What is Trigger?
Definition: An event or condition that initiates an automated workflow, such as a new CRM record, an email reply, a form submission, or a scheduled time interval.
Triggers start workflows. Without a trigger, your automation sits idle. Every workflow platform (n8n, Make, Zapier) begins with a trigger node that listens for a specific event and kicks off the subsequent actions.
Common trigger types in GTM: webhook triggers (receive data from an external tool), schedule triggers (run every hour, every day, every Monday), CRM triggers (new deal created, deal stage changed), email triggers (prospect replied, email bounced), and form triggers (someone submitted a landing page form).
A practical example: your trigger is "HubSpot deal moves to 'Demo Scheduled' stage." The workflow that follows: pull the contact's LinkedIn URL from HubSpot, enrich with Clay for recent company news, generate a personalized pre-demo briefing using Claude's API, and send it to the AE's inbox. The trigger is simple. The downstream value is high.
GTM Engineers chain triggers across tools. An email reply triggers an Instantly webhook, which triggers an n8n workflow, which updates HubSpot, which triggers a HubSpot workflow that notifies the AE. Each tool's trigger becomes the next tool's input. Understanding this chain is critical for building reliable pipelines that don't drop data between steps.