When creating a trigger for a product, you have the following options for the trigger event:
Purchase: Activated, first time only
Purchase: Activated
Purchase: Deactivated
First, the distinction between Purchase and Participant.
When you create triggers on "Purchase", the contact that the trigger is invoked for is the billing contact for the purchase.
For triggers on "Participant", the contact is the participant(s) for the purchase.
In 98% of cases, those are the same. But in the cases where one person is the billing contact and another person is the participant in the course, it matters.
As well in the cases where there is more than one participant for the same product, it matters—in that case, the triggers on Participant will be invoked once for each participant.
The second half should be self-explanatory.
"Activated" triggers run each time a purchase is activated. Which means if it's canceled, and then activated again, it'll run again. If the purchase enters the "Failed" state because an installment remains unpaid longer than your settings allow, and they come back and bring their payment in order, the Activated triggers will run again.
The "Activated, first time only" triggers only run the first time.
The "Deactivated" triggers run each time the purchase goes from an active state to an inactive state, which could happen due to failed payment, canceling or expiring a subscription, a refund, etc.
If you want to use triggers to grant access to some resource, e.g. you want all the active participants to be on a mailing list in MailChimp, or you want to use Webhooks to manage some external service that people get when they purchase through Simplero, you'll want to use the "Participant: Activated" and "Participant: Deactivated" trigger events to manage access to that external resource.
Your business is always changing and we realize you may find the need to add a trigger to an existing List or Product. Maybe you have decided to create a sales funnel for your List or some kind of nurture sequence for your product. Or maybe you are converting a product to be an evergreen. Whatever the case if you add a trigger after there are already subscribers or purchases the new trigger will not affect those previously on the list.
However, what if you want the trigger to apply to the previous members?
You have two options for how to do this. Both work equally well but if you have a long List or Product then I would suggest going with option 2.
Select Sales and then Products from your Simplero Dashboard
In the Products tab, locate and select the product
Select the Participants tab
Check the boxes next to the Participants name you want to perform the trigger
Once all the Participants have been selected, click the Select action... drop-down list and select the action you need
Select Contacts and then Segments from your Simplero Dashboard
Select the Segments tab
Create a segment that only includes that List or Product that you are adding the trigger to
Perform an action to the segment - Use the same settings that you used in creating your trigger
GDPR notice for those doing business in the EU: Please keep in mind when using triggers based on actions of your customers that you are in compliance with GDPR, actions such as these may violate rules in regards to consent and profiling. This message does not constitute legal advice should you have a question about compliance please consult a lawyer.