Not every contact moves through your automation the same way. Some buy right away. Others take their time. Goals let your automation react to what each contact actually does, so nobody gets messages that no longer fit.
A goal is a milestone you want contacts to reach, like buying a product, filling out a form, or logging in to a membership site. It also works as a gate. When a contact achieves the goal, they move into the steps you've placed after it. Goals are close cousins of triggers. A trigger starts an automation. A goal creates a new path inside one.
Say you have ten nurture emails above a goal for purchasing a product. A contact buys after the fourth email. They jump straight to the goal, and they skip the other six emails asking them to buy something they already bought. To pick your goal, ask what you hope a contact does because of this automation. For a nurture sequence, that's usually a purchase.
In edit mode, click What Happens Next? below an element or trigger, and choose Goal. Click into the goal, click Add Goal, and pick the type. Goals come in four categories: CRM, External Events, Sales, and Sites and Pages. That covers things like a form submission, a tag being added, a completed task, an email link click, a purchase, a page visit, or a membership change. Visits to Ontraport pages are tracked automatically. To use a page on another site, add the Ontraport tracking code there first.
You can also add conditions to a goal, so only contacts with certain data or history can achieve it. And to build several similar goals quickly, hover over a goal and click the copy icon.
Put goals side by side to send contacts down different paths. For example, after a sales call task, add a "Task is completed" goal for each outcome, like left a voicemail or not interested, and build the right follow-up under each one.
Every goal has settings. "Who can achieve this goal?" has four options: any contact on this map, only contacts on previous waits, contacts on any upstream element, and any contact in account. Upstream means only contacts on the direct vertical path above the goal. If you can't follow the arrows down to the goal, that element isn't upstream. That's useful when one map has several email series, each ending in its own purchase goal.
Next, choose what happens if the contact is already on the map. Move here when achieved moves them to the goal and removes them from wherever else they were. Add here again when achieved adds them here and leaves them where they are too. Ignore this goal leaves them where they are. You can also check "This goal can only be activated once per contact." For task outcome goals, any contact on this map with Move here when achieved is the recommended setup.
Every goal comes with a wait above it. By default, it's set to continue immediately when the attached goal is achieved, so contacts stay there until they actually do the thing. You can't make someone buy, but you can plan for the people who don't. Click the wait, change "Wait here until" to "Some time passes," enter an amount, like seven days, and click Done. A new path appears to the left of the wait. Build it with What Happens Next?, and finish it with an End, Exit, or Go to element.
For example, use a "Clicks an Email link" goal with a two-day wait. Anyone who hasn't clicked after two days takes the side path, where you can resend the email. Anyone who clicks moves ahead right away.
Once your map is running, click Performance in the top right. Goals show your contacts' conversion rate, and three reports are built around them: Goal Conversion Rate, Goal Conversion Point, which shows where contacts were when they converted, and Goal Conversion Time, which shows how long they took.
So: goals mark what you want contacts to do, move them forward the moment they do it, and give everyone else a path of their own. Next up: actions, the steps that do the work in your automations.