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

New customer, Never-transacted prospect: 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; the other outcomes and channel states are on the walk
State
Phase
Reworked, replaces the live sends it namesNewRetires, struck through in placeUnchangedWaits for Phase 2App engineeringBackend engineeringBrazeAnalyticsDesign

What changes

one line per moment: the change, the phase and who builds it
The momentThe changePhaseWho builds it
The wave announcement
wave day; email leads because the message keeps for days, and a push-only customer gets a push-length wave frame instead
Changed
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…
Phase 1BrazeAnalytics
The offer window
the wave window, typically the week of the send
Changed
The wave stops dying at the door: an in-app card carries the offer for the window, the routes one tap away.
Phase 2Braze
The one second knock
the back half of the wave window, before it closes
New
The live weekly sends once and stops; the legacy second touches are archived.
Phase 1BrazeAnalytics

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.

Who gets each treatment, and what stops it

the targeting, the caps and the suppression on every treatment, as the decisioning matrix holds them
Open the table (6 treatments)
The treatmentWho gets itWhat stops it: caps and suppressionWhen nothing is sent
The wave announcementThe wave snapshot, frozen on wave day: never-transacted prospects, lapsed and churned transactors, tieredTwo touches per wave, once per wave per customer, no re-send within a season.
Suppression Anyone inside any live journey episode; power users and organic returners (the minus 11.8 percent precedent); an active trip or live auction; the cold tail; the roughly-twelve-months unengaged (the sunset row instead).
Do nothing for everyone outside the snapshot; the wave never chases between drops.
The offer windowWave recipients who open the app during the window, tapped or organicOne card in the slot for the window.
Suppression Power users never see the wave card. The win-back card’s audience is disjoint today (push-only, no email); arbitration becomes real the day the wave gains its push and in-app legs, and the rule ships with them.
An app open without a transaction stands the wave down: the window respects presence.
The one second knockWave recipients at the window’s last days: unseen get one push knock, seen-but-no-action get one trip-prompt nudgeTwo touches per wave, hard.
Suppression As row 1; the email-only unseen inbox waits for the next wave.
Seen and acted, or two touches spent: rest until the next wave.
The rest between wavesEveryone the wave touched and did not convertThis row is the cap.
Suppression This row is the suppression between waves.
The next calendar wave, or the anniversary slot, never both in one cycle.
The sunset sendThe roughly-twelve-months unengaged tailOnce, ever.
Suppression Everything, afterwards: that is the point.
Removal from every marketing audience after it. The app remains theirs.
Waves stand down for live episodesAnyone inside a live journey episode at a wave freezeNot applicable.
Suppression This row is the suppression.
The owning journey’s own beats.

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 detail
Leave feedbackThis pack is a proposal, and part of the journey is live. Wave 1 is in market with its holdout; the guardrail ruling and the York read gate the series. Say what is wrong with the engine, or what it is missing.
Pack version: 4 Sep 2026, 02:46 (London)