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Overview
Your Zap fires for every new lead the same way: enrich, score, add to sequence. But not every lead deserves the same workflow. The enterprise prospect showing buying signals needs a different path than the startup founder who just downloaded a whitepaper. Without conditional logic, your automation treats a hot lead and a tire-kicker identically—wasting sequence slots, diluting personalization, and frustrating your sales team with noise.
Zapier's filters and paths transform one-size-fits-all Zaps into intelligent routing systems. Filters act as gatekeepers, stopping workflows when conditions are not met. Paths branch your automation into multiple tracks based on lead attributes, intent signals, or behavioral data. Together, they let you build GTM workflows that respond to context—routing high-fit leads to aggressive sequences while nurturing lower-priority prospects with lighter touches.
This guide walks through filter and path configuration from basic setups to advanced multi-branch routing. You will learn how to build conditional logic that matches your ICP criteria, incorporates behavioral signals, and integrates with enrichment tools to make routing decisions based on complete lead profiles.
Filters vs. Paths: When to Use Each
Filters and paths solve different problems. Choosing the wrong one creates either unnecessary complexity or insufficient routing capability.
Filters: Binary Decision Points
Filters stop a Zap entirely when conditions fail. They are binary—the workflow either continues or halts. Use filters when you need to prevent actions for leads that should not enter a workflow at all: blocking competitors, preventing duplicate processing, stopping workflows for invalid emails, or excluding specific domains from outreach.
Filters excel at exclusion logic. When a filter condition fails, Zapier logs the task but performs no subsequent actions—keeping your task count low and your data clean.
Paths: Multi-Branch Routing
Paths split a single Zap into multiple branches, each with its own conditions and actions. Unlike filters, paths do not stop workflows—they direct leads to different destinations based on attributes. Use paths when different lead segments require different treatments: routing enterprise leads to high-touch sequences, sending different messaging based on industry vertical, or triggering different workflows based on fit scores.
Ask yourself: "Should some leads not be processed at all?" If yes, start with a filter. Then ask: "Should different leads receive different treatments?" If yes, add paths after the filter. Most sophisticated Zaps use both—filters to exclude, paths to route.
The most effective GTM workflows layer filters before paths. The filter removes leads that should never enter any workflow. The path then routes qualified leads to appropriate tracks.
Building Filter Conditions That Work
Filter configuration seems straightforward until you encounter edge cases. Missing fields, inconsistent data formats, and unexpected values break naive filter conditions.
Basic Filter Syntax
Every filter consists of a field, an operator, and a value. Zapier evaluates the condition and either continues the Zap or halts it.
| Operator | Use Case | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Text exactly matches | Exact string comparison | Country exactly matches "United States" |
| Text contains | Substring matching | Job Title contains "Director" |
| Text does not contain | Exclusion matching | Email does not contain "@competitor.com" |
| Number greater than | Numeric thresholds | Employee Count greater than 50 |
| Exists | Field presence check | Phone Number exists |
| Does not exist | Missing field check | Unsubscribe Date does not exist |
Handling Missing and Null Values
The most common filter failures come from missing data. If your enrichment provider does not return a company size, your "employee count greater than 100" filter will fail—even for enterprise companies.
Before evaluating field values, confirm the field exists. Create an AND condition group where the first condition checks "Field exists" and the second evaluates the value.
When a field might be missing but you still want to continue processing, use OR groups. Example: "Employee Count greater than 100 OR Employee Count does not exist" continues for large companies AND companies with unknown size.
Use a Formatter step before your filter to clean data. Convert text to lowercase, trim whitespace, or extract numbers from strings.
Building Compound Conditions
Complex qualification logic requires AND/OR groupings. Zapier allows nested condition groups, but complexity hurts maintainability. When filter logic exceeds three condition groups, consider whether a Code step or AI-powered scoring might produce a single qualification field that simplifies filtering.
For ICP-based filtering, tools like Octave can evaluate complex qualification criteria and return a single fit score. Filtering on "fit_score greater than 70" is simpler and more maintainable than replicating multi-dimensional ICP logic in Zapier conditions.
Configuring Paths for Segment-Based Routing
Paths transform a single Zap into a routing engine. Each path branch can contain its own conditions, actions, and even nested filters. Well-designed paths map directly to your buyer personas and segment strategies.
Path Architecture Best Practices
Paths evaluate from top to bottom. Zapier checks each path's conditions in order and executes the first matching branch. This evaluation order matters—put your most specific conditions first and catch-all paths last.
If a lead matches multiple path conditions, only the first matching path executes. Structure paths from most specific to most general. Enterprise IT Directors should match before generic Enterprise matches, which should match before a default path.
Segment-Based Path Example
Consider a workflow that routes leads to different sequences based on company size and buying signals:
| Path | Conditions | Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise + Intent | Employees > 1000 AND intent_score > 70 | Add to aggressive enterprise sequence, alert AE |
| Enterprise | Employees > 1000 | Add to standard enterprise nurture |
| Mid-Market + Intent | Employees 100-1000 AND intent_score > 70 | Add to accelerated mid-market sequence |
| Mid-Market | Employees 100-1000 | Add to standard mid-market sequence |
| SMB | Employees < 100 | Add to self-serve nurture |
| Default | (catch-all) | Add to general nurture, flag for review |
This architecture ensures every lead receives appropriate treatment while prioritizing high-value prospects. The structure aligns with automated lead scoring and prioritization principles.
