What’s the difference between internal vs external event triggers?

Internal event triggers fire based on activity the ESP directly tracks:

Email opens and clicks. Subscription changes. In-ESP form submissions. Website activity tracked by ESP pixel. List membership changes.

External event triggers come from outside systems:

Purchase events from ecommerce platform. CRM field changes. App activity from your product. Third-party service events. Custom backend events via API.

Key differences: Data availability: Internal events have full ESP context. External events include only what is sent. Latency: Internal events process immediately. External events have integration delay. Reliability: Internal events are guaranteed. External events depend on integration health.

Combining both: Powerful automations often combine internal and external triggers. External event starts flow; internal engagement shapes path.

Internal events tell you what happened in email. External events tell you what happened everywhere else.