email-sequences

name	email-sequences
description	Write, revise, or extend Gravel God / Roadie Labs email sequences (Mission Control drip emails, lifecycle triggers, broadcasts). Use whenever the task touches mission_control/templates/emails/, sequence definitions, subjects, or new email-marketing ideas for either brand. Encodes the Physiqonomics-derived voice models, the conversion principles, the hard constraints, and the ship process.

Email Sequences — Gravel God + Roadie Labs

You are writing revenue email for two honest-critic cycling brands. The goal is one custom-plan sale per day ($15/wk, one payment, cap $249), which also feeds the coaching pipeline. The protected asset is trust: harsh public race scores earn it; every email either deposits or withdraws.

Read first (canonical, in gravel-race-automation)

1. docs/email-voice-model.md — voice + devices per brand (Physiqonomics-derived)
2. docs/email-conversion-principles.md — the five gears, masters' moves, council findings
3. docs/specs/race-countdown-trigger.md — the lifecycle-trigger spec (if touching triggers)

Hard constraints (non-negotiable)

• Product facts are the only claims allowed: built from the race's course profile + rider FTP + real weekly hours; 48h delivery; ZWO + PDF overview; course pacing/fueling targets; human rebuilds remaining weeks on reply; $15/wk, one payment, cap $249; coaching exists (small roster). Verify any race-specific number against race-data/<slug>.json before writing it.
• Never: fabricated stats/testimonials/examples, countdown timers, fake scarcity, defensive copy ("no sponsors", "no ambush"), identity- transformation promises ("become a competitor"), hype adjectives.
• Promise-tracking: whatever the welcome says about future email volume must be literally true of the sequence. Count the sales emails.
• Single-pitch posture: one sales email + one follow-up per sequence, then done. Anti_pitch/repitch templates are SHARED across welcome/nurture/ quiz/win-back — keep them self-contained (no references that only welcome readers would get).
• {race_name} merge field: only safe where enrollment guarantees source_data.race_name (quiz + countdown sequences). Never in welcome-track pitch emails — most subscribers never supplied a race.

Voice cheat-sheet

	Gravel God	Roadie Labs
Register	Warm, irreverent, first-person Matti	Deadpan, clinical, institutional "we" allowed
Profanity	≤1 per email, opinions only, never on data	Zero
Humor	Jokes allowed, never at the reader	Flat parenthetical only ("the climb is 'rolling' (it is not)")
Instead of a swear	—	A verdict sentence: "No." / "It isn't."
Honesty mechanism	Self-deprecation, concessions	Methodological transparency, error bars
Urgency voltage	One line inside a story	Full audit-finding arithmetic
Sign-off	— Matti	— Matti (terse body above it)

THE FRIEND-OPENER RULE (Matti, Jul 2026 — his words: "normal, ask simple q about them without wasting their time, and provide value"): openers talk about THEM, never about the email. When the capture context is known (race_name/race_slug in source_data), open with the callback + a value link + ONE small answerable question ("A-race or stepping stone? one word"). When anonymous, the question IS the opener ("which race? one line is plenty"). Engine supports {{#race_name}}...{{/race_name}} / {{^race_name}}...{{/race_name}} conditional blocks — one template, both branches, never leak mustache or an empty placeholder (tests: TestConditionalPersonalization).

Devices that must survive edits: objection headers in the reader's voice, the concession move, pitch-by-teaching, P.S. open loops, exit ramp EARLY + verb CTA LAST ("BUILD MY PLAN →"), scannable offer block (day-7 email only), representative sample week as proof, "everything models the rider, nothing models the race" as the competitive frame (never name competitor apps).

File map (gravel-race-automation repo — road emails also live HERE)

• Sequence defs: mission_control/sequences/*.py — road = road_*.py with "brand": "roadielabs"; absent brand key = gravelgod
• Templates: mission_control/templates/emails/sequences/*.html — keep each file's existing <style> shell; GG marketing = teal-link letter, GG post-purchase = boxed brand header, RL = monochrome (#1a1a1a on #f5f5f0)
• Engine (brand senders, UTM, unsubscribe): mission_control/services/sequence_engine.py
• Brand sender config: mission_control/config.py BRAND_SEQUENCE_SENDERS
• Worker (lead intake, sends brand field): workers/fueling-lead-intake/worker.js

Ship process

1. Write/edit templates + sequence defs. Subjects live in the defs, not the templates — update both.
2. Self-check against the constraints above, then against wordpress/slop_rules.py phrases.
3. For major rewrites (new sequence, new pitch angle): run the autoreason council (/council) — critique → counter-proposal → synthesis → 3 blind judges with randomized labels. Judge on: conversion power, cringe risk, trust preservation, brand differentiation, cohesion. Truncation check: verify every proposal file contains ALL emails before judging.
4. python3 -m pytest mission_control/tests/test_brand_routing.py mission_control/tests/test_sequence_engine.py -q (70+ must pass; also run any new tests). The registry test asserts every referenced template file exists.
5. Commit (stage ONLY your files — the repo often carries parallel WIP), push to main → Railway auto-redeploys Mission Control; copy is live for the next 15-min send cycle.

Ops notes

• Resend domains: gravelgodcycling.com + roadielabs.com both verified (road: DKIM/SPF/MX in Cloudflare via one-time authorization, Jul 2026). Senders: [e-mail] / [e-mail].
• Road sequences activate only if active: True AND the brand routes — the subscriber webhook reads the worker's brand field; the plan_purchased enrollment path may NOT carry brand yet (unverified).
• Pre-existing: ~76 mission_control dashboard test failures (401 auth, env-dependent) — not caused by email work; don't chase them.

Parked build-items (highest-leverage first)

1. Race-countdown lifecycle trigger — SPEC'd, see docs/specs/.
2. Footer doorknob: one-line plan link on ongoing content emails.
3. Reply-mining: harvest "reply with your race" answers into copy + personal weeks-remaining replies.
4. Sample week hosted on each brand's How-it-works page (emails reference the inline version only, deliberately, until this exists).
5. purchase_welcome as forwardable delight (the CD Baby move).