Lifecycle email
Behavior-triggered email sent based on where a user is in their journey — welcome, activation, retention, winback, etc.
Lifecycle email is the discipline of sending emails triggered by where a user is in their journey with your product or brand — distinct from broadcast email (sent on a calendar to a whole list). The major lifecycle stages are acquisition (cold outreach, lead nurture), onboarding (welcome, activation), retention (engagement nudges, feature education), expansion (upsell, cross-sell), and winback (lapsed customer recovery).
Each stage has different goals and different effective tactics. Welcome sequences emphasize getting users to their first "aha" moment quickly. Activation emails target specific in-app behaviors. Winback emails ask questions rather than discounting. Mature email programs typically have 8–15 lifecycle flows running simultaneously, each triggered by different events.
Lifecycle email outperforms broadcast on virtually every metric per send — higher opens, higher clicks, higher conversion, lower unsubscribes. The reason is relevance: triggered emails arrive when the recipient cares about the content. The investment is upfront (designing the triggers, writing the sequences, wiring the analytics), but the ongoing send-and-conversion economics dominate.