Part 1
Why twenty minutes beats two days
A person who has just filled in a form still has your tab open and still remembers why they came. Two days later they have forgotten, and your message arrives as an interruption rather than a continuation. The same words perform completely differently depending on when they land.
Move your first follow up to minutes rather than days and change nothing else. It is the single cheapest test in lifecycle marketing.
Part 2
Event driven against calendar driven
A calendar sequence sends on day one, day three and day seven regardless of what the person did. An event sequence waits for a signal and reacts to it. Calendar is easier to build and it is why so many people receive a nudge to finish something they finished yesterday.
Any message that could be embarrassing if the person already acted belongs on an event, not a calendar.
Part 3
The quiet cost of a nightly batch
Many stacks process automation once a night. That turns every twenty minute intention into an up to twenty four hour wait, and nobody notices because the report still says the mail went out. It is the most common gap between a designed sequence and a running one.
Ask your tool how often it evaluates conditions. If the answer is nightly, your timing choices are decorative.
Part 4
When to stop sending entirely
A sequence that never ends is a machine for generating complaints. Decide up front how many messages someone gets before you stop, and treat silence as an answer rather than a reason to try harder.
Write the stop condition into the sequence on the day you build it, not after the first complaint.