Build around the aha moment, not a calendar
The job of onboarding is to get a new user to first value — the aha moment, when they first experience what your product is for. So the sequence is built around that milestone, not a fixed schedule. Reforge frames activation as a few distinct moments — setup, aha, and habit — and good onboarding maps each email to moving the user to the next one.
Behavior-triggered beats time-based
A time-based drip sends email three on day three no matter what. A behavior-triggered sequence sends the next email based on what the user did or didn't do — completed setup, or stalled before it. That makes each message relevant, and lets you drop nudges the moment the user takes the action, so you never badger someone to do something they've already done.
How many emails, over how long
A reasonable default is around five emails over roughly two weeks, but treat that as a starting point, not a rule. A simple product with fast time-to-value might need only three or four; a complex one might warrant more. The right number is whatever gets users to activation without nagging. Open-rate benchmarks vary so wildly across sources that they're not worth anchoring to — measure your own.
Make it a journey, and stop on success
Implement the sequence as a customer journey with a goal: enroll on signup, branch on whether the user activated, and exit the moment they do. Onboarding ends at first value, not at email five — and a user who activates on day one should never receive the day-five nudge. From there, they move into retention.