The challenge
Orrery built job management software for independent trades — plumbers, electricians, HVAC engineers. Their retention curve had an unusual shape: users who logged a second job stayed for years, and the overwhelming majority never logged a first one. Growth spend was going into acquiring users who opened the app, hit a nine-step company setup wizard asking for VAT registration, insurance details, team members and service rates, and never came back. The team had been treating this as a churn problem and had built a win-back email sequence for people who had never actually used the product.
What we did
Measured the gap nobody owned
Acquisition and churn both had owners; the step between them had neither. We defined activation as logging one job within 24 hours of install, measured it at 21%, and made it the number the whole team watched.
Moved setup after the value moment
The setup wizard asked for everything the product would eventually need before showing what it did. We cut it to two questions — trade type and whether they work alone — and deferred the rest to the point where each field was actually required.
Made the empty state do work
A new account showed a blank job list. We replaced it with a pre-filled sample job the user could edit into their real one, which turned the hardest screen in the product into the easiest.
Rebuilt lifecycle email around behaviour
The previous sequence was date-triggered and identical for everyone. We rebuilt it on product events so a user who stalled at job creation got help with job creation, not the day-three feature tour.
The result
Day-one activation went from 21% to 64% and day-30 retention rose 186%. Acquisition spend was unchanged throughout — the entire gain came from users who were already arriving and previously left within ten minutes.
“We had built a win-back campaign for people who had never used the product. Nobody had said that out loud until Digital Squad put the activation number on a slide. It was embarrassing and it was the most useful meeting we had that year.”