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Activation, Aha Moment & Churn Signals

Analytics/Activation, Aha Moment & Churn Signals.md
sharedUpdated Aug 23, 2026

Activation, Aha Moment & Churn Signals

Purpose

Three related but distinct things, worth keeping separate rather than blurred together: the activation action (self-directed, trackable in a fixed window), the aha moment (real value experienced, often depends on someone else acting too), and churn signals (automated follow-up when neither happens in time).

Core Activation Action, Per Role

Merchant: publish first Offer (not just create it as a draft — a draft with nothing live hasn't activated). Maps to the existing offer_published event (11. Analytics → Events).

Creator: submit first application. Maps to application_submitted. Deliberately not "get approved" — approval depends on a Merchant's decision, outside the Creator's own control, so it's not a fair activation measure for the Creator's own behavior.

Both are chosen specifically because they're entirely within the user's own control — a fair activation metric shouldn't depend on another party acting first.

The Aha Moment — Deliberately Separate From Activation

Merchant: first sale happens through their Offer — proof a creator actually converted a real buyer, not just that the Offer is technically live.

Creator: first commission earned — proof the model works for them personally, not just that they applied.

Both naturally take longer than activation, since both depend on someone else's action (a Creator applying and converting, or a buyer purchasing). Measuring time-to-aha as its own metric matters because it can be long even when activation is fast — a Merchant can publish an Offer in minutes and still wait days for a real sale; conflating the two would hide that gap.

Detection — Rule-Based, Not AI

Consistent with "rules before AI" (00. Mission & Principles, 04. Fraud Prevention): whether a user has completed their core action is a deterministic query against existing events (11. Analytics → Events), not something requiring AI judgment. A scheduled Celery job (02. Background Jobs) checks, on a recurring basis, which users crossed the 24h/48h thresholds without the relevant event:

Every hour:
  Find users created 24-25h ago with no offer_published/application_submitted event
    AND no 24h nudge already sent → trigger 24h nudge
  Find users created 48-49h ago with no core action completed
    AND no 48h follow-up already sent → trigger 48h churn follow-up, flag as at-risk

Nudge Delivery — Three Channels, One Underlying Signal

All three read from the same "has this user completed their core action" flag — no separate logic per channel:

  • Email: new Notification Logic trigger, activation_nudge_24h and churn_followup_48h — sent via the marketing domain (news.wesellvia.com, 06. Email Infrastructure), since this is a lifecycle/growth message, not a transactional receipt
  • In-app notification: same trigger, delivered through existing notification infrastructure (03. Database → notifications table)
  • Tooltip: purely frontend — the dashboard reads the same "core action completed" flag and conditionally renders a contextual prompt pointing at the relevant UI element. No backend push needed; this is a read, not an event.

AI's role here is optional, not load-bearing: the decision to nudge is the rule-based query above. The nudge's wording could optionally use the existing copy-assist AI feature (02. AI Services) for personalization later — not required for MVP, and never the thing deciding whether a nudge fires.

Churn Signal Tracking

activation_nudges
  id
  user_id
  tier            (24h_nudge / 48h_churn_followup)
  sent_at
  core_action     (which action they were nudged toward)

Prevents duplicate nudges, and the 48h tier doubles as a churn-risk flag — surfaced in 10. Admin Panel / Founder AI Command Console as an "at-risk new users" view, not just an outbound email with no internal visibility.

Metrics This Feeds

Extends 11. Analytics → KPIs and Funnel Tracking with two new explicit measures: activation rate within 24h (per role) and time-to-aha-moment (median days from signup to first sale/first commission) — both currently absent from the existing funnel definitions, which stopped at "first sale verified" without distinguishing activation from aha.

Open Questions

  • Exact nudge copy/tooltip content — not written here, a 09. UX → Copy Guidelines task once ready to build the actual screens
  • Whether a 72h+ tier is worth adding beyond the 48h churn follow-up — reasonable to hold off until there's real data on how much the 48h nudge actually recovers

Update (2026-08-23): Campaign → Offer Vocabulary Reconciled

All "campaign" references above renamed "Offer" (Core Activation Action, the aha-moment description, and the campaign_published event reference, now offer_published) — no separate Campaign entity exists (01. Domain Model, 2026-08-23). This doc previously implied Offer and Campaign were still two separate things ("publish first campaign... not just create an Offer"); corrected to describe one entity's draft → live transition.

Referenced by