Every email in these journeys starts with three questions: who is reading it, where they are in their decision, and how they feel that day.
Role
Product Manager
Timeline
Oct 2024 to Sep 2026
Tools
NetSuite (Oracle), Figma
first-email open rate, after I narrowed the second show to qualified, hot leads
unsubscribes on the second show's journey
Dollar amounts and figures on this page have been altered for non-disclosure purposes. Percentages reflect actual results. Customer and district names are replaced with placeholders.
Trade shows were where the follow-up gap cost the most. Booth visitors and qualified leads were not followed up consistently once the show ended, and each sales rep handled it in their own way, if at all.
How do we turn the people we meet at an event into customers, at scale, in each sales rep's own pitch and tone?
Finding the sales reps' pain points. I interviewed the sales reps to learn their sales process: what had been working for them and what hadn't. They named two pain points. The survey and the journey were designed to close both gaps.
Pain point 1
Lead information wasn't updated in the CRM on time, so details got lost between the booth and the office.
Pain point 2
A rep could give a great sales pitch and the lead would show interest, but gaps in follow-up let the lead go cold, and the opportunity was lost.
What we built together: a lead survey in NetSuite. Working with the sales rep, I created a survey form in NetSuite for the Tradeshow B journey. It asks leads for:
Before the show
The survey link goes in the first two emails, so we can profile the leads and the rep can plan the sales pitch before the event.
During the show
The rep uses the same form to enter leads into the system live, so customer enablement or marketing in the office can help as needed with the most up-to-date information about each lead.
From one original trade-show journey, I built two separate journeys, one for each sales rep's show, because each trade show draws a different kind of lead, and each one responds differently to timing, context, and how often we reach out. The stages stay the same; what changes is the wait time between touchpoints, the wording, and the channel.
| Tradeshow A | Tradeshow B | |
|---|---|---|
| Who we meet at the booth | Decision makers and influencers: directors, program managers | People who work in the facilities every day: lieutenants and captains |
| How they decide | They weigh options and bring others in, so the decision takes longer | Direct, straightforward, and decisive; they see the issues, the pain points, and the solutions that don't work firsthand |
| Wait time between touchpoints | Longer, to match a slower decision cycle | Shorter, to keep pace with how quickly they decide |
| Wording | Strategic and value-focused: outcomes, ROI, and case studies they can share with others who weigh in | Plain and specific: the day-to-day problem, how the product fixes it, and the next step |
| Channel | Email nurture, then a scheduled meeting, virtual or in person | Personal email from the sales rep, followed quickly by a call or a sample |
Awareness & interest
The pre-attendee list is scrubbed and uploaded to NetSuite. About a week out, an invitation to visit our booth goes to selected leads, followed by a reminder 1 day before the event. Social media posts announce the event on the same schedule, with content aligned to the emails.
Consideration
The sales rep meets visitors at the booth. Hot leads get a fast lane: a reminder to set up a meeting, virtual or in person ("Nice to meet you, I will reach out to schedule a meeting as discussed"), with a branch for whether the show has an app.
Conversion · 2 weeks
Two business days after the show, the journey branches on whether the person stopped by the booth. Both emails are built around "Top Products Transforming [Industry Name] Today".
Sales
Responders are flagged as qualified leads automatically and handed to sales. The rep logs the activity, changes the lead from unqualified to qualified, and creates an opportunity. If the customer asks for a sample, a pre-survey sample form goes out, and a post-survey form follows 3 days later. When a quote is accepted and a sales order is created, the lead converts to a prospect.
Closure
Leads who still haven't responded after a second outreach get a closure email: "We will reach back out and check in with you in 3 months." If they respond, the rep follows up by call; the win/loss reason then starts another workflow to reach back out.
Behavior decides the next step, not a fixed calendar: a booth visit, an open or click, and a reply each send the lead down a different path.
Clear hand-offs to sales: the automation turns responders into qualified leads and sends reps a list of who did not open or respond, so reps spend their calls where they matter.
Replies reach the team, not one inbox: I routed replies to a shared sales email folder as well as the rep's own email, so no lead waits on one person.
Data checks along the way: unsubscribes, bounces, whether the post-show attendee list was uploaded, and each lead's last logged activity.
