A trigger is a temporary user condition that enables you to display your campaign in a specific context. The trigger enables the campaign to be displayed to the configured audience only when additional conditions are met.
How to set up your trigger in the campaign flow
Using the drop-down list
Once you are in the context of creating a campaign, on the targeting section you will find a dedicated drop-down option to configure your trigger, in the How to section. To display it, you can click on the field under “Define the trigger condition”.
Three options are possible:
- The Any Time option (native pre-selected option)
- The list of existing triggers, if you have already created any (account level)
- The option to create a New Trigger (at the bottom)
Using no trigger: Triggering the campaign without any specific condition
The first time you access the targeting section of your campaign, the Any Time option is selected by default in the trigger condition panel.
This means no trigger is defined and the campaign will display in all cases, without any specific triggers.
Creating a new trigger
To create a new trigger to display your campaign, you need to select the triggering criteria to be applied to your campaign.
To create a new trigger, follow these steps:
- Select New Trigger from the dropdown menu (final option in the dropdown)
- The Trigger Builder open
- Drag and drop your criteria from the left panel list to the working area on the right
- Fill in the requested fields depending on the trigger criteria you’ve selected (see below for more explanation on each criterion)
- You can combine two or more criteria using the AND / OR value inside the trigger builder’s middle column
a. OR means that your campaign will be triggered if ANY of the selected trigger criteria are met
b. AND means that your campaign will be triggered only if ALL of the selected trigger criteria are met (more information in the section below) - Don’t forget to name your trigger in the specific name field, above the configuration space 😉
- Click on Save to use the trigger in your campaign and to save it to your account library – it will be reusable in other campaigns (see the section on Using a Saved Trigger)
- Click on Use Without Saving to use the trigger in this campaign only (if you don’t want to use it again in the future). This action will still create the trigger, but not at the account level: you will find it only in this campaign’s configuration
- Click on Cancel to go back to the targeting page without saving anything
If you’ve created a new trigger, it will be automatically selected in the dropdown: the trigger setup is now complete.
You can save your targeting configuration by clicking Save on the bottom right.
Using a saved trigger
If you want to use a trigger that has already been configured, you can find it directly in the dropdown list:
Click on it to select it for your campaign: the trigger setup is now complete. You can save your targeting configuration by clicking Save on the bottom right.
Managing your saved triggers
If you want to edit, duplicate or delete an existing trigger, you can do it directly from the dropdown menu:
- Click on the pen icon and you will open the Trigger Builder. You can then modify the name of your trigger and/or its configuration. Click on Save to record your changes.
📎Note: If your trigger is already used in a live campaign or is live in QA, you won’t be able to save your modifications. In this specific case, you’ll get a yellow disclaimer with the details of the campaign(s) that are using the trigger and are currently live or live in QA. In this case, you can:- Modify the configuration and use the new trigger in this campaign only (CTA Use Without Saving). The new trigger will be used for this campaign only, and you’ll find it at the top of the list in the dropdown. If you edit it again, you’ll be able to give it a new name and save it as a new saved trigger
- Go back to the previous dropdown and duplicate it before editing
- Pause your campaigns first before editing and saving it
- By clicking on the trash icon, a prevention pop-in will ask you if you’re sure you want to delete the selected trigger. Click Delete to delete, or click Cancel to return to the previous screen.
- By clicking on Duplicate, the selected trigger will be duplicated and will appear just after the selected one in your dropdown list
Heads up ⚡
You can’t delete a trigger that is already being used in a live campaign or is live in a QA campaign. You need to pause the campaigns that use the trigger to be able to delete that trigger from your account.
Heads up ⚡
The trigger applies to your whole A/B Test – the original version (V0) plus all its variations (V1, V2, and V3 for an A/B/C/D test, for example).
For example, if you have built the following trigger: “Trigger the campaign when at least 4 pages of the website have been visited”, the A/B Test will be triggered on the 5th page of the visitor’s session, with a random chance to see the original, V1, V2 or V3.
Good to know 💡
Single-page Experiences vs Multipage Experiences
👉For A/B Tests, Simple Personalizations, and Patches, you’ll have to define one single trigger rule for your campaign because these types of campaigns have only one “experience” (one type of new content generated with AB Tasty to display).
👉 For Multipage Tests, Multivariate Tests, Multipage Personalizations, and Multi-experience Personalizations, you’ll have to define a trigger rule for each “experience”. This rule can be the same or can be different depending on your needs.
- For Multipage Tests and Personalizations, we call the experiences “Pages”
- For Multi-experience Personalizations, we call the experiences “Experiences”
- For Multivariate tests, we call the experiences “Sub-tests”
⭐️ Tips:
- Use the same trigger on all experiences when this trigger is linked to your visitor’s current situation
e.g., geolocation criteria, device criteria, etc. - Use a different trigger on all experiences when the trigger is linked to a contextual behavior.
e.g., Experience 1 is a pop-in that will be triggered after 5 viewed pages to promote sales (trigger = minimum viewed pages). Experience 2 is a banner in the basket (no specific trigger). - Consider using different triggers in case of Multi-experience personalization. This kind of campaign has been designed to help you launch several messages to different segments in the same campaign and to ensure no overlap between messages.
To learn more, refer to this article.
For all types of campaigns:
- Don’t forget to use the dropdown menu on the Targeting page to switch between experiences and set up your trigger for every experience
- There’s also a “Replicate” option, which allows you to replicate the full targeting setup or one part of the targeting setup of one experience in another experience, or in all experiences. To learn more, refer to this guide
How the trigger criteria work
It’s easy to build a new trigger by clicking on the Create button at the bottom of the dropdown in the trigger section. Open the Trigger Builder and select your trigger criteria.