Trial signups but no second session

One well-timed email that pulls a trial user back for the second session — the one where the habit forms — built from what they left behind in session one.

When to run it

Session one looks great in the analytics — signups explore, click around, sometimes even set something up — and then a large share never log in again. Nothing went wrong that a support ticket would catch; the trial just lost the fight for their attention against everything else in their week.

Why it works

The second session is where a trial becomes a habit: the user comes back on purpose, to the thing they left behind. A rescue email works because it restores the context that evaporated — what they set up, what it was about to show them, and the shortest path back in. It works best framed as unfinished business ("your import finished", "here's what your data looks like now"), not as a generic "we miss you".

The play

1. Start the clock when the first session ends — the rescue is timed from when they leave, not from when they signed up.
2. Give them two days to come back on their own.
3. If they haven't, send one email built from their own session: the thing they created, the next step it unlocks, one link straight back into it.
4. Exit the moment a second session starts, so nobody engaged gets "rescued".

Ship it with Hogsend

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

export const secondSessionRescue = defineJourney({
  meta: {
    id: "second-session-rescue",
    trigger: { event: "session.first_ended" },
    entryLimit: "once",
    suppress: hours(0),
    exitOn: [{ event: "session.started" }],
  },
  run: async (user, ctx) => {
    const returned = await ctx.waitForEvent({
      event: "session.started",
      timeout: days(2),
      label: "await-second-session",
    });
    if (!returned.timedOut) return;
    await sendEmail({
      to: user.email,
      userId: user.id,
      template: "onboarding/come-back-to-it",
      props: user.properties, // what they set up rides into the template
    });
  },
});

The trial-length version — reminders keyed to the expiry date instead of the session gap — is the trial conversion sequence recipe.

How you'll know

Second-session rate within 72 hours of the first session, for rescued versus unrescued cohorts. Downstream, watch trial-to-paid for users who had a second session versus those who didn't — that gap is the number that justifies the play.