A goal for every stage, so the journey is measured against the sales funnel, not just email engagement:
My contribution to the CRM
I introduced a new data point on each account and contact in NetSuite: the trade show where we first made contact, kept even when the lead didn't go through. Before, that history disappeared once a lead went cold. With it, sales can see where a relationship started, re-engage those contacts before the same show comes around again, and trace a later purchase back to the event that opened the door.
Two trade-show journeys have run end to end, and together they produced 236 leads and $39,434 in revenue that NetSuite attributes to the campaigns.
The second journey went to a much smaller list: 288 contacts on the first email instead of 3,378. That was deliberate. These were qualified, hot leads that needed follow-up right away, so I narrowed the send to them to raise the conversion rate. First-email opens nearly doubled, bounces dropped from 7.7% to 1.4%, nobody unsubscribed, and leads rose from 56 to 180.
| Journey | Emails | First-email list | First-email opens | Leads | Purchasers | Bounce rate, first email | Unsubscribes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Tradeshow B 2026 (Jan to Feb) | 5 | 3,378 | 33% | 56 | 6 | 7.7% | 84 |
| 2 · Tradeshow A 2026 (Mar to Apr) | 6 | 288 | 64% | 180 | 2 | 1.4% | 0 |
How the two journeys were built and reused
Tradeshow B and Tradeshow A were two separate customer journeys, each built from the same original version: Tradeshow B for one sales rep's trade show and Tradeshow A for another's. For each one, I designed and proposed the email templates, iterated on them with the sales rep's input, and got the rep's final approval before launch. Once approved, a journey's templates are reused for other trade shows in the same industry, so each new show starts from a proven journey instead of from scratch.
Second journey
The school district's name and other identifying details have been replaced with placeholders such as [District] and [City] for non-disclosure purposes.
A self-initiated project. No one asked for this journey, and there was no requirement for it. I saw a communication gap and a big opportunity, and learned how the account works through its sales rep. The rep stressed that targeting the budget cycle matters: schools receive funding and have to spend it, or they lose it. That led me to conclude the account was a strong fit for a customer journey timed to its budget cycle, so I proposed one to improve how we communicate with it.
This builds on the persona research on the automations page (decision maker, influencer, and end user). On top of who our customers are, I mapped when they can spend. Public-sector buyers run on fiscal calendars, so the same email lands very differently depending on where the reader is in their budget year. I laid out what each quarter means for federal and state buyers, and what marketing should focus on and say in each one.
| Quarter | Activity | Marketing focus | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 (Oct to Dec) | New budgets active | Reintroduce offerings, emphasize readiness | "Start your FY strong" email and ads |
| Q2 (Jan to Mar) | Steady execution | ROI case studies, performance updates | "See how we improved uptime in federal sites" |
| Q3 (Apr to Jun) | Pre-year-end planning | Early urgency, remind about unused funds | "Maximize your remaining FY funds" |
| Q4 (Jul to Sep) | Peak spending | Urgency, quick-ship deals, compliance focus | "Buy before Sept 30" campaign |
| Quarter | Activity | Marketing focus | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 (Jul to Sep) | Budgets activated | Awareness and onboarding | "Kick off your FY strong" email and ads |
| Q2 (Oct to Dec) | Steady execution | ROI content, upsell opportunities | "How to stretch your facility budget" guide |
| Q3 (Jan to Mar) | Mid-year review | Budget reminder campaigns | "Plan for mid-year adjustments" email |
| Q4 (Apr to Jun) | Peak spending | Urgency-driven offers | "Use remaining FY funds before June 30" |
Why a journey just for [District]
Interviews with the sales rep who covers [District] showed that [District] makes budget decisions differently from other ISDs, so a generic school-district journey would have reached people at the wrong moment. I built a detailed journey around [District]'s own cycle: its budget year opens in June, issues surface once school starts, buying stops over winter break, and the budget cycle ends in mid-April.
Every phase starts from a trigger in the customer's world, not ours, and names its goal and its audience before any email is written. The ask grows only as the reader gets closer to spending. Below, each phase shows my thinking and its sequence of emails; the board screenshots show every email's timing and wording.
