sales-customerio

What this skill does

# Customer.io Platform Help

Help the user with Customer.io platform questions — from behavior-triggered journeys and campaigns through transactional messaging, segmentation, multi-channel delivery (email, SMS, push, in-app, WhatsApp), Data Pipelines, Custom Objects, Ad Audience Sync, and analytics. Customer.io is a customer engagement and marketing automation platform for data-driven, event-based messaging across the entire customer lifecycle. Founded in 2012 by Colin Nederkoorn and John Allison, Customer.io serves 9,000+ brands with $100M+ ARR and differentiates through event-driven automation for product-led companies — while Mailchimp/SendGrid focus on marketing email, Customer.io excels at behavior-triggered messaging (onboarding, activation, retention, re-engagement) with first-party data at the center.

## Step 1 — Gather context


If `references/learnings.md` exists, read it first for accumulated knowledge.

Ask the user:

1. **What area of Customer.io do you need help with?**
   - A) Journeys — visual drag-and-drop workflow builder for multi-channel automation
   - B) Campaigns — segment-triggered, event-triggered, or date-triggered messaging
   - C) Transactional Messages — API-triggered email, push, or SMS (password resets, receipts, etc.)
   - D) Segmentation — data-driven (auto-updating) or manual (static) segments
   - E) Multi-channel messaging — email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messages, WhatsApp
   - F) Data Pipelines — data ingestion API, reverse ETL, Segment integration
   - G) Custom Objects — modeling relationships beyond people (accounts, products, subscriptions)
   - H) Ad Audience Sync — Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube audience sync
   - I) Design Studio — collaborative drag-and-drop email editor
   - J) A/B & cohort testing — testing content, subject lines, workflow branches, send times
   - K) Broadcasts — one-time or scheduled messages to segments
   - L) Webhooks — sending/receiving data to any API within journey steps
   - M) Analytics — conversion goals, cohort comparison, AI-powered insights
   - N) APIs — Track API, App API, Transactional API, Data Pipelines API
   - O) Integrations — Salesforce, Segment, Snowflake, BigQuery, Zapier, etc.
   - P) Account / Billing — plans, pricing, profile limits
   - Q) Something else — describe it

2. **What's your role?**
   - A) Developer / engineer
   - B) Product / growth
   - C) Marketing / lifecycle
   - D) Admin / account owner
   - E) Founder / solo operator
   - F) Other

3. **What are you trying to accomplish?** (describe your specific goal or question)

**If the user's request already provides most of this context, skip directly to the relevant step.** Lead with your best-effort answer using reasonable assumptions (stated explicitly), then ask only the most critical 1-2 clarifying questions at the end — don't gate your response behind gathering complete context.

Note: If the user needs a specialized skill, route them there with a brief explanation of why that skill is a better fit.

## Step 2 — Route or answer directly

If the request maps to a specialized skill, route:
- General email marketing strategy / best practices -> `/sales-email-marketing`
- Cross-platform email deliverability (not Customer.io-specific) -> `/sales-deliverability`
- Email open/click tracking strategy -> `/sales-email-tracking`
- Connecting Customer.io to other tools via Zapier or middleware -> `/sales-integration`
- Funnel strategy / conversion optimization -> `/sales-funnel`

Otherwise, answer directly from platform knowledge using the reference below.

## Step 3 — Customer.io platform reference

**Read `references/platform-guide.md`** for detailed module documentation, pricing, integrations, and data model.

*You no longer need the platform guide details — focus on the user's specific situation.*

## Step 4 — Actionable guidance

Based on the user's specific question:

1. **Setting up an event-triggered campaign**:
   1. Identify the event that should trigger the campaign (e.g., `trial_started`, `purchase_completed`, `feature_activated`) — make sure your application is tracking this event via the Track API or Data Pipelines
   2. In Customer.io, go to Journeys > Create Journey > choose "Event triggered"
   3. Select the trigger event name — optionally add event data filters (e.g., only trigger when `plan = "pro"`)
   4. Add a delay if needed (e.g., wait 1 hour after signup before sending the first onboarding email)
   5. Add your first message action — select the channel (email, SMS, push, etc.) and design the message
   6. Use Liquid templating to personalize: `{{ customer.first_name }}`, `{{ event.plan_name }}`, `{{ customer.company }}`
   7. Add branching logic for follow-ups — e.g., "Did user complete onboarding step?" true/false branch
   8. Set a conversion goal event (e.g., `onboarding_completed`) with a time window to measure campaign effectiveness
   9. Test the journey in draft mode — use a test profile and manually trigger the event via the Track API
   10. Activate the journey when ready

2. **Sending transactional email via the API**:
   1. Create a transactional message template in Customer.io: Transactional > Create Transactional Message > Email
   2. Design the email content — use Liquid variables for dynamic data (e.g., `{{ order_number }}`, `{{ reset_url }}`)
   3. Note the transactional message ID from the template settings
   4. Get your App API key from Settings > API Credentials (this is a Bearer token, different from the Track API Site ID/key pair)
   5. Send via API:
      ```
      POST https://api.customer.io/v1/send/email
      Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APP_API_KEY
      Content-Type: application/json

      {
        "transactional_message_id": "YOUR_TEMPLATE_ID",
        "to": "[email protected]",
        "identifiers": { "id": "user_123" },
        "message_data": { "order_number": "ORD-456", "total": "$99.00" }
      }
      ```
   6. Handle the response — check for success (200) or error codes
   7. Monitor delivery in Customer.io's Transactional Messages section — opens, clicks, and delivery status appear alongside campaign analytics
   8. For EU data residency, use `https://api-eu.customer.io/v1/send/email`

3. **Building data-driven segments**:
   1. Go to Segments > Create Segment > Data-driven
   2. Define conditions using the visual condition builder — combine attribute filters, event filters, and engagement filters
   3. Attribute filter example: `plan` equals `"premium"` AND `created_at` is after 2025-01-01
   4. Event filter example: Person has performed `login` at least 3 times in the last 7 days
   5. Engagement filter example: Person has opened any email in the last 30 days
   6. Use AND/OR grouping for complex logic — e.g., (plan = "premium" OR plan = "enterprise") AND (last login within 14 days)
   7. Preview the segment to see matching profiles before saving
   8. Use the segment as a journey trigger — people automatically enter the journey when they match the segment criteria and exit when they no longer match
   9. Segments re-evaluate in real time as new data arrives via Track API or Data Pipelines — no manual refresh needed

4. **Adding a webhook to a journey workflow**:
   1. Open an existing journey or create a new one in the journey builder
   2. Add a "Send Webhook" action at the desired step in the workflow
   3. Configure the webhook: set the HTTP method (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE), URL, headers, and body
   4. Use Liquid templating in the webhook body to include person attributes and event data: `{ "user_id": "{{ customer.id }}", "plan": "{{ customer.plan }}" }`
   5. Add authentication headers as needed (e.g., `Authorization: Bearer YOUR_EXTERNAL_API_KEY`)
   6. Use cases: update an external CRM, trigger a Slack notification, call your own API to provision a resource, sync data to a third-party tool
   7. Handle webhook responses — you can branch the journey based on the webhook response status code (success/failure