Market Core · Customer Journey · Module
Drop-off
Where people leave, in what proportion, and why — because the stage with the largest loss is the one worth working on, whatever the current plan says.
The idea
How it works
Improving the largest loss is almost always cheaper than adding volume at the top, and it is almost always the less popular option because adding volume is a campaign and fixing a stage is a process change.
Not all drop-off is bad. People who leave because the offer is genuinely not for them are being correctly filtered, and treating that as leakage produces effort spent recovering customers who should not have been pursued.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Size each loss in absolute terms
A poor conversion rate on a small stage matters less than a modest one on a large stage.
- 02
Separate correct filtering from real loss
Some drop-off is qualification working. Recovering it is a cost with no return.
- 03
Ask the people who left
They answer more readily than expected and their reason is rarely the one assumed internally.
- 04
Fix the largest, not the most visible
The stage everyone talks about is usually the one with the best-looking dashboard rather than the biggest loss.
One level in
The components of drop-off
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Some drop-off is qualification working. Recovering it is effort spent on customers who should not have been pursued.
The other modules in customer journey
The buying stages
What actually happens between first awareness and purchase, drawn from buyers rather than from a template — including the parts that are invisible.
LearnWhat moves people forward
What actually causes progression between stages, established by asking buyers rather than by inferring from what was clicked.
LearnAttribution
How credit is assigned across touchpoints, on a stated model, with its limits recorded — because the purpose is better budget decisions rather than a defensible number.
Learn