Nurture Cadence That Silently Starved a Segment
A B2B SaaS company runs a single engagement program with three streams: 'Trial', 'Mid-Funnel', and 'Late-Stage'. Each stream has a 4-week cadence and 6 emails. The program uses a default program status of 'In Progress' and a per-person communication limit of 1 email per day across the engagement program. Recently, the 'Mid-Funnel' stream's weekly send volume dropped from ~2,000 to ~400, while 'Trial' stayed flat. The team also added a new smart campaign last month that adds anyone with 'Lead Score > 50' to the Mid-Funnel stream, and a separate campaign that removes anyone who opens an email from all streams. The engagement program's stream membership is set to 'Add to stream' with no removal rule. Reporting shows Mid-Funnel members are still present but receiving far fewer sends.
1. Identify the most plausible explanation for the Mid-Funnel volume collapse, distinguishing between membership loss and send suppression.
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Members are 'still present' per reporting, so this is a send suppression / eligibility problem, not membership loss. The strongest candidate is the interaction between the communication limit and the open-based removal campaign:
- The 'remove on open' campaign removes people from all streams. If it removes them from the engagement program entirely, they would no longer count as members - but reporting says they're present, so either the removal is partial or reporting is counting program membership more broadly.
- More likely: the open-based removal campaign removes people from streams but they remain in the program, and the new 'score > 50' add campaign keeps re-adding them, creating churn where people bounce in and out and miss cadence windows.
- The communication limit of 1/day is per engagement program; if the Trial stream is also sending, shared people get their one send consumed by Trial, starving Mid-Funnel. Check overlap between Trial and Mid-Funnel membership.
Recommend checking: (a) overlap counts between streams, (b) whether the open-removal campaign removes from stream vs. program, (c) cadence alignment so streams don't collide on the same day.
2. The team wants Mid-Funnel volume restored without increasing total email volume. Propose a configuration change and justify it.
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Do not raise the communication limit - that increases total volume and risks deliverability. Instead:
- Stagger cadences. Offset the Trial and Mid-Funnel cadence start days so overlapping members receive one stream per day rather than competing for the single daily send. This restores Mid-Funnel sends without adding net volume.
- Fix the open-removal logic. Removing people from all streams on a single open is too aggressive; scope removal to the specific stream or require a stronger signal. This stops the churn that keeps Mid-Funnel members from advancing.
- Reconcile the add campaign. Ensure 'score > 50' adds don't repeatedly reset cadence position; set the add to only fire when not already a member.
Justification: the constraint is 'no increase in total volume,' so the levers are allocation (staggering, limit scoping) and membership stability (removal/add logic), not send frequency.