Welcome & first-purchase flow
A four-step series that introduces the brand story, sets expectation around variety packs, and routes new buyers into the right replenishment cadence.
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Case 08 — Marketing Automation
A lifecycle engine that runs on its own.
For a better-for-you soda brand, we built the welcome, education, replenishment, and re-engagement flows that turn first-time buyers into a base of habitual drinkers — without anyone babysitting the send button.
A retention story hiding inside an acquisition team.
The brand had a marketing team that could ship a beautiful drop and a sharp paid campaign. What it didn’t have was a quiet, always-on layer underneath — the email and SMS work that turns a first sip into a fridge habit.
Flows existed but were inherited, half-mapped, and unaudited. Some triggers fired twice. Some never fired. The agency stack had grown to four tools that didn’t cleanly talk to the source of truth.
The brief: rebuild the lifecycle engine end-to-end. Make it auditable. Make it own a chunk of revenue without a team standing over it.
Stop sending campaigns. Tend the engine.
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Decision 01
Give every flow one source of truth.
Subscription state, pack size, last purchase, last open, and channel preference in one record. When it changes, the right flow fires; when it shouldn’t, the system suppresses itself.
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Decision 02
Make every send traceable.
Deduping rules, lifecycle stages, and source-of-truth tagging, plus an audit log — so anyone can trace why a contact got what they got.
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Decision 03
Swap status updates for a weekly tuning ritual.
Subject lines rotate, triggers get re-thresholded, underperformers retire, and winners join the always-on rotation.
Eight flows, one source of truth, and a weekly tuning ritual.
Replenishment trigger
Trigger fires on inferred consumption window per pack size. Pulls discount logic from the source-of-truth promo calendar.
Education series
Three-touch nurture on prebiotics, sweetener positioning, and category context. Plain language. Built for forwarding.
Win-back program
Two-step recovery for lapsed subscribers and one-time buyers. Different copy, different cadence, different offers.
SMS overlay
Replenishment and drop announcements only. Strict opt-in pathway. Designed to never collide with the email program.
CRM hygiene & tagging
Deduping rules, lifecycle stages, source-of-truth tagging. Audit log so anyone can trace why a contact got what they got.
The send button isn’t the asset. The system is.
Every flow reads from the same source of truth: subscription state, pack size, last purchase, last open, channel preference. When that record changes, the right flow fires. When it shouldn’t, the system suppresses itself.
Weekly we sit with the team for a tuning meeting — not a status update. Subject lines get rotated. Triggers get re-thresholded. Underperformers get retired. Winners get promoted into the always-on rotation.
The team isn’t running campaigns anymore. They’re tending an engine.
Flows live
8 always-on
Cadence
Weekly tune
Ownership
Co-owned
What runs without a babysitter.
Flows that run themselves
Welcome, education, replenishment, and win-back run without anyone babysitting the send button.
Every send traceable
An audit log shows why any contact got what they got.
Weekly tune
The engine is co-owned with the team and tuned every week.
Lifecycle as brand experience.
The team stopped asking ‘what should we send this week’ and started asking ‘what should the system do differently next week.’ That’s the shift we hired for.Marketing leadership — OLIPOP
Other engagements in this neighborhood of work.
Skip the slides. Have the conversation.
A 30-minute conversation. No deck. We map your lifecycle and tell you honestly where to start.