 cohort’s month-10-to-11 rise (+58 retained) is the anniversary signal the rest protects.

Nothing waits

Braze · Braze build
The sunset send

email The unengaged tail stops being waved at: one honest last email (if you ever fancy First Class for less, here is where we are), then silence for good. Sender reputation is the shared resource the sunset protects.

Nothing waits

Braze · Braze buildAnalytics · decision needed
Waves stand down for live episodes

The headline governance change: waves stand down for any customer inside a live journey episode. The wave engine becomes a citizen of the estate instead of a broadcast over it.

Engineering rows D4

Nothing waits

Braze · Braze buildAnalytics · computed trait
Power users and organic returners

The wave never lands on the customers most likely to come back anyway: the measured harm is the rule’s evidence.

Nothing waits

Analytics
An active trip or live auction

The wave defers to the moment: a seasonal offer on a travel day reads as noise at best.

Nothing waits

Braze · computed trait

The words are on the journey map above. A D number opens that row of the Engineering brief; the engineering board uses the same numbers. Live sends not named here continue unchanged.

What needs deciding

the questions the build waits on, from the matrix’s register; the full list with every owner is on the reference
The questionOwner
Rule on the drop-1 guardrail read: 0.71 percent unsubscribed in four days against a 0.28 percent benchmark. Does drop 2 send as designed, send changed, or hold?Blocks launch Sheran, at Gate 1
The York holdout read: incremental transactions against the 5.0 percent no-contact holdout, at one, two and four weeks.Blocks launch Analytics: Ivi and Ben
Build the shared episode flag and the wave-freeze exclusion: the engine’s first governance build, already a launch gate on the first-slip journey.Blocks launch Analytics: Ivi and Ben
Tier-level sizing per wave freeze: Cooling and Cold marketable counts confirmed, and the frequency band into the sync.Analytics: Ivi and Ben
The sunset semantics: one last email then removal from every marketing audience, shared with the win-back journey’s deep-tail rule.Legal

The asks of Analytics

Open the five asks
The Analytics brief

The formal ask, from this pack

Five asks, the first one urgent: the series is gated on it. The board is the system of record; these rows are raised there and referenced here.
#The askHand backStart here
1The York holdout read: incremental transactions against the 5.0 percent no-contact holdout and the 0.84 percent organic baseline, at one, two and four weeks.The read, and the scale-or-stop recommendation.The measurement position on the Campaign brief.
2Tier sizing per wave freeze: the lifecycle band, the zero-bids fence, and marketable counts per tier (Cooling 20.9k and Cold 16.9k are the working figures).Per-tier volumes per freeze.The wave row on the Decisioning matrix.
3The exclusion flags into wave segments: power user, organic return, and the episode flag’s data side.The flags readable at the freeze.The Engineering brief’s governance band.
4Per-route comparison figures, nightly, on the standing pattern: the real-number rule for every wave claim.The traits live, coverage stated.The traits band on the Engineering brief.
5The sync extensions (phase 2): frequency band, anniversary date, business against leisure.The extended payload.The plumbing band on the Engineering brief.

Opens are machine-inflated: clicks are the honest engagement read everywhere in this journey.

Working detailPack version: 4 Sep 2026, 12:13 (London)