Our Automation team has been hard at work this spring, bringing you Automation Timing earlier this month, and now two new types of triggers to add to our Automation product suite:

• Custom Event Triggers

• Cancellation Triggers

Custom Event Triggers

Trigger Automated Messages when custom events fire. If you’re using Custom Events, now you can trigger automated messages when we see these events. If you’re not using custom events, now is a great time to give them a look.

Prior to this release, event-based triggers were available only by using tags, i.e., by triggering off a tag_added or tag_removed event. Tags are a great way to track metadata about a user and keep track of audience segments, but events are a better way to automate messages based on activity. Triggering off events means you will not clutter your system with tags; it means you won’t have to remove them to clean things up, and you don’t need to remove them if you want to trigger on that event multiple times.

One major advantage of using events vs. tags is that events will show up in your Connect and Insight data products, letting you associate triggering events with engagement activity.

To get started using custom event triggers, see Custom Event Selectors.

Cancellation Triggers

You might also want to keep certain notifications from going out in the event that a certain outcome is achieved. Cancellation Triggers give you the flexibility to drop a message on the floor if that happens.

Example:

In the following example a pipeline with a 3-day delay is set into motion after a user indicates interest in sinks. If 3 days of sink-buying radio silence go by, the user will receive a notification with a fabulous sink offer, unless a "COMPLETED_CHECKOUT" event fires, canceling the notification.

{
    "immediate_trigger": {
        "tag_added": "interests::kitchen_sinks"
    },
    "timing": {
        "delay": {
            "seconds": 259200
        }
    },
    "cancellation_trigger": {
        "custom_event": {
            "name": "COMPLETED_CHECKOUT"
        }
    },
    "outcome": {
        "push": {
            "audience": "triggered",
            "device_types": [
                "ios",
                "android"
            ],
            "notification": {
                "alert": "Like sinks? You'll love this deal!"
            }
        }
    }
}

See Pipeline Object: cancellation_trigger in our API refererence for more details.