Trigger

Timing is what a trigger earns. A follow-up sent the moment someone shows interest beats the same message sent three days later on a fixed schedule. A well-chosen trigger lets a small team run thousands of personal journeys at once, because the responses fire themselves. Without triggers, someone has to notice a pricing page visit or a sudden drop in activity by hand, and by then the moment has usually passed.

• Start with the highest-intent signals: a pricing page visit, a demo attended, a technical document downloaded.
• Write each trigger as an if-then, keeping the signal and the response apart.
• Pick responses that help the person. A useful follow-up earns more trust than a pushy one.
• Add an exit rule, so someone who has already bought stops receiving the sequence.
• Test a new trigger on a small segment before pointing it at the whole list.

Every automation has the same shape: when this happens, do that. The "when this happens" part is the trigger, and the "do that" part is the action. A trigger can be an event (someone books a demo), a change in data (a deal moves to a new stage), or time (seven days after signup with no login).

A condition often sits between the two: only fire if the contact is on a paid plan. The trigger says when to look, the condition says whether to act.

• Triggers that fire twice for the same person, because nothing records that the action already happened.
• Chains of triggers that start each other in a loop.
• Too many triggers on one person in the same day, which feels like spam.