Today the list opens our emails to find the discount. I want it to open them to see who got paid, how fast, and what they did. Written like a trader talking to a trader, not a brand shouting a percentage. Halloween and Black Friday are the exceptions, and the Halloween one is built below.
I went through the Figma file: the campaigns since the September Reset, the Halloween set in progress, and every live flow. The work is clean. The strategy is the problem.
Why. Every one of these is a moment the trader already cares about. Emails there get read without a code.
Why. A dormant lead and a funded trader should never receive the same email. Stage decides content, line decides product, engagement decides whether they get campaigns at all.
Weekly "who got paid" email from the public payout ledger. Named certificates. Trader stories: days to pass, the setup they ran, how fast we paid. The guarantee in every footer.
Why first. It costs nothing, it uses what we already have, and it is the only thing that changes why people open. Everything else builds on a list that trusts us.
Drawdown care, passed, funded, first payout, refund progress. Zapier or webhooks from the platform into Klaviyo, the same way the breach flow works today.
Why second. I told the COO on my first morning: if I hit 50% of my drawdown, I want to know you care. He agreed we need flows for that. That is retention, and retention is where a prop firm makes money.
Replace flow discounts with Try Aqua at $10 as the entry. Hard weekly cap per person in Klaviyo. Discounts only around a real occasion.
Why third, not first. Pull the codes before the proof is in place and revenue dips with nothing to catch it. Do it in week three, once the proof emails have gone out.
The agency is good and uncapped on volume. Volume is not the gap. These three are.
Every email reads like one trader writing to one trader. Signed by a name. Replies go to a human. The agency writes for several prop firms, so it has to sound like all of them.
I know what a trader feels at 50% drawdown, the night after a pass, and the morning a payout lands. The flows below are built on those moments, not on calendar dates.
Topstep charges monthly and still keeps traders for years because nobody doubts the payout. We are cheaper and offer more. Add the credibility and there is no reason to go anywhere else.
Sources: Telos Media x AquaFunded Figma file (campaigns, live flows, Halloween drafts) and Klaviyo, both seen 18 Sep 2026.
Offer: 25% off sitewide and a 150% refund at the 4th payout. The concept is the opposite of a trick: proof first, code second. Dark, cobwebs, bats, orange. Still AquaFunded, because the button stays blue and the numbers are ours.
The brand's own visual language, turned dark: glossy orange glass objects on navy, candlestick bars behind, a glass ribbon around the hero, cobwebs and bats kept to the corners. One 3D object per email: the % sign on water, the coin stack with the arrow, the hourglass. Matching glass icons carry the three numbers so nobody reads a paragraph. Real wordmark, blue AquaFunded button, orange offer card, and a live countdown that renders at the moment of open. All art generated on Higgsfield in one style pass. CFD and Futures versions built as real HTML, Klaviyo ready.
The Halloween drafts already in the file lean on fear ("the scariest thing is not starting", "the sidelines are the trick") and stack every claim into one midpoint email with five CTAs. Every other prop firm will scream a percentage. Ours opens with $8M paid, three payouts a day on a public ledger, and a guarantee, then mentions the price. Email 2 tells one true story and ties the number four to the refund. Email 3 is three icons and a clock because by Friday there is nothing left to say. Three emails across five days respects the cap. Subject lines are five to seven words. The whole sequence is under 350 words of copy.
The journey: sign up, buy, trade the evaluation, pass or fail, get funded, request payouts, buy again. Today the flows only cover the first two steps and the failure. Retention in three steps: notice the trader before they blow up, prove the payout the day they pass, and make payout four (the refund) the goal. Here is what I would build, in order.
Trigger platform event: 50% or 80% of daily loss or max drawdown used. Audience in evaluation and funded. Purpose keep the account alive, show we noticed.
Trigger pass event. Audience new funded traders. Purpose turn a pass into a first payout.
Trigger payout paid, each time. Audience paid traders. Purpose celebrate, prove, move them toward payout four.
Trigger breach event (exists). Audience failed traders. Purpose explain, then offer the right next step, not a code.
Trigger signup. Audience leads. Purpose earn the first purchase on trust, learn the trader type.
Triggers profitable 30 days; no purchase in 60 days; no open in 180 days. Purpose second account as a safety net, winback with proof, then stop emailing.
Keep them, cut them to two emails each, remove the codes. Abandoned checkout gets a proof email then a Pay Later alternative. Post purchase becomes the first three days of the evaluation: rules, guarantee, support.
Taking over today. The number I would put my name on is revenue per recipient: email revenue divided by emails delivered. It rewards fewer, better sends and punishes blasting.
Why. One question in the welcome flow tells us the type. From then on every email shows one product, not eight.
| # | Item | Needs | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Halloween "No Tricks" sequence, 6 HTML emails (built, on this page) | Code NOTRICKS created, Klaviyo segments, sign-off on copy | Ready now, sends 27 to 31 Oct |
| 2 | Guarantee line in every template footer | Template access | Day 1 |
| 3 | Weekly frequency cap and Smart Sending | Klaviyo admin | Day 1 |
| 4 | Proof library: certificates, ledger screenshots, 5 trader quotes, 2 short videos | Design assets, permission from 3 traders | Week 1 |
| 5 | "Who got paid this week" campaign template | Weekly numbers from finance | Week 2 |
| 6 | Welcome flow rebuilt, no code, trader-type question | Klaviyo profile property for trader type | Week 2 |
| 7 | Drawdown care, passed, first payout, refund progress flows | Platform events via Zapier or webhook: drawdown %, pass, payout paid | Week 2 to 3 |
| 8 | Failed flow rewritten around Pay Later, codes removed from all flows | Sign-off that flow discounts go | Week 3 |
| 9 | Segments: stage, line, engagement, size tier, geography | Order data mapped to Klaviyo | Week 2 |
| 10 | Black Friday plan, whole funnel including post failure | Offer decided 30 days out | Week 4 |
Guardrails: unsubscribe rate, spam complaints, and open rate as a diagnostic only. If opens fall 20% while revenue per recipient rises, that is the plan working.