How to set up time-based triggers?

Neelke Stadler Updated by Neelke Stadler

Want to send a weekly message? Or a notification after something happens? Time-based triggers makes this possible!

Every chat journey needs to start somewhere. You can define your trigger rules directly on the Journey page.

How to set up a trigger?

Navigate to the Journey page. When you create a new journey, you will be prompted to define the trigger that kicks off that journey.

If you are unsure of your trigger you can click "skip for now" and do this later.

Two types of time-based triggers

You can choose between a relative or specific time trigger.

  1. Before or after an event, e.g. 2 days before your appointment.
  1. At a specific time, e.g. every Monday at 8 am. You can set this to be a once-off or a recurring trigger.

More trigger types will launch on the Canvas soon! 😎

Review and refine your trigger

It is very important to define triggers correctly to ensure personalised messaging. Nobody likes messaging that is not relevant and timely to them. Make sure to double check your trigger.

Once you have defined your rule, you will see a review screen. Here you can:

  • Add another rule to refine your target audience. This is recommended to ensure personalised messaging.
  • View how many people matches the trigger definition at that point in time.
The audience matching a specific trigger is subject to time. It is important to remember that depending on when a trigger is evaluated, the audience will change. This is also the power of triggers. A simple example, if you set up birthday messaging then 30 people may match your criteria today, whilst 62 matches it tomorrow.

Time-based triggers require a template

WhatsApp requires you to use a message template when reaching out to people after 24 hours since the last interaction. Because time-based trigger makes it possible to reach out beyond 24 hours, all time-based triggers have to start with a template message to ensure successful messaging.

You can select an existing template, or it needed, create a new template to start the specific chat journey.

Have fun using time-based triggers. Test your chat journeys and take care not to spam people - nobody likes spam!

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The available trigger types in Journeys

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