# Introduction to Journeys Welcome to Journeys—Customer.io’s messaging interface! The pages in this Getting Started section aim to introduce you to our platform. This page introduces the core concepts involved in working with Customer.io. The following pages dive deeper into each concept. Journeys incorporates data from your customer touchpoints, helping you customize campaigns and send sophisticated, personalized messages that support and engage your audience.  New here? Check out our Quick Start Guide This section provides an overview of Journeys. But we recommend using our [Quick Start Guide](/get-started/quick-start-guide) if you’re ready to jump in and start using Customer.io. ## How it all works[](#how-it-all-works) The image below illustrates what a well-rounded integration with Customer.io looks like. [![cio_integration_visualization.svg](https://docs.customer.io/images/cio_integration_visualization.svg)](#da9368a3d7b051672d47f43b836b2e09-lightbox) 1. **Your Product** sends **Real-time Data** to [Customer.io](/get-started/integrate/#integrate-with-customerio). 2. We’ll associate your real-time data with **People** and **Objects**. *People* are your leads, users, customers, etc that you want to send messages to. *Objects* are things that are important to your users, like an account they belong to. 3. Next, you **Activate your data**: populate **Segments** and build powerful campaigns that send personalized **Messages** to your audience. When you’re fully set up, data will flow into Customer.io, triggering campaigns and messages, helping you automate customer communications!  Want to send customer activity to your workspace? Check out our [Get Started guide](/get-started/integrate/) to learn more about integration methods. ## People[](#people) In Journeys, everything revolves around people. In Customer.io, you represent a person with data: * the things you know about them ([attributesA key-value pair that you associate with a person or an object—like a person’s name, the date they were created in your workspace, or a company’s billing date etc. Use attributes to target people and personalize messages.](/journeys/attributes/)) * the things they do ([eventsSomething that a person in your workspace did. Events can trigger campaigns, add people to segments, etc, and you can use properties from events to personalize messages.](/events/)) * the things they’re related to ([objectAn object is a non-person entity that you can associate with one or more people—like a company, account, or online course.](/journeys/objects/) relationships) * the campaigns they’re in and the messages they’ve received You’ll find people and their associated data on the **People** page. ## Objects[](#objects) Objects are the things that are important to your people, like an account they belong to, online courses they enroll in, or homes they’re interested in purchasing. A change to an object and people’s relationships to objects can trigger campaigns. You’ll find objects under *People* on the left-hand menu. Learn more about setting up objects here: [Objects: how they work](/journeys/objects-start/). ## Segments[](#segments) Segments are groups of people who match the same criteria. A segment can trigger campaigns, define recipient lists, represent conversion criteria, and more. To help you get started, we’ve pre-configured a few segments for you. If you go to the **Segments** page, you’ll see segments like “Paying Customers”, “Have not logged in recently” and “Unsubscribed”. Be sure to check those out! Learn more about segmenting your users here: [Getting Started: Segments](/journeys/getting-started-segments) ## Campaigns, Broadcasts, and Transactional Messages[](#campaigns-broadcasts-and-transactional-messages) Campaigns and Broadcasts send email, SMS, push, and in-app messages to your people. But, beyond that, your campaign and broadcast workflows can send Slack messages, webhooks, update [attributesA key-value pair that you associate with a person or an object—like a person’s name, the date they were created in your workspace, or a company’s billing date etc. Use attributes to target people and personalize messages.](/journeys/attributes/), and more. Transactional messages are emails that you send in response to your audience’s actions in your app. **Campaigns** are the quintessential messaging automation workflow. They help you send one or more messages in a workflow sequence to people when they meet your trigger condition(s). You can trigger campaigns when people perform events, when they join Segments (e.g. they meet attribute conditions), and so on. Campaigns are ideal for dripping content to people as they become eligible to receive it. * Welcome and onboarding series * Re-engagement series * Behavioral messages (respond to actions people take in your app or on your website) **Broadcasts** send a message to a list of recipients. Broadcast messages are queued to send to all the defined recipients at a time you specify. Broadcasts are ideal for manually sending newsletters or programmatically triggering announcements in bulk, like: * Newsletter messages * Pre-scheduled announcements * Promotions * Periodic release notes * Community alerts * Event change notifications * Product launches **Transactional messages** help you respond directly to your audience’s actions in your app. Unlike broadcasts and campaigns, transactional messages are one-to-one interactions. Transactional messages are ideal for: * Purchase receipts * Registration confirmations * Password resets * Event reminders * Shipping updates Learn more about [Campaigns and Broadcasts](/journeys/getting-started-campaigns-and-broadcasts) or [Transactional Messages](/journeys/transactional-api). ## Integrations[](#integrations) Once you grasp the basics of Customer.io, you’ll want to plan your integration. And don’t worry - you can also use your preferred tools and sources to transit data through Customer.io. It’s up to you!