Agency name × Partner name

# Bold by
design.

North & Partners Brand · Strategy · Q2 2026
29 · IV · 2026
Agenda Agency × PartnerPhase I
01 Agenda
item
02 Agenda
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03 Agenda
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04 Agenda
item
Our Principles Agency × PartnerPhase II
1

### Make it
blunt

Decisions read at a glance. If a stakeholder needs the legend, the slide is doing too much.

2

### Stay in
the system

Three serif numerals, two sans weights, six saturated colours. Anything else is a special case.

3

### Show the
shape

Lead with form. Use weight, scale, and silhouette before reaching for icons or imagery.

4

### Earn the
black slide

Reserve full-bleed black for moments that deserve a beat. Never as wallpaper.

Direction Section II
02
Direction
& doctrine

## Where we
are going,
and why.

Findings · Detail Agency × PartnerPhase III
Action title · 05

## 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 IIIEvidence

## 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
1007550250
D0D7D14D30D45D60D90
How we'll work Agency × PartnerPhase 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 Agency × PartnerPhase 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 IIIEvidence

## 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 IIIEvidence
"

> 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 Agency × PartnerPhase 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.