Every ticket gets a playbook.
A strategy is a step-by-step playbook that guides every ticket purchase — from the moment we buy it to the moment it's safely delivered to the customer. This guide explains how those playbooks work, in plain English.
01What is a strategy?
One sentence: a strategy is the plan a ticket follows from purchase to delivery.
Every day, tickets are bought across many accounts and marketplaces. Each purchase needs the same care: check it arrived correctly, keep an eye on it, and deliver it before the event. Doing that by hand for thousands of tickets doesn't scale.
So instead, every purchase gets assigned a strategy — a playbook that says exactly what to do and when. The system follows the playbook automatically, and people step in only when something needs a human.
It starts at purchase
The moment a purchase shows up in Reach (our system of record), its journey begins and a strategy takes charge.
It follows a plan
Checks, health scans, and delivery steps happen at the right moments — automatically.
It always ends
Every ticket reaches a clear final outcome. The goal is always the same: Delivered ✓.
02The ticket's journey
Two fixed points, one path between them.
Every journey is stretched between two moments we always know:
- The purchase — the moment the purchase order appears in Reach. This is the starting line.
- The event date — the concert, game, or match itself. This is the deadline everything works backward from. If an event gets postponed, all scheduled steps automatically shift with the new date.
Every journey ends in one of four ways
Nothing is allowed to just trail off. Every ticket lands in exactly one final outcome:
Delivered
The customer has their tickets, confirmed. This is the goal — always.
Canceled
The purchase or tickets were canceled upstream. Journey ends.
Surrendered
The last-resort exit — costly, so it always requires human approval first.
Refunded
Money came back instead of tickets. Journey ends.
03The three timing windows
Different moments call for different work.
Between purchase and event, a strategy organizes its work into three windows. This is the core idea behind every playbook:
Verify everything
Within hours of purchase: are the tickets actually there? Do the seats, barcodes, and account details all check out? Catch problems while they're fresh and easy to fix.
Routine check-ups
Weeks or months may pass before the event. During the quiet middle, the strategy runs regular health checks — daily or weekly — to make sure nothing has quietly gone wrong.
Deliver the tickets
Starting about 3 days out (T−72h), the main delivery push begins: get the ticket links, retry if needed, fall back to backup delivery methods, and escalate anything stuck.
Steps in the first window count forward from the purchase ("2 days after we bought"). Steps in the countdown count backward from the event ("72 hours before showtime"). And when the countdown starts, the routine check-ups automatically stand down so they never get in the way of the delivery push.
04Reacting to surprises
The clock isn't the only thing a strategy listens to.
Real life doesn't wait for the schedule. If something happens to a ticket — at any point in the journey — the strategy reacts immediately:
An error pops up
A login fails, an account looks risky, a delivery bounces. The strategy runs the matching fix-it routine right away.
The purchase is canceled
If the seller cancels, the ticket's journey ends cleanly as Canceled and the team is notified — no wasted effort.
The situation changes
If a ticket no longer fits its playbook — say it turns out to be high-risk — it can be moved to a different strategy better suited to it, mid-journey.
That last one matters: switching playbooks is a normal, first-class move. The system records exactly when a ticket moved, from which strategy to which, and why — so there's always a clear paper trail.
05Building blocks
Strategies are assembled from simple, snap-together pieces.
You don't write code to build a strategy. You place blocks on the timeline. There are just a few kinds:
When
The timing — "2 days after purchase", "every 24 hours", "72 hours before the event", or "when an error happens". (triggers)
Only if
Simple filters using what we know about the event, the account, the purchase, and the tickets — e.g. "only FIFA events" or "only if the barcode is missing". (conditions)
Do this
The actual work — scan the account, pull the ticket links, deliver them, switch to a backup method, or alert a person. (actions)
Safety rails
Built-in limits that wrap every action: retry rules, cooldowns, daily caps, and "does this marketplace even allow that?" checks. (guards)
Reusable components
Sequences you use over and over — like the standard account health check, or the full ticket-link delivery routine — are saved as named components. Drop one into any strategy and the whole proven sequence comes with it.
When a component is improved, existing strategies keep using the version they were built with until someone deliberately upgrades them. No surprise changes.
06Versions & safety
You can never break a running strategy by accident.
Who decides which strategy a ticket gets?
- Each event has a default. New purchases for that event automatically enroll in it.
- Smart rules can override the default — e.g. "FIFA purchases → FIFA Aggressive", "tagged no-fulfill → Manual". Most specific rule wins, and you can preview how many sales a rule would affect before applying it.
- A person can always pin a specific ticket to a specific strategy. A human pin beats every rule.
07Coming next: spotting purchases earlier
Phase 2 — designed today, built later.
Today, a journey starts when the purchase order appears in Reach. Phase 2 will start watching even earlier, using two additional signals:
- Cart activity — the earliest hint that a purchase is happening (also the noisiest).
- Purchase-confirmation emails — arriving within seconds of a buy.
The job of Phase 2 is simple: if those early signals fire but no purchase order shows up in Reach within a grace period, raise the alarm — a purchase happened that our system of record doesn't know about yet. Once the PO exists, Phase 2's job is done and the normal journey begins. Nothing about today's strategies has to change when it arrives.
08The Fulfillment screen
Strategies is where you design. Fulfillment is where you watch it happen.
The Fulfillment view shows every running journey, grouped by event:
Strategy chips
Each event band shows which playbook is governing its sales — the same names you edit in the Strategies view.
Progress steppers
Swept → Links → Delivered. See at a glance where each sale sits on its journey, with badges for anything unusual.
Deadline countdowns
The time remaining before each event, with the nearest deadline always visible in the toolbar.
Assign Strategy
The waterfall button on an event band lets you change that event's default strategy — with a preview of how many sales it affects before you commit.
Human locks
A named lock on a sale means a person is handling it — automation stays out until the lock is released.
DRY-RUN / LIVE
The same master safety switch. In DRY-RUN, every button simulates and logs instead of touching real systems.