Using Enrichment Data in Path Conditions
Raw form data rarely provides enough context for sophisticated routing. Enrichment steps before your paths add the firmographic, technographic, and behavioral signals needed for intelligent routing:
- Technology stack: Route Salesforce users to integration-focused messaging
- Funding stage: Series B+ companies get enterprise treatment
- Hiring signals: Companies hiring for your buyer persona indicate active projects
- Intent data: High intent scores trigger accelerated sequences
When combined with a context engine like Octave, your paths can evaluate synthesized insights—matching leads to the right cadence based on confidence scores rather than individual field values.
Advanced Conditional Logic Patterns
Beyond basic filtering and routing, Zapier supports patterns that handle complex GTM requirements.
Time-Based Routing
Lead response time matters. Paths can route leads differently based on when they arrive:
- Business hours routing: Leads arriving during business hours get immediate rep assignment; after-hours leads queue for next-day follow-up
- Day-of-week logic: Friday afternoon leads might enter a Monday-start sequence
- Timezone-based routing: Route to reps based on lead timezone
Behavioral Trigger Conditions
Integrate behavioral signals from your product or website into path conditions. Buying signals like pricing page visits or demo requests indicate intent levels that should influence routing:
Configure your product analytics to send events to Zapier when key actions occur.
Use Code steps or external scoring tools to convert events into actionable scores.
Combine firmographic fit with behavioral intent in your path conditions.
Multi-System Coordination
Enterprise GTM stacks involve multiple systems that need coordinated updates. When a lead matches your enterprise path, you might create a Salesforce contact, add to your sequencer with proper field mapping, log the decision to your analytics warehouse, and trigger a Slack notification. This coordination becomes critical when you need to maintain consistent data across CRM and outbound tools.
Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Over-Filtering
Aggressive filters feel safe but over-filtering loses good leads. If your filter rejects 80% of leads, examine whether your conditions match reality. Common causes include requiring fields that enrichment providers often miss and setting thresholds based on ideal profiles rather than realistic targets.
Path Overlap and Gaps
When paths have overlapping conditions, leads consistently match the first path even when a later path would be more appropriate. Test your paths with sample data representing each segment, including edge cases like the 100-employee company or the lead with missing industry data.
Ignoring the Default Path
Every path configuration should include a default branch. Without one, leads that match no conditions simply stop. The default path should log the lead for manual review and add to a generic nurture sequence.
Static Conditions in Dynamic Markets
Path conditions set once and never updated drift from reality. As your ICP evolves, your qualification criteria should update accordingly. Schedule quarterly reviews of your filter and path conditions.
Document your path logic outside of Zapier. A simple spreadsheet mapping conditions to actions makes quarterly reviews faster and helps onboard new team members.
Testing and Monitoring Conditional Workflows
Testing Strategy
Before deploying conditional Zaps, test with representative samples from each intended segment. Create test records for each path including edge cases. Verify that leads intended for exclusion actually get filtered. Confirm that each path's actions execute correctly and watch the first 50-100 leads closely before scaling volume.
Ongoing Monitoring
Set up monitoring to catch routing issues before they impact pipeline:
- Path distribution tracking: Monitor what percentage of leads match each path. Sudden shifts indicate condition problems.
- Filter rejection rates: Track what percentage of leads fail filters.
- Error alerts: Configure Zapier to alert you when Zaps error on unexpected data formats.
Integrating with Context Engines for Smarter Routing
Zapier conditions evaluate individual fields. But qualification decisions often require synthesizing multiple signals into a holistic assessment. Rather than building complex nested conditions for ICP matching, you can call an external scoring service that evaluates the full lead profile and returns routing recommendations.
Tools like Octave provide this synthesis layer. Instead of maintaining qualification logic in Zapier, you define your ICP and routing rules in a central context engine. Your Zap sends lead data, receives a qualification decision with confidence score, and routes accordingly:
- Centralized logic: Update qualification criteria in one place, not across multiple Zaps
- Richer evaluation: AI-powered scoring considers signals hard to express as simple conditions
- Explainable decisions: Get reasoning for why a lead qualified
This pattern aligns with the broader trend toward hands-off AI pipelines where automation handles not just execution but decision-making.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, and this is often the recommended pattern. Place filters early to exclude leads that should not be processed at all, then use paths to route the remaining qualified leads to appropriate treatments.
Zapier supports up to 5 path branches plus a default path. If you need more, consider using nested paths within specific branches or Code steps to generate routing variables.
Leads that fail a filter condition do count as a task, but this is typically one task rather than multiple tasks for each action that would have executed.
Check Zapier's task history for the specific lead. You will see which data values were evaluated and why each path condition passed or failed. Common causes include data format mismatches and path evaluation order.