Trial emails that work before day 14, not after

A free trial has one built in deadline and most products waste it. The only email many trials ever send is the receipt after conversion, or the “your trial has ended” note after it is too late to matter. The job is the opposite: catch trials before they expire and nudge the ones who never added a card.

Our situation

GetFluxly runs a 14 day free trial with the full product and no card required. That is deliberate. We would rather you spend day one wiring up real data than typing a card number. But it means nothing forces a payment decision until the deadline does, so the countdown has to be visible in the inbox, not just in a corner of the app.

Two facts about a trial account decide every email we send:

• Activated or not. Activated means at least one live automation that has sent email. An activated trial is deciding whether to pay. A non activated trial is still deciding whether the product works.
• Card added or not. Adding a card is also one of our trial tasks and unlocks extra AI credits, so we get to mention it as a gain, not only as a deadline.

Urgency on someone who never installed the SDK is just noise. Help on someone whose automations already sent 200 emails is condescending. The branch matters more than the copy.

What to track

• trial_started, with trial_ends_at stored as a profile trait
• card_added
• subscription_started
• automation_activated, kept as a live count on the profile
• automated_emails_sent, a rolling count, because “your automations sent 214 emails this week” is the best conversion argument we have

Triggers, conditions, and the rules we took

Global condition first: subscription_started exits the entire sequence. Card asks are skipped once card_added fires. Every email checks conditions at send time, not when it was scheduled.

1. Day 7, halfway. Branch on activation. Activated and no card: show their own numbers, ask for the card, mention the AI credits unlock. Not activated: no card ask at all, just the shortest path to a first automated send and an offer to help.
2. Day 11, three days left. Only to accounts without a card. State plainly what happens at expiry: automations pause, data stays. Concrete beats ominous.
3. Day 13, one day left. Short. One line, one button.
4. Day 17, three days after expiry. The grace email. Paused, not deleted, one click resumes. A surprising number of conversions happen here, after the pressure is off.

One honesty rule we hold ourselves to: say exactly what expiry does. We pause sending. We do not delete anything. Vague loss (“you will lose access to your data!”) converts worse than a concrete picture, and it costs trust you will want later.

The timeline

Four emails, and an activated account that added a card early receives none of them.

The emails

1. Day 7, activated, no card

GetFluxlyhello@getfluxly.com

DAY 7 · ACTIVATED, NO CARD

Halfway through, and your automations are already working

---

Hi {{first_name}},

Quick numbers from your first week: your automations sent {{emails_sent_count}} emails without you touching anything.

Your trial ends on {{trial_end_date}}. Add a card now and nothing changes on that day, everything just keeps running. It also unlocks extra AI credits for the rest of your trial.

Add a card

2. Day 11, three days left

GetFluxlyhello@getfluxly.com

DAY 11 · NO CARD

Your trial ends {{trial_end_date}}

---

Hi {{first_name}},

Three days left. Here is exactly what happens if the trial lapses: your automations pause and stop sending. Your events, profiles, and setup all stay intact.

If GetFluxly is doing its job, this takes a minute:

Add a card

If it is not, reply and tell me what is missing. I read every one.

3. Day 17, grace

GetFluxlyhello@getfluxly.com

DAY 17 · AFTER EXPIRY

Your automations are paused, not gone

---

Hi {{first_name}},

Your trial ended a few days ago, so your automations are paused. Everything you set up is still there, and one click turns it all back on.

Resume my automations

No rush, and no drip campaign after this one. This is the last email about it.

Setting it up

1. Store trial_ends_at as a trait so every email can compute “days left” instead of hardcoding send dates.
2. Define activation as one event, then branch the halfway email on it.
3. Make subscription_started a hard exit for the sequence, checked at send time.
4. Write the expiry email to describe exactly what pauses and what persists. Then make sure the product actually behaves that way.
5. Keep one grace email after expiry, then stop. Promising it is the last one, and meaning it, is part of why it works.