A field guide · Vol. I

# Kept
things.

Presented by A. Speaker Role · Team · Spring 2026
29 · IV · 2026
For: the room.
Two pages. One ask.
Pin & Paper North Field Office Phase I

## What's
inside.

01 The trust gap
Findings · 12 min
02 Three pilots, scored
Evidence · 9 min
03 A way of working
Method · 7 min
04 What we ship next
Decisions · 8 min
Principles North Field Office Phase II

## Three rules we're keeping.

Pinned to the wall above every desk. We refer back to them when a decision feels too big to make from the seat we're in.
Rule · 01

### Write the
real sentence.

If a customer wouldn't read the email, the email is not the work. Plain words, signed by a person, sent on a Tuesday.

— write it by hand first.
Rule · 02

### Earn the
second look.

Every interaction in the first 72 hours is doing four times the work of one in week three. Spend accordingly.

no autoresponder, ever.
Rule · 03

### Keep the
handwriting.

The system is allowed to grow, but the voice on the other end stays small enough to know who you wrote to last week.

200 names, max.
Section II
Direction
& doctrine

## Where we
are going,
and why.

— turn the page —
Findings · detail North Field Office Phase III
Notice · 05
Action title

## The trust gap is built in the first 72 hours, not the first 7 days — and the cost compounds for the rest of the lifecycle.

### What we found

Three behavioural signals in the first 72 hours predict 18-month retention better than any feature-usage metric we tracked.

- Email open #2 — opening the second lifecycle email lifts D90 retention by 19 points.
- Personal salutation — accounts that received a written welcome retained 2.4× the cohort.
- Reply received — a single human reply within 24 hours is the single largest lever measured.

N = 14,200 · Q1 2026

### Why it matters

$4.1M projected retained ARR — current cohort.

The first three days are the only window where customers are both paying attention and willing to write back. Every interaction here does the work of roughly four interactions in week three.

The cost of getting this wrong is not refunds — it is the long, quiet churn of an account that never returns to the inbox.

Modelled on FY24 cohort behaviour

### What to do

- Rewrite emails 1–3 in human voice; ship behind a 50/50 holdout. Owner: lifecycle. Due: May 17.
- Route every signup to a named human for one personal reply within 24h, capped at the top 200 accounts/day. Owner: success. Due: May 24.
- Instrument the 72-hour window as a first-class metric in the weekly review. Owner: analytics. Due: June 1.

Pilot scope: top-decile signups
Retention, by cohort Phase III Evidence

## Curve
bends at
day three.

Cohorts that received a written welcome and a human reply within 24 hours retain at roughly 2× the rate of the templated cohort, and the gap holds steady for ninety days.

Templated welcome (control)
Written welcome
Written + human reply
% of cohort active, by day
100 75 50 25 0
D0 D7 D14 D30 D45 D60 D90
How we'll work North Field Office Phase IV

## From insight
to default,
in five moves.

A repeatable path each pilot follows, end to end, before it is allowed to graduate to the default experience for every customer.
1

### Frame

Translate the insight into a single behavioural hypothesis we can falsify in a sprint.

2

### Design

Smallest end-to-end change that lets the hypothesis be tested cleanly in one cycle.

3

### Pilot

Ship to a 50/50 holdout in one segment. Hold the line for two cycles before reading.

4

### Read

Pre-registered metrics only. Kill, scale, or extend — not three of three.

5

### Default

Promote to the default surface and retire the legacy path inside the same release.

Week 1 · Frame Week 2–3 · Design Week 3–6 · Pilot Week 7 · Read Week 8 · Default
Three pilots, side by side North Field Office Phase IV

## Where each
pilot earns
its keep.

Scored against the four levers that matter most this cycle. We will only carry forward bets that win on at least two.
Lever
Rewrite welcome
Quiet upgrades
Inbox-as-search
Time-to-impact
≤ 4 weeks
6–8 weeks
≤ 4 weeks
Build cost
low
medium
low
Retention lift (model)
+19 pts D90
+7 pts D90
+5 pts D90
Risk to power users
none
Material
soft, reversible
In numbers Phase III Evidence

## The case,
by the numbers.

Three figures we will report against every cycle. If one of these stops moving, the bet is over.
2.4×

### Retention
multiple

Cohort with written welcome + human reply, vs. templated control. Sustained through D90.

$4.1M

### Projected
retained ARR

Modelled on the current quarter's signup cohort, holding all other inputs constant.

72hr

### The window
that matters

Behaviour after the first 72 hours predicts 18-month retention better than any feature metric.

Client voice Phase III Evidence
"

> Three days in, someone wrote me a real sentence. I'd been a customer of theirs for nine months before I noticed I'd never been a customer anywhere else again.

Margaux Lévêque CFO · mid-market retailer · 14 months in
What's next North Field Office Phase V
From here

## Pick the
three
bets.

Three pilots in eight weeks. We'll bring back evidence the quarter after, and the question won't be whether to ship — it'll be which two to default.

### How we move this week

1

#### Pick the pilots

Confirm two of three by Friday. Owners named in the same conversation; calendars cleared.

2

#### Pre-register the read

Lock the metric, the holdout, and the kill criteria before any code ships. Analytics writes it; both sides sign.

3

#### Stand a Friday review

One slide each pilot, every Friday, until the bet defaults or dies. No exceptions, no makeup decks.