This article recaps the opening "Triggers" segment of our Lifecycle Marketing That Drives Repeat Orders webinar (AppFront Growth Series, Campaigns 101).

Every campaign in AppFront is built from two pieces: a trigger (what starts the campaign — a lifecycle moment, a purchase behavior, a manual action) and an event (what happens as a result). This article and the ones that follow walk through the different trigger types available and when to use each one.

Life cycle rewards are the foundational, automated touchpoints tied to a customer's individual journey with you — sign-up, birthday, membership anniversary, and win-back for lapsed customers. Because they run automatically based on customer behavior, they act as guardrails that keep every customer moving along a consistent journey without manual effort.

Unlike life cycle rewards, compensation campaigns are manual — you trigger them yourself from an individual guest's profile or a group of guests. They're commonly used for service recovery (a bad review, a long wait, a cold dish) or to reward contest and trivia winners with a free item or store credit.

A single compensation action can both load the reward into the guest's account and send a personalized email or text message at the same time, so the "we're sorry" message and the free item arrive together instead of through two separate manual steps.

A landing page signup trigger gives you an embeddable, customizable link you can place anywhere — an Instagram bio, a QR code, an ad — to funnel new people into your loyalty program. Because each link is trackable, you can see exactly which channel is driving the most sign-ups, and automatically segment new members by where they came from, so an Instagram sign-up can be routed into different follow-up messaging than a sign-up from your website.

Next up: point bank, tiers, group marketing, and cashback — the rest of the available campaign triggers.