Journey Triggers

Triggers define when a supporter should enter a Pathway.

Every Pathway needs at least one Trigger, and you can add multiple Triggers where different supporter actions should start the same journey.

Use Triggers to respond to moments such as joining a campaign audience, registering, creating a fundraiser, receiving a first donation, reaching a fundraising or activity milestone, submitting a form, reaching a date or changing order status.

You can also add Exclusions to stop specific supporters from entering the Pathway.

Each Pathway starts with a Source node containing one or more Triggers.

These define the events that can add a supporter to the Pathway. For example, the same Pathway could begin when someone registers, creates a fundraiser or submits a particular form.

Because Journey Builder works within the campaign audience, the relevant audience record is then added to the Pathway when the Trigger is met.

Use Added to Audience when the Pathway should begin as soon as a supporter becomes part of the campaign audience.

This can happen through actions such as submitting a Facebook Lead Form, registering, creating a fundraiser or being uploaded into the campaign audience.

This is the broadest Trigger and is useful when the journey should start as soon as the supporter becomes associated with the campaign.

Donors do not normally create audience records unless they already exist as a registrant, fundraiser or other audience member.

Use Registration Created when the journey should begin as soon as a registration is created, whether or not the supporter also creates a fundraising page.

This is useful for welcome journeys, event onboarding, ticketed events, registration-only campaigns and starting fundraising support immediately after sign-up.

Use Fundraiser Created when the Pathway should begin only after a fundraising page has been created.

You can target specific fundraising platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, JustGiving and GoFundMe, making this useful for platform-specific stewardship.

For example, if a supporter connects a JustGiving page later in their journey, you could start a Pathway that helps them share it or get more from their fundraising page.

Use Date and Time when a Pathway should start in relation to a particular point in time.

You can use a fixed date and time, start before or after a date, or use a dynamic date linked to the supporter, campaign or event.

Dynamic dates can include things such as event start or end dates, registration dates and fundraising page end dates.

This is useful for countdown communications, event reminders, campaign launches, post-event stewardship and multi-event campaigns where supporters have different dates.

Use First Donation when you want a Pathway to start as soon as a supporter receives their first donation.

The Trigger works across supported fundraising platforms including Social Sync, Facebook, Instagram, JustGiving and GoFundMe.

This is useful for congratulating fundraisers, encouraging them to keep momentum or moving them from an activation journey into an active fundraiser journey.

Use Amount Raised to start a Pathway when a supporter reaches a fundraising milestone.

You can trigger on values that are equal to, more than, less than, more than or equal to, or less than or equal to a set amount. You can also use a percentage of the supporter’s personal fundraising target.

For example, you might trigger a journey at £100 raised, £500 raised, 50% of target or 100% of target.

This makes it easy to create milestone-based encouragement, recognition and high-value stewardship.

Use Facebook Lead Form Submitted when someone submits a lead form through Meta, including both Facebook and Instagram Lead Forms.

Choose the connected Facebook page and the form or forms that should start the Pathway. When someone submits one of those forms, Social Sync will create or match their audience record and add them to the Pathway.

This is useful for lead cultivation, event interest campaigns, recruitment journeys and converting leads into registrations.

You can select multiple forms where they should all feed into the same Pathway, refresh the list when new forms have been created, and import existing submissions where historical leads should also be included.

See our Facebook Leads Integration guide for more information.

Use Form Submitted when a specific Social Sync form or registration flow should start the Pathway.

This is useful when the form itself identifies a particular supporter group, such as corporate partners, past participants, volunteers or people using a specific registration flow.

It allows you to start the right journey immediately without needing to segment those supporters later.

Use Merchandise Order when a Pathway should respond to a change in a supporter’s order.

Available events include Order Created, Order Processed and Order Cancelled.

For example, you could send an order confirmation when an order is created, a fulfilment update once it is processed, or a cancellation message if the order is cancelled.

Order Merge Fields can also be used to include personalised product and delivery information in your communications.

Use Activity Logged to start a Pathway based on a supporter’s activity progress.

You can trigger on their first activity, a specific amount completed, more or less than a set amount, or a percentage of their activity target.

For example, you could respond to their first mile, 20 miles completed, 50 squats completed or 50% of their activity goal.

This is particularly useful for challenge campaigns where supporter activity should drive encouragement and milestone communications.

Exclusions stop certain supporters from entering a Pathway, even when they meet the Trigger.

You can exclude people using information such as amount raised or donated, campaign segment, registration date, tags, event, event date, forms submitted and other supporter or campaign data.

For example, you might include all registrants except corporate partners, or create separate experiences for charity-place and own-place participants.

This is different from a Condition later in the journey, where the supporter has already entered before being routed into a particular branch.

Using Exclusions can therefore keep journeys and reporting cleaner by preventing irrelevant supporters from entering in the first place.

Multi-event campaigns can use one connected journey across several events.

Triggers and Exclusions can use event information to make sure supporters enter the right Pathway based on things such as their event, event date, distance, place type or registration flow.

This allows you to reuse the same journey structure across multiple events while still keeping the experience relevant to each supporter.

Social Sync records which Trigger added a supporter to a Pathway.

You can review this through Journey Builder inspection tools, journey logs or the supporter’s audience record.

This makes it easier to understand why someone entered a Pathway and troubleshoot journey behaviour when needed.

The best Trigger is usually the event that most clearly represents the moment the supporter’s experience should change.

For example, use Registration Created for onboarding after sign-up, Fundraiser Created for fundraising-page-specific stewardship, First Donation or Amount Raised for fundraising milestones, Date and Time for scheduled moments, and Activity Logged for challenge progress.