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Segment-triggered journeys

This guide builds a journey that starts the moment a contact enters — or exits — a CDP segment. Use a segment trigger instead of a static audience when membership moves over time: new signups, inactive customers, churn risks, loyal accounts. The journey enrolls each contact as the segment re-evaluates and runs them through a branching, multi-step flow across messaging and voice. For segment mechanics (rules, auto-refresh cadence, behavioral operators) see CDP audiences. For linear blast or drip campaigns see the end-to-end campaign guide. This page covers the journey-style trigger and the wait and branch steps that make it a flow instead of a one-shot send.

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1. Pick a live segment

Create or open a segment under Contacts → Segments and make sure Auto-refresh is on. A segment trigger only fires when the segment re-evaluates; without auto-refresh the journey has nothing new to enroll. Pick a refresh cadence that matches how fast membership should trigger enrollment — daily for walk-in consumer lists, monthly for account-lifecycle segments.

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2. Create the journey with a Segment trigger

Open Campaigns → Journey builder and add a trigger node. Set Trigger Type to Segment entry and pick your segment; set it to Segment exit to enroll contacts as they drop out of the segment (win-back, churn-rescue, suppress-on-exit patterns). You can mix both trigger types across journeys — the same contact can be in an entry journey for one segment and an exit journey for another.

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3. Build the flow with wait and branch steps

From the trigger, connect your steps in order. The node palette gives you:
  • Message — send SMS, WhatsApp, email, push, or internal-inbox steps with template and locale fallbacks per step.
  • Voice — start a call, hand off to an agent, or play a voice step. Voice steps follow the same re-entry and exit rules as messaging steps.
  • Wait / Delay — hold the enrollment for a fixed time (minutes, hours, or days) before the next step fires. Use this to sequence drips.
  • Wait Until Date — resume every enrolled contact at a specific calendar moment, or from a date stamped on the contact’s custom fields (birthday, renewal date).
  • Wait for Event — hold until a named CDP event arrives (e.g. Checkout Completed) with a timeout branch, so a checkout either continues the purchase flow or times out into the reminder branch.
  • Condition / branch — split the flow on contact fields, segment membership, custom attributes, or an A/B split. Each branch carries its own downstream steps.
Step connections are edges on the canvas. A wait-for-event or branch node declares said event/threshold at save time — validation blocks publish if a branch can never fire (a wait-for-event node with no event name, or an emptily-configured segment trigger).

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4. Understand enrollment semantics

Three rules make segment triggers safe to run continuously:
  1. Diff-based dispatch. Each auto-refresh tick enrolls only the contacts that newly entered the segment (or newly exited, for segment-exit triggers). A no-op churn of the same members does not re-enroll anyone.
  2. Re-entry guard. A contact already mid-journey does not re-enter the same journey when they bounce out and back into the segment, or when a different trigger also fires for them mid-run. The journey completes or cancels before a re-entry can start.
  3. Batched dispatch. A backfill or a filter change that adds thousands of contacts in one tick sends them to the journey in small batches, so a large segment stays responsive and a spiking refresh does not time out.

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5. Watch enrollment in Contact 360

Track enrollments per contact in Contacts → Contact 360 → Journeys, and per journey in the campaign analytics. If a segment never grows (rules too narrow) you see zero enrollments; if it re-evaluates daily you see a steady trickle of new participants. That is the difference from a one-shot campaign: the trigger is a standing intake, not a fixed audience list.

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6. Combine with other triggers

A journey does not have to be segment-only. Common shapes:
  • Segment entry + CDP event gate — enroll new signups, then wait-for-event on Trial Activated with a timeout branch into a nudge sequence.
  • Segment exit + branch — enroll contacts who fell below churn threshold, branch on account tier, then route high-value contacts to an agent call and the rest to an automated voice or email step.
  • Segment + exit criteria — besides trigger choice, set journey exit criteria so a contact who converted mid-flow leaves early rather than completing all steps.