Recipe: Upgrade upsell workflow

Generic “upgrade now” emails get ignored. Specific ones (“you sent 950 of your 1000 monthly emails”) convert. This recipe fires an upsell Workflow only when a user hits a usage threshold that a paid plan would remove, personalized to what they actually did.

What you need

An event from your app when the user approaches a plan limit
A way to pass the usage context as event properties
A Stripe integration is handy but not required

Send the signal from your app

When a free-plan user hits 80% of any plan limit, fire an event via the Send event endpoint:

await fetch("https://app.loops.so/api/v1/events/send", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.LOOPS_API_KEY}`,
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    email: user.email,
    eventName: "approachingPlanLimit",
    planName: "Free",
    eventProperties: {
      usageCurrent: 950,
      usageMax: 1000,
      usagePercent: 95,
    },
  }),
});

await loops.sendEvent({
  email: user.email,
  eventName: "approachingPlanLimit",
  contactProperties: {
    planName: "Free",
  },
  eventProperties: {
    usageCurrent: 950,
    usageMax: 1000,
    usagePercent: 95,
  },
});

See Events and Event properties for the full API. Note: this approachingPlanLimit event is specific to your app’s usage tracking. The Stripe integration covers subscription, invoice, checkout, quote, and dispute events (see the full list in the integration doc), but usage-limit events still need to come from your own backend.

Build the workflow

Trigger on Event received

In the Workflow builder, pick Event received and select approachingPlanLimit.

Filter on plan

Add an audience filter to your workflow so you only send to free-plan users: planName = Free. Set the filter scope to All following nodes.

Personalize the email

Use event properties directly in the email. In the editor, click the ⚡️ icon above the editor or type { and then the event property name:

You have sent {usageCurrent} of {usageMax}
emails this month ({usagePercent}%). Upgrade to keep going.

Send a follow-up email

Add a follow-up email to your workflow that is sent 3 days after the initial email. Your initial “All following nodes” audience filter will still be applied to the follow-up email.

Why event-triggered beats scheduled

Scheduled “here is our pro plan” campaigns hit people who aren’t close to a limit and who did nothing to prompt the message. Event triggers mean every send goes to a user with a concrete reason to upgrade right now.

If your pricing has multiple limits (users, storage, emails, integrations), fire a separate event type per limit, triggering a separate workflow for each.

Measuring success

Open rate: should be higher than a generic upsell because the subject can cite the specific resource
Upgrade conversion: track via your existing billing system, not in Loops
Unsubscribe rate: watch this closely, over-sending upsells is a fast way to lose users

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Recipe: Upgrade upsell workflow

What you need

Send the signal from your app

Build the workflow

Why event-triggered beats scheduled

Measuring success

Read more

Events

Event properties

Stripe integration

Branching workflows

​What you need

​Send the signal from your app

​Build the workflow

​Why event-triggered beats scheduled

​Measuring success

​Read more

Events

Event properties

Stripe integration

Branching workflows

What you need

Send the signal from your app

Build the workflow

Why event-triggered beats scheduled

Measuring success

Read more