Attribute or Segment lets you trigger automations based on profileThe representation of a person or group in Customer.io. People and custom objects both have their own profiles, but we bill based on the total number of profiles in your account. attributes, segmentsA segment is a group of people in your workspace. Use segments to trigger automations, track membership over time, or fine-tune your audience. There are two types of segments: data-driven and manual. Data-driven segments automatically update when people start or stop matching criteria. Manual segments are static., or both. Use segments if you want to track profiles that match this criteria over time or reuse the criteria as a trigger for other automations. You can set segment criteria based on your audience’s attributes, events, etc. Use attributes alongside segments or to quickly target specific profile attributes without creating or finding a segment. This trigger is best for automations like recurring NPS surveys, onboarding drip automations, and inactivity reminders.

An eventSomething that a person in your workspace did. Events can trigger automations, add people to segments, etc, and you can use properties from events to personalize messages.-triggered automation helps you respond to a profile’s activity in your app or website. For instance, you could trigger an automation based on a user abandoning their cart, viewing a specific page on your app, or completing an order.

Form submission lets you take advantage of formConnected Forms in Customer.io allow you to automatically trigger automations, send data to other services, and add or update people when they submit forms on your website or in your app. responses to trigger automations. You can connect a form to your workspace or integrate with Facebook Lead Ads. Use this type of automation to send messages to nurture new leads or respond to support requests.

Use Object updated when you want profiles to enter the automation every time an objectAn object is a non-person entity that you can associate with one or more people—like a company, account, or online course. is updated in your workspace. For instance, if you were tracking accounts as objects and updated the name of one, you could notify everyone that managed the account that the account went through a rebrand. Keep in mind, only profiles enter into journeys, not objects.

You’ll see this as “Object_type_name updated” in your trigger list. In the image above, “Course updated” is an example.

When you use objects to trigger automations, you can choose who enters into the automation. The audience could be:

• every profile in the object
• certain profiles related to the object

A relationship is the association between an objectAn object is a non-person entity that you can associate with one or more people—like a company, account, or online course. and a profile. Use this trigger type when you want profiles to enter an automation after their relationship to an object has changed. For instance, if you track accounts as objects, this could mean they joined an account (profile added), or they are now a manager (relationship changed).

You’ll see this as “Profile added” or “Relationship changed” in your trigger list. In the image above, “Profile added to Course” and “Relationship changes with Course” are examples.

When you use relationships to trigger automations, you can choose who enters into the automation. That is, the recipient of the message in this kind of automation doesn’t have to be the profile in the relationship that triggered it. The audience could be:

• the profile whose relationship to the object is updated (default)
• every profile in the object
• certain profiles related to the object

An important date triggers automations on a specific or relative date based on an attributeA 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. that profiles in your audience have. You can trigger based on any customer attributes that are properly formatted dates. This is useful for recurring automations like birthdays, anniversaries, subscription renewals, and payment reminders.

A webhook triggers a automation based on data from an external service. The purpose of your automation is to manipulate this data and associate it with profiles, much like you can with Zapier or Segment, but entirely within an automation. Because data, not profiles, is the subject of your automation, webhook-triggered automations don’t typically send messages directly; rather, they let you associate data with profiles, which can trigger subsequent automations.

Webhook automations help you perform one-to-many interactions with your audience, like notifying a group of profiles when you post a job or a product becomes available that a cohort of your audience is interested in.