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All the Starting Points
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Every Customer Journey begins with a starting point. Use starting points to add contacts to your journey based on conditions that you set.
In this article, you'll learn about all the starting points you can use in a Customer Journey.
Things to know
- To learn more about starting points and how to use them in your Customer Journey, check out About Customer Journeys.
- Many starting points require certain types of information in your contacts’ audience fields. To learn more, check out Manage Audience and Signup Form Fields.
Available starting points
Here are all the starting points to choose from when you create or edit a Customer Journey.
Contact Activity
These starting points add contacts to a journey when they sign up for your emails, or when their audience data changes.
| Starting Point Name | Action |
|---|---|
| Tag added | Adds a contact after you add a specific tag to them. |
| Signs up | Adds a contact when they sign up for or are imported to an audience. |
| Audience field changes | Adds a contact when their audience field data changes to a specific value. |
| Joins audience group | Adds a contact after they join a specific group in your audience. |
| Leaves audience group | Adds a contact after they leave a specific group in your audience. |
| Viewed a page | Adds a contact after they view a page in your Mailchimp website with Track with Mailchimp enabled. |
| Clicked a link | Adds a contact after they click a link in your Mailchimp website with Track with Mailchimp enabled. |
Date and Special Events
These starting points add contacts to a journey based on a specific date field in your audience, like a birthday or an anniversary date.
Recurring date starting points and Birthday starting points add contacts to a journey on a yearly cycle. Specific date starting points add contacts to a journey based on a specific day and year in the future, so they can’t be used with Recurring date or Birthday starting points or wait rules.
| Starting Point Name | Action |
|---|---|
| Birthday | Adds a contact based on birthday field data in your audience. |
| Specific date | Adds a contact based on a specific date field in your audience. |
| Signup date | Adds a contact based on the date they were added to your audience. |
| Recurring date | Annually adds a contact based on a specific date field in your audience. |
Shopping Activity
These starting points add contacts from your connected e-commerce store. The abandoned cart starting point cannot be used with other types of starting points.
| Starting Point Name | Action |
|---|---|
| Buys any product | Adds a subscribed contact after they purchase any product from your store. |
| Buys a specific product | Adds a subscribed contact after they purchase a specific product from your store. |
| Abandons cart | Adds a contact 6 hours after they abandon a cart in your store. |
| Time since last purchased | Adds a subscribed contact after they have not purchased anything from your store in a specific timeframe. This starting point looks at purchase activity after your journey is activated. |
Marketing Activity
| Starting Point Name | Action |
|---|---|
| Opens email | Adds a contact after they open a specific email campaign. |
| Clicks any email link | Adds a contact after they click any link in a specific email campaign. |
| Clicks specific email link | Adds a contact after they click a specific link in a specific email campaign. |
| Responds to survey | Adds a contact after they respond to your survey. |
API and Integrations
These advanced starting points target contacts who meet the criteria from your Integrations with Mailchimp or custom API integrations.
| Starting Point Name | Action |
|---|---|
| API 3.0 | Adds a contact when an API endpoint is triggered. |
| Event API | Adds a contact after an API call is posted to the Events endpoint with a specific event name. Contacts can be added to a journey with an API call to a URL displayed in the Customer Journey builder. |
Additional information
Ready to get started or learn a little more? Here are some more resources to help you along the way.
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