User journey in a campaign

The user journey is composed of steps, with each step corresponding to a row of triggers.

A user first enters the campaign through the Journey Start trigger which is the Root trigger. If a message is sent to the user successfully, the user is then eligible for the next set of triggers. The trigger filter criteria is evaluated and if the user qualifies, then they continue onto the next step of the journey. If the user does not qualify for any of the triggers, they fall out of the campaign and the journey is completed.

The location of your triggers is very important as they determine how users move through a campaign. In a simple setup, for any user, the triggers get evaluated from left to right (higher priority to lower priority). If a user satisfies the criteria for more than one trigger, the user enters the branch with the first eligible trigger. And if a user doesn’t satisfy any of the trigger criteria, they fall out of the journey.

Priority: The ordering of sibling or child triggers expresses the order in which the triggers get evaluated for the user. Triggers generally get evaluated from left (higher priority) to right (lower priority) and top to bottom.

Trigger ordering is more complicated when triggers have delays. A lower priority trigger can have a calculated send time that comes before a higher priority one. As a result, the ordering is not always left to right. For more information, see Eligible trigger ordering.

Root Trigger: There can be only one root trigger. This is the start of the journey.

Siblings: Triggers that appear on the same row are called siblings. In this example, triggers B, C, and D are siblings.

Children: These are the set of triggers that appear in the row below another trigger that are also connected to that trigger. A trigger can have none, one, or many children. In this example, triggers B, C, and D are the children of trigger A. Trigger E is the child of trigger B.

Parent: The parent is the trigger in the row above the row that the children belong to. In this example, the parent of trigger C is A and the parent of trigger D is also A. The parent of trigger E is B.

Branch: The part of the journey that originates from a trigger (the parent) and includes all its children and their subsequent generations, is called a branch.