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Each automation has exactly one trigger. It decides which contacts enter and when. To add one, drag it from the Triggers section of the Step palette onto the canvas, then click it to set it up. Every trigger enters only contacts whose status is Active. A new form signup who hasn’t confirmed double opt-in yet is held back and enters the form’s journeys when they click the confirmation link, with what they submitted available as trigger data. Send Email steps never mail a contact who is unsubscribed, bounced, complained or unconfirmed. They skip that contact and record the reason in Logs. The exception is a step that uses a Transactional send policy, which can still mail unsubscribed contacts. Enrollment frequency in the journey settings decides whether a contact can enter more than once (see Automations).

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Contact Added to List

Choose a Contact list. Only contacts added to the list after you activate the journey enter. People already on the list at that point don’t. With double opt-in on, a new subscriber enters after they confirm. See Lists.

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Segment Change

Choose a Segment, then an Event: Entered segment or Exited segment. When you activate the journey, InstantCampaign records who is in the segment at that moment. Those people don’t enter. From then on, only contacts who join (or leave) the segment enter. See Segments.

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API Event

Use this trigger to start a journey from your own backend, for example after an order or a signup in your app.
1

Name the event

Enter an Event name, for example purchase. The name is a label, and it is also the event name that starts this journey when you record custom events.
2

Activate the journey

A unique Trigger key is created when you activate. The trigger panel then shows the endpoint, the request format, and cURL and JavaScript examples, with Copy trigger key and Copy full URL buttons.
3

Call it

Send a request with two headers: your API key (Authorization: Bearer …, from Settings → API Keys) and the journey’s key (X-Trigger-Key). Both must belong to the same workspace. The body needs the contact’s email. You can also send a data object.
The email must match an existing, active contact, and that contact enters: there’s no audience to pick for this trigger. To act on only some of the contacts your system sends, add an If/Else Condition after the trigger. Everything in data is available to later steps. In email subjects and bodies, write Liquid such as {{ data.orderId }}. In If/Else Condition steps, use Payload value (data.*). A journey with this trigger also starts when you record a custom event with the same name through the events API. See Events and goals and the API reference.
Keep the trigger key secret. The API key is required too, so a leaked trigger key can’t be used on its own.

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Schedule

Choose who enters under Audience source: a Segment or a Contact list (only active list subscribers). Then pick a Schedule type:
  • Recurring (daily/weekly): set Frequency to Daily, Weekly (with a Day of week) or Monthly (with a Day of month, 1–28, so that every month has the day, February included).
  • Based on contact date field: enter a Date field, for example birthday or renewal_date. The box suggests the built-in dates and your Date custom fields. A contact enters on the day the month and day of their date match today, every year. The name is looked up in this order, and the next place is tried when a contact has no value in the one before:
    1. a built-in date: birthday, createdAt, subscribedAt or lastActivityAt
    2. the custom field with that key
    3. the key in the contact’s metadata (set through the contacts API or by an Update Contact step)
    To read only one place, write customField.renewal_date or metadata.renewal_date. Store dates as YYYY-MM-DD.
  • One-time on specific date: pick a Date. The audience enters once and never again.
Set the Send time and Timezone. The time is read in the timezone you choose. With recurring and date-field schedules, a contact can enter again once their previous run has finished.

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Email Engagement

Choose an Audience source (segment or list) and an Engagement type: Opened email, Clicked link or Did not open. You can also limit it to one campaign with Campaign (optional). Leave that blank for Any campaign. Contacts in the audience who match enter the journey.
Engagement triggers work well with Once enrollment. For example, use Did not open plus a specific campaign to send a single follow-up.

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Form Submission

Choose a Form. Only active forms are listed. The journey starts as soon as someone submits the form. The answers are available as data, under a name made from each field’s label: {{ data.email }} for the email address, {{ data.company }} for a field labelled “Company”, {{ data.first_name }} for “First name”. The form editor shows each field’s name under it. A field labelled “First name” or “Name” also fills in the contact’s {{ first_name }}. See Signup forms.

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Website Event

Enter the Event name your site sends, for example page_view or button_click. The journey starts when a visitor who has been identified by email fires that event through the InstantCampaign tracking snippet:
ICTrack.identify() must run on the same page, before the event: the snippet stores nothing between pages. Get the ict_… tracking token under Settings → Tracking Tokens. The event’s properties are available to later steps as data, and the event itself as event (for example {{ event.name }}). An event with the same name recorded from your server through the events API also starts this journey.
The snippet uses a tracking token in data-site-id (from Settings → Tracking Tokens). A tracking token can only send events, so it’s safe to put on a public web page. Never put an API key on a web page.

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Troubleshooting

  • API call returns “Contact not found”: create the contact first, for example through the contacts API. The trigger doesn’t create contacts.
  • API call returns an enrollment error: the journey’s Enrollment frequency doesn’t allow this contact to enter again. With Multiple times, it also means the contact is still in the journey.
  • API call returns “Journey is not active”: activate the journey, or call the trigger key of the version that’s live now.
  • A birthday journey never fires: check that the Date field is spelled exactly like the custom field’s key (or the metadata key), that the dates are stored as YYYY-MM-DD, and that the Timezone matches your audience.
  • Nobody entered a Segment Change journey right after activation: this is expected. People already in the segment when you activate don’t count as a change.