Before the trip: reassure, wayfind, bank the value. The customer's four questions (did it work, which platform, which coach, was it worth it) go unanswered on every channel while the window sells taxis and swaps over them. One arc per trip answers all four in order and demotes every sell below the reassurance, with disruption yielding everything to the service layer. The stake is won-trip lifetime value: £115.62 against £22.92 when the trip goes wrong.
The highest-stakes window of the relationship is three sells and no wayfinding.
“Prove my upgrade is real and get me to my seat. The question changes as the trip approaches: what will First be like, did it work and where is my ticket, right platform and right coach, and was it worth it.”
Why it happens The upgrade does not feel real. A reference code with no visible seat reads as not a real reservation, and nothing answers the morning's questions: platform, coach, will it be honoured.
The behaviour we are driving Board the right coach on the right platform without contacting support, feel the value on board, and arrive trusting the product enough to come back.
| The moment | The change | Phase | Who builds it |
|---|---|---|---|
| The catering email same day as purchase, one operator's services | Changed A silence becomes an owned beat: one expectation-setting email for the long-lead tail, per-operator inclusions, tested against a holdout with a stated go and no-go. | Phase 1 | BrazeAnalytics |
| The day-before reassurance T-22h | Changed Push joins as primary for armed users; the email leg becomes an A/B against the proven control with a rollback floor; reach extends beyond the current narrow eligibility. | Phase 1 | BrazeAnalytics |
| The morning wayfinding travel morning | Changed A wayfinding push that does not exist today becomes the centre of the morning, with one cap-exempt correction, gated honestly on the data path that makes it real. | Phase 2 | Backend engineeringBrazeAnalytics |
| The ride to the station travel morning, after wayfinding: the surviving test arm's clock | Changed A wayfinding push that does not exist today becomes the centre of the morning, with one cap-exempt correction, gated honestly on the data path that makes it real. | Phase 2 | Backend engineeringBrazeAnalytics |
| The value moment on board | New A new consent-free modal at the one moment the product's value is physically felt, shipped without a fabricated figure. | Phase 2 | App engineeringAnalytics |
| The arrival touch at arrival | Changed No retirement, no re-point: the send joins the order, gains disruption suppression, is personalised on the home station within Veezu's covered stations, and its figure… | Phase 1 | Braze |
6 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.
Phase 1 ships on Braze and Analytics with no app release; Phase 2 waits for engineering. The journey map shows which is which, card by card.
| The treatment | Who gets it | What stops it: caps and suppression | When nothing is sent |
|---|---|---|---|
| The wait email | Winners whose trip is seven or more days out | Marketing layer, inside the arc's once-per-trip-per-send rule. Suppression Refund or cancel exits the arc; live disruption yields the whole arc to the service layer. | For short-lead winners the answer is do nothing: the day-before beat is hours away. This email exists only where the wait is long enough for doubt. |
| The day before | Every reachable winner at T-22h | Reassurance class within the arc; once per trip. Suppression Refund or cancel exits; disruption yields; the episode flag stands broadcasts down. | The beat is reassurance. A customer whose trip is tomorrow does not need a cross-sell; the arbitration order enforces that downstream. |
| The morning | Push-armed winners on travel morning | Reassurance class; the single correction re-issue is cap-exempt by ruling. Suppression Disruption yields the arc: a disrupted trip gets service comms, not a cheerful platform line. | Where the payload is unavailable at fire time the push does not send a vague fallback: the trip state carries the journey and the push stays silent. A wayfinding push without wayfinding is a sell slot in disguise. |
| The live pin on the lock screen | iOS winners from T-2h | Not a send once started; the start event sits in the reassurance class. Suppression Disruption flips the pin's content to the service state, not a marketing message. | Where the pin starts, the push suppresses: one wayfinding answer per customer, never two. |
| On board | Winners on a non-disrupted trip, once on board | One render per trip. Suppression Disruption hard-suppresses; refund or cancel exits. | On a disrupted trip the honest action is silence from marketing: the service layer owns the customer. |
| The persistent trip state | Every winner, the whole window | Not a send. Suppression None: it is never consent-gated and never suppressed; its content changes state instead. | The state is the do-nothing answer done properly: solving the need in the product beats adding a message, and most of this journey's sends are alerts pointing at it. |
