Top One Futures / Elite Access activation study
Half of all passed accounts pay within a day and the median payer takes 12 hours. The decision doesn't decay gradually. It holds up through week three, then falls off a cliff between day 21 and day 30.
The green line is the share of passed accounts that have paid. The amber line is what matters for promotions: of the people still sitting unpaid on day X, how many will pay in the following week without any nudge from us. That's the intent still left in the pool.
Both series are Kaplan-Meier estimates, which correct for accounts that passed too recently to have had a full window to pay. Without that correction, recent passes would drag the averages down artificially.
This is the table that sets promo timing. The last column is the one to read: it's the natural forward motion left in the pool, and it collapses by a factor of two between day 21 and day 30.
| Still unpaid at | % of all passers | Of those, % who ever pay | % paying in next 7 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | 49.8% | 75.4% | 42.4% |
| Day 3 | 39.4% | 68.9% | 31.1% |
| Day 7 | 29.8% | 59.0% | 21.5% |
| Day 14 | 23.4% | 47.7% | 11.6% |
| Day 21 | 20.7% | 40.9% | 9.5% |
| Day 30 | 18.1% | 32.2% | 4.0% |
| Day 45 | 16.6% | 26.2% | 2.4% |
| Day 60 | 15.7% | 22.0% | 4.2% |
You guessed that if someone hasn't activated in 14 days, roughly 5% ever will. The real number is much healthier: 11.6% of day-14 holdouts pay in the following week on their own, and 47.7% pay eventually. Promoting at day 14 means discounting a pool where nearly half were going to pay you anyway.
Day 30 is the number you were reaching for. Past 30 days the weekly rate drops to 4% and only a third of what's left ever converts. That is where the account goes inert.
Any discount is paid partly to people who were going to pay full price. The later you trigger it, the fewer of those there are, so the bar for the offer drops. The last column is the lift you'd need on the genuinely dead portion of the pool just to break even.
| Trigger at | Accounts | People | Fees in play | Would pay anyway | Margin given up | Break-even lift |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Immediately | 1,813 | 926 | $431,247 | 87.8% | $75,695 | 179% |
| Day 7 | 1,354 | 716 | $328,456 | 59.0% | $38,750 | 36.0% |
| Day 14 | 1,186 | 624 | $288,184 | 47.7% | $27,512 | 22.8% |
| Day 21 | 1,035 | 555 | $251,955 | 40.9% | $20,608 | 17.3% |
| Day 30 | 863 | 462 | $208,887 | 32.2% | $13,472 | 11.9% |
Triggering immediately is self-defeating: you would have to nearly triple activations among the dead pool just to pay for the discount handed to the 88% who convert on their own. Day 21 is the first point where the offer is both cheap enough to be safe and early enough that the pool is still warm.
Cross-referencing every unpaid account against its checkout orders changes the picture. Two thirds of the people sitting unactivated have already been to the payment page and left, some of them repeatedly. When someone does pay, the median time from opening checkout to paying is 36 seconds, so the flow itself is not the friction.
They tried to pay and the payment failed. Highest intent in the entire pool.
Do: payment recovery and an alternate method, not a discount. Discounting a declined card doesn't make it approve.
Median 2 visits to the payment page, one account went back 28 times. They know the fee exists and keep hesitating.
Do: this is the only segment where a discount plus a hard deadline is the right tool.
No activation order exists at all. The youngest group by a wide margin, which suggests some simply haven't registered that they passed.
Do: reminders and awareness first. Don't spend a discount before you've confirmed they know.
Discounting is currently almost nonexistent: only 1.0% of all activations used a code, totalling $2,887 since April. The live activate code is at least well aimed (its median user is 11 days stale), but it is unrestricted and it expires tomorrow at noon.
Each stage matches the intervention to what's actually blocking that person. Nothing before day 21 should carry a discount, because until then the pool converts on its own.
Half of all passers pay within 24 hours and 70% within a week. A discount here is pure margin donation. Send the congratulations and the activation link, nothing more.
Route declined cards into payment recovery with an alternate method. Send the never-opened-checkout group a plain reminder that they passed and the account is waiting. This alone should move the number, since the flow converts in 36 seconds once they reach it.
This is where natural conversion falls to 9.5% per week and the break-even lift bottoms out at 17%. Target the 863 accounts held by 452 people who opened checkout and left. Make the code single-use and email-locked so it can't leak back to fresh passers, the same discipline used on the Nova giveaway coupon.
26% of what's left converts eventually and the weekly rate is 2.4%. One final deadline offer, then let them go and put the effort into the front of the funnel instead.