Nudge signups to the aha moment on day one

A conditional welcome-day email that only goes to the signups who stall before your product's first moment of value — the ones who got there on their own never see it.

When to run it

Your signup funnel converts but your activation funnel doesn't: accounts get created, the core action — first project, first import, first send — never happens. The gap between user.signed_up and that first value event is where most trials die, and it's widest in the first 24 hours.

Why it works

A signup is the peak of the user's intent; every hour after it, the reason they signed up gets colder. A nudge that lands the same day speaks to someone who still remembers why they came. The key is to nudge only the people who actually stalled — a welcome blast to everyone trains users to ignore you, while a conditional nudge reads as "we noticed you got stuck".

The play

1. Pick ONE activation moment — the single action that predicts retention, not a checklist of five — and make sure your analytics records it.
2. On signup, wait a few hours for that moment to happen on its own.
3. If it hasn't, send one email that removes the biggest blocker: link straight into the step, not to the homepage.
4. If it has, stay silent. The best onboarding email is the one the activated user never receives.

Ship it with Hogsend

ctx.waitForEvent is the whole trick: the journey enters on signup, waits durably for the activation event, and only the timed-out branch sends. No cron, no state table, no "did we already email them" flag.

import { defineJourney, hours, sendEmail } from "@hogsend/engine";

export const dayOneNudge = defineJourney({
  meta: {
    id: "day-one-activation-nudge",
    trigger: { event: "user.signed_up" },
    entryLimit: "once",
    suppress: hours(0),
  },
  run: async (user, ctx) => {
    const activated = await ctx.waitForEvent({
      event: "project.created",
      timeout: hours(6),
      label: "await-first-project",
    });
    if (!activated.timedOut) return; // they got there on their own
    await sendEmail({
      to: user.email,
      userId: user.id,
      template: "activation/first-project-nudge",
    });
  },
});

For the multi-step version — milestone celebrations and a second nudge — see the activation milestones recipe.

How you'll know

Activation rate within 24 hours of signup, split by whether the nudge was sent. Because the journey only emails the stalled cohort, the honest comparison is stalled-and-nudged versus stalled-before-you-shipped-it — or put a holdout on the journey and let the lift number settle the question.