| The day-before email family, kept as the control | Its current narrow eligibility, unchanged | As today. Suppression As today, plus the arc's episode exclusions as they land. | Do nothing, deliberately: this row's treatment is the absence of change. |
| Ride cross-sell to the station | Winners whose trip starts in the ride partner's coverage cities | Commercial class within the arc's order. Suppression Suppressed on disrupted trips; loses same-window collisions to wayfinding and logs the loss. | The sell is legitimate; its rank is not. Below operational and reassurance, always. |
| Ride cross-sell from the station | Winners arriving at one of the 78 Veezu-covered stations (console-confirmed filter), personalised on their home station | Commercial class. Suppression Disrupted trips suppress: a delayed arrival is exactly when this push currently fires into anger. | At arrival the reassurance job is done; a relevant sell is acceptable if it ranks correctly and shuts up during disruption. |
| The train-swap reminder | Ticket buyers on swap-capable operators; upgrade winners only when the same customer also bought the ticket | Commercial class; re-entry after 2 days with no exit criteria is reviewed as part of the same pass. Suppression Disruption yields; loses same-window collisions to wayfinding. | For a customer holding a won upgrade on the same trip, the honest question is whether a swap sell belongs in their morning at all; the kill threshold answers it with data. |
| The legacy swap push | Unknown: whatever cohort its unidentified trigger still selects | Outside every rule until its caller is known. Suppression None known. | A send nobody can explain does not get to keep firing at customers because switching it off takes effort. |
| The catering email | Same-day purchasers on one operator's services, email opted in | Commercial class; joins the order. Suppression Disruption yields. | If the reassurance beats already carry per-operator inclusions, a separate catering email may be the estate answering a question the journey already answers. |
| The question | Owner |
|---|---|
| The catering email's future once the inclusions block exists: stand as a governed send, or fold into the beats. The fold is the smaller estate. | Sheran |
| Does the Veezu agreement allow the ride push to personalise and, where relevant, narrow by the customer's home station, and what is the revenue impact? Today the push already fires only on arrival at one of 78 Veezu-covered stations (console-confirmed); the proposal adds the home station so the message speaks to arriving home or arriving away and never reaches anyone outside coverage. | Sheran |
| Ratify the post-win slot arbitration this pack builds on as a working assumption: this journey owns every marketing slot while the won trip is pre-travel; the win beat itself is exempt as the entry hand-off. | Sheran |
| The 22-month timing test: which arm wins on the read you hold, or should it close without a winner? One decision retires two arms. | Blocks launch Analytics: Ivi and Ben |
| The non-inferiority floor for the day-before email A/B, sized on the proven family's baseline, and the reach sizing that states the family's true coverage. | Blocks launch Analytics: Ivi and Ben |
| The interim platform-and-coach source pre the live rail feed, its freshness, and whether a platform-change event can reach Braze. Decides Row 3's phase. | Blocks launch Engineering and Product |
| Do refund and cancel events reach Braze fast enough for instant arc suppression, and does anything consume them today? | Blocks launch Engineering and Product |
| The ride pick-up pair's full audience panel: is the measurement holdout excluded there as it is on the drop-off pair and the day-before family? | Lisa, and the Braze developer |
| # | The ask | Hand back | Start here |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Decide the 22-month timing test on the read you hold: which arm wins, or does it close without a winner? One decision retires two arms. | The decision. | The ride pick-up row on the matrix. |
| 2 | Size the non-inferiority floor for the day-before email A/B on the proven family’s baseline, and state the family’s true coverage. | The floor and the reach sizing. | The measurement position on the Campaign brief. |
| 3 | Define the deflection baseline: does the trip state, made prominent, already deflect most of the 1,753 anxiety tickets? The wayfinding push’s marginal case depends on it. | The baseline. | The wayfinding row. |
| 4 | Size the long-lead slice (won seven or more days out): go or no-go on the wait email’s test power. | Go or no-go. | The wait-email row. |
| 5 | Substantiate the saved amount (the walk-up anchor is unconfirmed) and build the persona register trait, nightly. | The figure and the trait. | The on-board modal row. |
Conversion is behaviour, never opens: the catering email’s open-based success is the standing instrument fault, and every canvas converts on purchase or behaviour from day one.