Case study · Online education · Addiction recovery & wellness
A 16,000-contact list, warmed up and split five ways
An online addiction-recovery and wellness brand wanted to launch a paid 30-day food-reset challenge from a free webinar. I set up its GoHighLevel account so that the sending domain was warmed up before the launch, each audience got its own message, people stopped getting invitations once they registered, and buyers were counted down to day one.
The system
From an old list to a paid launch
Everything here is email: years of course buyers, challenge alumni, free participants and cold subscribers. GoHighLevel protects the sender reputation first. Then it sends each segment its own invitation, stops emailing people once they register, and takes buyers from checkout to program day. In-person discovery events get booked automatically.
Comes in
GoHighLevel
Goes out
System 1 · Deliverability
Warm up the domain before the launch
A big launch email from a sending domain that had never been used would land in spam, and an old list is full of dead addresses.
- A drip-mode warm-up releases contacts in batches of 10 every 0.7 minutes, stamps a Last Email Sent Date field and sends a warm-up email.
- Bulk warm-up batches went out in stages before any launch email.
- An Email Events = Bounced trigger tags every bounce, so dead addresses can be suppressed.
- A sender-domain policy broadcast adds an engagement-score point to each contact it reaches. It also told subscribers which domains are really the brand's, as a guard against phishing.
System 2 · Segmentation
One launch, five audiences
A loyal course buyer and someone who joined five years ago would have received the same launch email.
- The list is split by relationship to the brand, and each segment has its own sequence and copy. The contact count is in each workflow's name, so the team can see the audience size at a glance.
- Paid buyers and alumni hear about what they already know. Cold subscribers get a re-introduction first. The first email is skipped for audiences that do not need it.
- Separate webinar-registrant and second-webinar nurtures take over once someone signs up.
| Segment | Who | Contacts |
|---|---|---|
| Segment 1 | Warm, engaged in the last 180 days | 4,073 |
| Segment 2 | Cold but engaged | ~8,300 |
| Segment 3 | Alumni of the previous challenge | 522 |
| Segment 4 | Paid course buyers | 9,337 |
| Segment 4B | Free-challenge participants | 4,243 |
| Members | Non-member sequence | 1,421 |
System 3 · Nurture logic
Wait, branch, test
Invitation sequences keep emailing people who already registered, which annoys them and wastes sends.
- The member sequence creates a launch-pipeline opportunity, sends email 1 and then waits up to 2 days for a webinar registration.
- Registered: the contact is removed from the workflow straight away.
- Not registered: a random A/B/C split (34 / 33 / 33) sends one of three subject lines for the next email. Each path repeats the wait-and-branch, so the whole thing grows into a testing tree.
System 4 · Commerce
From free webinar to day one
Buyers paid and then heard nothing until the program started.
- A five-step funnel: free webinar opt-in → thank-you page with upsell → 30-day challenge → upsell checkout → paid thank-you.
- A Payment Received trigger, limited to the challenge product, tags the buyer and sends an internal "product sold" alert.
- Find opportunity: if one is found it is updated, and if not one is created. A Go To step joins both paths into one confirmation flow.
- It then sets the event start time on the contact and sends countdown emails.
System 5 · In-person events
Register once, booked automatically
Discovery events in two cities were arranged by email back-and-forth.
- Each city has its own registration form, funnel and class-booking calendar for 1-hour sessions.
- On submit, staff get an internal alert, the contact is tagged for that city, and a thank-you and confirmation email goes out.
- After 30 seconds, a Book Appointment action books the contact into the event calendar. Nobody schedules anyone by hand.
- A third class calendar runs a recurring nutrition class.
Structure
A launch pipeline and the busiest workflows
The member sequence opens an opportunity for each member it emails, so the launch pipeline shows the size of the campaign at a glance. A cold-nurture pipeline with six stages is ready for the next re-engagement push.
Busiest workflows
Total enrollments, October 2026
Launch audience by segment
Contacts per segment sequence
Organization
Three folders, one per job
Automations are grouped by purpose: event automations, list maintenance, and the launch itself, with a subfolder for the segment sequences. The inbox is almost entirely replies to broadcasts, such as out-of-office notices, changed addresses and moderated-list bounces. That is the list-hygiene signal the bounce and engagement workflows are there to act on.
| Asset | In the account |
|---|---|
| Workflows | 19 total, 17 published, about 10.6K enrollments |
| 16 workflow campaigns, 13 bulk sends, a newsletter template folder | |
| Funnels | Webinar → challenge (5 steps), two city event funnels, an A2P compliance funnel |
| Forms | Two webinar forms, a UTM test version, one event form per city |
| Calendars | 3 class-booking calendars, 2 staff calendars |
How it's built
Tools and design choices
Warm up before you launch
Batched warm-up sends, bounce tagging and engagement scoring come before the first big email.
Segment by relationship
Buyers, alumni, free participants, and warm and cold subscribers each get their own sequence.
Stop when they act
Every invitation waits for a registration and drops the contact the moment it happens.
Test while you send
Every unanswered step splits three ways, so the launch shows which subject lines work.