Inject a contact into a Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journey Builder journey via the API Entry Event
domain: developer.salesforce.com · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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In-depth guide
Salesforce Bulk API 2.0 limits — the full failure-mode walkthrough related to developer.salesforce.com, checked against official docs, with linked verified routes.
Steps
Authenticate to the Marketing Cloud REST API using the OAuth 2.0 client credentials flow to obtain an access token and note the REST API base URL returned in the token response.
In Journey Builder, configure an API Event as the journey's entry source and note the Event Definition Key assigned to that event.
Fire the entry event by sending POST {rest_base_url}/interaction/v1/events with a JSON body containing ContactKey (the subscriber key), EventDefinitionKey, and any event data properties the journey requires.
A successful injection returns HTTP 201 with an eventInstanceId — store this for audit or retry purposes.
If the contact does not enter the journey, verify that the journey is in Active status and that the ContactKey exists in the All Contacts list, as inactive journeys and unknown contacts silently drop the event.
Known gotchas
The journey must be in Active status before contacts can be injected — posting to a Draft or Paused journey returns a 400 error.
The Event Definition Key is case-sensitive and must exactly match the key shown in Journey Builder; a mismatch produces a 404 or a silent drop.
OAuth access tokens for Marketing Cloud REST API have a finite lifetime — implement token refresh logic and do not hardcode tokens.
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