The Post Purchase Sequence

Last week you sold it. This week you make sure they use it.

Drop 09 left you with launch-week.md and, if the week went the way you planned, some customers. Those customers are now sitting in a folder in your email tool, and the last thing your business said to any of them was a receipt from a payment processor.

The Post Purchase Sequence is seven prompts and one file called post-purchase.md. Prompt 1 does not write anything. It interviews you until it can fill in a delivery map: what “it worked” actually means for your product, how long it really takes, the smallest useful thing a tired person can finish in 15 minutes, and the one step where your customers go quiet. It pushes back when your answers are vague, and it ends with a list of everything you could not answer, which is the list you should read twice. Prompt 2 drafts four of the seven emails straight from that map, with word count caps and the same rule the launch kit used: any number it cannot trace to your proof bank comes back as [NEED NUMBER] instead of an invention. Prompts 3, 4, and 5 handle the three emails that carry the weight, because each one has rules a general drafting prompt will break. Prompt 6 is a separate proofreading pass in a fresh chat. Prompt 7 runs sixty days later and tells you which email to rewrite from scratch.

The send calendar is in the file. Day 0, 1, 3, 7, 14, 21, 30, with the refund exit rule and the one email that moves.

The email that listens

Day 7, you send under 90 words containing exactly one question and no link anywhere, including the signature.

The question has to be answerable in one sentence by somebody holding a phone in a parking lot. “How’s it going?” is not answerable. “Did you get the first batch uploaded yet, or are you stuck somewhere?” is. What comes back is your customers describing your product in words you did not write, which is the exact raw material your next sales page needs and the one thing no tool sells you.

It also moves the review ask. If somebody replies that it worked, the review email goes out the next morning quoting their own sentence back to them, instead of firing on day 21 at a person who may have gotten nowhere. Asking a happy customer on the day they felt it is a different request than asking a random customer three weeks after their card was charged.

Why the manual way costs you

The retention emails are the piece small businesses hand off, and the invoice lands before anyone writes a sentence. An email marketing freelancer charges you $40 to $85 an hour in typical 2026 US rates, and a seven-email flow built properly is not a two hour job. Go up a tier and an agency retainer runs you $2,000 to $5,000 a month, which is $24,000 to $60,000 a year for work that is mostly writing down what already happens inside your business. That freelancer still has to interview you about where your customers get stuck before they can start. You pay the invoice and you still supply the hard part.

The software takes its cut on the other side. Klaviyo’s Email plan charges you about $30 a month at 1,000 contacts, billed monthly with no annual discount on self-serve plans as of 2026, so $360 a year out of your pocket to put seven emails on a timer. Klaviyo bills on active profiles now, meaning every contact who could be emailed, whether you email them or not. Both numbers were checked today. Whatever already sends your newsletter will fire these seven on a delay, and if it will not, a repeating checklist and ten minutes a month covers a handful of customers.

Running all seven prompts end to end moves about 45,000 input tokens and 22,000 output tokens, which at Claude Sonnet 5 pricing of $2 per million input and $10 per million output, verified today, is 9 cents in and 22 cents out. Thirty-one cents against a $2,000 retainer, and inside a Claude subscription you already pay for, it is $0 in new tools. Unlike the retainer, the file keeps working every month whether you open it or not.

The cost with no invoice is the one that stings. Your customer paid you and then heard nothing, and you find out how that went when the refund request arrives instead of the review. You spent money on Meta to reach that person. They raised their hand, they paid, and then your business went quiet on them for thirty days.

How to use it

1. Run Prompt 1 today, before you write anything. Twenty minutes. If it tells you that you cannot name the step where customers go quiet, believe it, and go read your last five support emails before you write a single line. That one answer is what separates this from the template your competitor downloaded.
2. Run Prompt 2 tomorrow with the delivery map and proof-bank.md pasted in. Fix the [NEED NUMBER] flags by going and getting the numbers, not by softening the sentences.
3. Run Prompts 3, 4, and 5 on the three emails that do the work. When Prompt 3 asks what you say to somebody who emails you stuck, paste your real reply out of your sent folder. That reply is already the best version of that email; it just has never been sent to anybody who did not ask first.
4. Run Prompt 6 in a fresh chat the day before it goes live, then load the seven into whatever sends your email and place a test order so you watch all seven arrive the way a customer does. Put Prompt 7 on your calendar for sixty days out.

Ten drops built the offer, the page that sells it, and the week that launches it. This one covers the thirty days everybody skips, and it is the only asset in the Vault that runs on people who have already paid you. Your competitors are all bidding against each other for strangers. Your last customer is sitting there right now with an unopened folder and nothing scheduled. If it doesn’t make you money, I don’t keep yours.

Next Monday’s Tool Teardown: verdict as always, one real test, keep or replace.

Next Friday’s drop: the Win Back Sequence. Four emails for the customers who bought once, went quiet, and are still sitting on your list costing you money to store.