Automation campaign triggers

This article lists all of the triggers you can use to enter contacts into your automation campaigns.

See also: How entry triggers work

Each event type has a number of trigger conditions you can select from.

The conditions (except for changed segment membership) use AND logic - meaning that if you select multiple trigger conditions, the contact must fulfil all of them in order to enter the flow.

So in this example:

• Event type: The contact has placed an order
• Trigger condition 1: It was the contact's last order
• Trigger condition 2: Order includes a product that matches a product with an attribute which is X

The contact's last order must include a product with the selected attribute in order to meet the entry requirements for this campaign.

Contact placed an order

Contact visited store website

Contact abandoned a basket

Capturing abandoned baskets in your app

If you've integrated your mobile app with Ometria, you may want to trigger campaigns on baskets abandoned there too.

To do this, make sure you use the condition Contact has a basket created on and include 'App':

Contact recently viewed a product that went on sale

See: Price drop campaigns.

Contact's lifecycle status changed

Contact entered or exited a segment

These triggers depend on a contact entering or exiting a segment based on normal changes to a contact's data.

The campaign will not trigger if:

• a contact enters/exits the segment because the conditions of the segment were changed, or; 
• the contact enters the segment because it was created for the first time.

This trigger does not allow more than one condition - if you select more than one condition, only the top one will be used to trigger entries. 

See: Contact has entered a segment.

Contact viewed any product

The contact has viewed any product on your site for a period of time without placing an order.

See below for further information.

Contact viewed a specific product

The contact has viewed a specific product on your site for a period of time without placing an order.

Contact changed subscription status

The contact has subscribed or unsubscribed from marketing communications.

A subscription trigger only enters a contact when the subscription event is created and the timestamp no older than four hours.

Contract spent a certain amount

The contact has spent a certain amount of money over a specified time period.

Contact's birthday is soon

The contact’s birthday will be in x hours/days/weeks.

To trigger a campaign for birthdays occurring today, use the setup 'Contact has a birthday in 0 days':

This trigger enters contacts at midnight (00:00), so we recommend using a general wait node before your send action to make sure contacts receive your message at a reasonable time of day:

Custom date

See: Create a custom field

Depending on the items your store offers, you can trigger your campaigns by custom dates, e.g. anniversary, child’s birthday etc.

While it's possible to send an exact timestamp with a custom date, the custom date trigger uses midnight (00:00) to enter contacts who match the day's date, not the exact timestamp that comes with their custom date.

The following conditions are available for the custom date trigger:

Enter contacts at a specific date and time

If you already send push notifications or SMS via Twilio in Ometria, you can now trigger your cross-channel campaigns to enter contacts at a specific date and time.

See also: Sending scheduled SMS and Push campaigns

Select an Entry date and an Entry time, then choose your segment:

While contacts are entering your automation campaign (at the time and date specified) you won't be able to make any changes to the campaign flow. 

If you pause the campaign while it's entering contacts, you will have 24 hours to unpause before any contacts who haven't yet entered won't enter.

Examples for triggering automation campaigns

The examples below are intended to help you think about how you’d like to set up your own campaign triggers:

• Welcome campaign
• Abandoned basket campaign
• Abandoned browse campaign
• Visited the website for greater than x seconds
• Visited the website then viewed a product from a category
• Post first purchase campaign
• Win-back campaign
• VIP recognition campaign
• Contact has entered a segment

Welcome campaign

New leads are at their most receptive within the first two weeks of being introduced to your brand.

Here's an example of a welcome campaign spanning a few days after a lead signs up:

Abandoned basket campaign

Some of the highest open rates and conversions come from abandoned basket and abandoned browse campaigns.

The contact has… abandoned a basket trigger can be used to identify specific products, specific product attributes (e.g. category), and abandoned baskets in specific stores:

If you don’t select an option from the drop-down, the campaign will trigger for any abandoned baskets.

See also: How does Ometria process abandoned basket events?

Abandoned browse campaign

Abandoned browse campaigns help you retarget visitors on your website that visited, browsed but didn't place an order. 

There are multiple ways you can trigger a campaign by an abandoned browse event. 

Visited the website for greater than x seconds

This trigger targets any contact who visits your website for more than a set time period (in seconds - e.g. 120 seconds = two minutes), whether or not they have browsed any products.

If you use this trigger, we advise you to make sure you don't use the {{visit.products}} merge tag in your template.

Visited the website then viewed a product from a category

This trigger sends to contacts that viewed products with any selection of attributes. 

Magento users' category attribute lists contain the product category ‘root catalogue’, which contains all the products in your database. If you are a Magento user we recommend you use this trigger for abandoned browse campaigns.

Viewed any product over a period of time

This trigger checks hourly for any contacts who viewed any product 'x' times in the past 'y' hours, and didn't purchase.  

It will also check if the contact has placed an order for any of the viewed products in the past 30 days, and will not recommend the recently ordered product in any emails (if emails use a recently viewed product recommendation engine and/or {{ visit.products }} merge tags).

When you use this trigger, the abandoned browse block displays only one product.

Use this trigger if you don’t want to start an abandoned browse campaign for contacts who have placed an order in the past 24 hours.

It also avoids any empty fields in emails if you're using the {{visit.products}} merge tags, as by default it covers all products.

Post first purchase campaign

This trigger targets customers who have already placed their first order (first-time customers) and aims to encourage them to place a second order.

Win- back campaign

This trigger is for customers who have not placed an order for a considerable period of time, i.e. customers whose lifecycle stage is ‘At-risk’ of lapsing. 

For contacts who have visited the website in the intervening period, but have not yet shopped, you might want to send a ‘Can we help you?’ email, using a follow-up condition.

VIP recognition campaign

A VIP in Ometria is generally a high-spender; a customer who shops often and/or spends over a certain threshold (defined by you). You might choose to define a VIP by any of the following:

• The amount a customer spends within a time period
• A specific CLV threshold
• A minimum number of orders
• A predefined lifecycle stage

In the example below, we’ve used ‘minimum number of orders’ (three) to define VIP.

Contact has entered a segment

Trigger a campaign when a contact enters or leaves a segment (either dynamic or static segments).

Your automation campaign must be active in order to trigger this action.

Contacts cannot re-enter static lists.

Ometria doesn’t generate events when manual changes are made to a dynamic segment (i.e., when you change the segment conditions). 

Events are only generated when a contact enters or exits a segment as a result of something happening with that contact (e.g., they have placed another order, their lifecycle stage changes, etc.).

You can also trigger when a contact leaves a segment, and you can select:

• Which is - to include a specific segment
• Which is not - to exclude a specific segment

You can add and remove a contact to a static segment via API as well as by CSV upload - see: How to use CSV upload as an automation trigger

Find out more about segmentation in Omeria:

• Segment explorer
• Saved segments