Email Automation · Mailchimp · Trial to Activation · Branching Logic
💡 Project snapshot: B2B SaaS · 14-day trial · 7 emails · 2 paths · 6 tags · Tools: Mailchimp, Notion
Teamo is a fictional B2B SaaS platform that helps small and mid-size businesses manage people operations: employee onboarding, performance reviews, and team engagement, all in one place. For this project, I designed and built a simulated branching onboarding email sequence in Mailchimp to guide new trial users toward activating their account and converting to a paid plan within 14 days. The sequence runs automatically from signup, splits based on user behavior at Day 3, and handles both activated and non-activated users with separate, relevant email paths.
Most SaaS trial users never fully activate. They sign up, look around, and leave without experiencing the core value of the product. For Teamo, this means a user never sees how employee profiles, review cycles, and engagement surveys work together.
The onboarding sequence exists to close that gap. Its job is to guide new users to their first activation action as quickly as possible, and to respond differently depending on whether they get there or not.
The single most important action a new Teamo user can take in their trial is adding their first employee profile. Everything else in the platform connects to it: performance reviews, onboarding checklists, and engagement surveys all require at least one profile to function.
This is the activation trigger for the sequence. Once a user completes this action, they are considered activated and move into a different set of emails than users who have not.
A linear sequence treats every user the same, regardless of what they do. That creates two problems: users who activate quickly get emails that feel irrelevant (being told to do something they already did), and users who are stuck get emails that assume they are making progress when they are not.
A branching sequence solves both. Activated users get emails that push them forward toward conversion. Non-activated users get emails that remove friction and offer help. Both paths are grounded in where the user actually is, not where we assume they are.
The trial runs for 14 days. Emails are timed to create a gentle but consistent cadence without overwhelming the user. The first two emails go to everyone. From Day 3 the sequence splits based on activation status.
The sequence was built in Mailchimp using the Customer Journeys feature. Below is a walkthrough of the key components.