Add journey triggers

What you will learn

• What a journey trigger is

• Types of triggers you can use

• How to set up triggers step by step

• How to apply filters and refine pathway logic

• Best practices & tips

What is a journey trigger?

A journey trigger (or entry trigger) is the event or condition that causes a contact to enter a journey. Once triggered, the journey can send messages, apply logic, or take actions along multiple steps.

You can think of a journey trigger as the “door” into the automation: when a person meets the trigger condition, they become eligible to go through the rest of the journey.

Common Use Cases for Triggers

• When someone takes a specific action or an event happens (e.g. places an order, signs up, adds to cart)

• When someone is added to a segment or list

• Based on a date property (e.g. birthday, subscription anniversary)

• Based on profile changes (e.g. status changes, attribute updates)

Types of Triggers & When to Use Them

Below are commonly supported trigger types in journeys:

How to Add a Journey Trigger

1. Navigate to Journeys in the menu

2. Click Create Journey

1. Then click on Create from Scratch

1. Give a name and tags to the journey

2. Choose trigger type:

   • Most popular

     • Checkout started (event)

     • Added to list

     • Viewed product (event)

   • Your store

     • Placed order (event)

     • Added to cart (event)

     • Shopify (or any integration)

   • Your subscribers or contacts

     • Added to or Removed from Segment / List

     • Contact Updated

     • Date Property

     • Application - Custom events

   • Other triggers

     • Message delivered or Message clicked

     • Related object updates - created, deleted, updated, added to /removed from object

1. Configure trigger details:

   • If Integration Event trigger, choose the connector and event name, e.g. Checkout

• If Application trigger, choose the Application and custom event

• If Segment/List, choose which segment or list to use

• If Date property, select the date attribute of the contact and when relative to date the journey should trigger on or before.

• If Contact Updated, choose the contact attribute which is updated

• If Related object triggers, choose the trigger type and related object

• If Message delivered or clicked, select the event and the campaign

1. (Optional) Add Entry conditions — narrow down which events or entries count.

2. (Optional) Add Exit conditions — exit the contact at any time from the journey

3. (Optional) Add any additional settings e.g. end on segment exit or re-enter when getting added to segment again. Additionally you can enable global or journey holdout.

4. Save the trigger settings

5. Continue building the rest of the journey logic with different steps

6. Publish the journey

Once live, whenever a contact meets the trigger criteria, they’ll enter the journey path unless filtered out.

Entry and Exit Conditions

• Entry conditions will filter contacts from entering the journey at the trigger level itself.

Any contact who satisfies the entry conditions will only move to the next step and the rest will be marked as Rejected.

• Exit conditions will exit contacts at any point of the journey at the trigger or any other step if they satisfy the exit conditions

Any contact who satisfies the exit conditions will immediately exit from any step and will be marked as Exited.

You can turn ON entry or exit conditions toggle to add any AND/OR statements for the conditions.

You can add following types of entry conditions:

• Properties about someone: Based on contact attribute values

• If someone is or not in the list: Based on if a contact is or not in the selected list in this condition

1. If someone is or not in the segment: Based on if a contact is or not in the selected segment in this condition

• If an event happened or did not happen: Based on if a contact has a selected event that has occurred or not

• Properties about event: Based on the properties of the event or object selected in the trigger. This option will only show values if the trigger is event or related object.

Additional trigger settings

There are some additional settings on the trigger to define journey behaviour which are for the Added to segment trigger.

• Allow re-entry: When enabled, it allows the contact to re-enter the journey if they get added to segment again by satisfying the segment conditions again.

• End on segment exit: When enabled, it immediately ends the journey for the contact if they exit the segment by not satisfying the segment conditions anymore.