Phase 1 · June to July
My thinking: a new budget year means full inboxes and plans not yet set. A sales ask now would be ignored, or worse, unsubscribed. So the three emails go from "we noticed something useful" to "here's who we are" to "here's something free you can use," and every subject line tells the reader up front that nothing is being asked of them.
Phase 2 · September to November
My thinking: the timing of each email follows when the pain is felt. In September the problems are fresh, so I lead with empathy and leave the product out. In October they're looking for answers, so the product shows up as the answer, with proof. In November budget talks start internally before the holiday lull, so I hand them the math to bring into that conversation.
Phase 3 · December to January
My thinking: nobody is buying over the break, and a sales email would feel tone-deaf. Going silent for two months, though, would undo the trust built since June. So this phase carries goodwill only: holiday greetings for Thanksgiving and the New Year, sent as part of the company's holiday campaign rather than as separate sales emails.
Phase 4 · February to April
My thinking: these readers don't need to be convinced the product works; the earlier phases did that for the people who use it. What slows them down is friction: paperwork, pricing questions, and finding the contract. So this phase removes friction first and adds urgency last. The tone moves from "no rush" in February to a soft deadline in March and a hard deadline in April, matching how close the real deadline is.
The procurement email has one version for healthy or expanding accounts and one for stable accounts.
Phase 5 · May
My thinking: the journey doesn't end at the deadline. Buyers need to see value so they come back, and non-buyers shouldn't be dropped, just moved into next year's journey.
Their calendar, not ours. Every send date is tied to a moment in [District]'s school and budget year: a new budget, the first weeks of school, flu season, the internal budget talks before the holidays, winter break, and the mid-April close.
The audience changes with the decision. Admins and facilities directors hear from us first, then the people who feel the problems every day (facilities, principals, custodial leads), and finally the people who sign (procurement, finance, budget approvers).
The ask grows only when they're ready. No ask in awareness, a demo invitation in consideration, nothing over the break, then a soft deadline before the hard one.
Every subject line lowers the pressure. "No pitch here," "no strings attached," "nothing for your team to chase down": each one tells the reader what they get and what they don't have to do.
Local and peer-based. [District]-specific guides, Texas district trends, and Q&A with [District] peers, because a facilities lead trusts what other campuses are seeing.
One journey, different versions. The procurement email has one version for healthy or expanding accounts and one for stable accounts, so the offer fits the relationship.
Silence is a choice too. The dark period carries goodwill only, so the relationship survives the break.
Where it stands: designed, not yet run
I had just completed this journey, so it hasn't been run and has no results yet. The sales rep pushed back: he felt this account didn't need this many emails or this much detail. I worked to bring him along by explaining how a customer journey works: buying decisions in a school district take time, and it takes multiple touchpoints before one has an effect.
The level of detail is also deliberate. This journey is meant to be the foundation for other accounts in the education sector, so I thought it through in depth once, to be reused rather than rebuilt for each account.
Each sales rep and industry show responds differently depending on timing, context, and touchpoint frequency. Keeping the stages the same and varying those three things let me compare what works without rebuilding the journey. [Add what the comparison showed.]
These were qualified, hot leads that needed follow-up right away. Narrowing the send to them nearly doubled first-email opens (33% to 64%), cut bounces from 7.7% to 1.4%, and nobody unsubscribed.
Each stage has a goal tied to the sales funnel: 25% lead to qualified, 10% lead to prospect, 10% prospect to customer. Across the two shows, the journeys turned 236 leads into 8 customers.
They get a closure email promising a check-in in 3 months, and the win/loss reason starts another workflow to reach back out, so no lead is simply dropped.
236 leads and $39.4K in attributed revenue from 2 trade shows
33% to 64% first-email open rate after targeting qualified, hot leads
7.7% to 1.4% first-email bounce rate
0 unsubscribes on the second show's journey
The biggest lesson was that a smaller, better-targeted list beat a big one, and that a journey built as a template, once approved, can be reused for other shows in the same industry instead of being rebuilt each time. Next, I want to revisit the data throughout the year from every campaign that uses a customer journey, and refine the details with the sales reps to see where it worked and where it didn't. Then I would iterate on the journey, because it has to meet the company's KPIs, and those change every year.
See also
Customer Retention Automation: the reorder reminder series, open quote follow-up, and birthday congratulations.