Possible to Pause a Smart Campaign mid flow? | Community
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A
Anonymous
November 21, 2014
Solved

Possible to Pause a Smart Campaign mid flow?

  • November 21, 2014
  • 6 replies
  • 5361 views
We have a few Smart Campaign flows that are a few weeks long - and of course with the holidays coming up, I'd like to pause the emails for the holiday week.

It was easy to set up for Nurture programs, but for individual smart campaigns not in engagement programs I can't figure out how to pause everyone in these flows. Any ideas?
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Best answer by Dory_Viscoglio
I'd be cautious of adding/removing waitsteps if your campaigns are triggered and adding new people every day... let's imagine this is your current flow:

1. Send email 1
2. Wait 1 week
3. Send email 2

If you update it to add an additional week, you will get the results you want that week but not the following week... here's why:

1. Send email 1
2. Wait 1 week
3. Wait 1 week
4. Send email 2

No problems here, but when you delete the additional week wait step, anyone who was in the second wait 1 week waitstep (flow step #3), when they're done with that wait step they will not receive email 2 since that's now flow step #3, which they just exited.  

If this was just a one time batch campaign, then it should be fine to add an additional wait step.

6 replies

A
Anonymous
November 24, 2014
Thanks everyone. What I ended up doing is this:

Nurture programs - pause for a week, then unpause.

Flows outside of Nurture Programs - add a week wait. 
Anyone in these flows I marketing suspended them for one week.

So far so good, we will see later this week if no one gets an email on Thanksgiving!
Heloise_Briere1
Heloise_Briere1
New Participant
May 25, 2018

Hi Greg, so I'm re-opening this because we want to do the same: We have a bunch of people in a flow and we need to pause it for a couple of weeks but would prefer to avoid having to remove everyone from the flow.

So if people are currently on a waiting pause, by adding an additional waiting pause (but not modifying the existing one), it will for sure add the waiting time and not blast the email?

Thanks in advance for confirming,

Heloise

Heloise Briere
Dan_Stevens_
Dan_Stevens_
New Participant
May 25, 2018

Alternatively, you could disable the entire EP by accessing Settings. And then turn it back on when you want it to continue.

Dory_Viscoglio
Dory_ViscoglioAccepted solution
New Participant
November 24, 2014
I'd be cautious of adding/removing waitsteps if your campaigns are triggered and adding new people every day... let's imagine this is your current flow:

1. Send email 1
2. Wait 1 week
3. Send email 2

If you update it to add an additional week, you will get the results you want that week but not the following week... here's why:

1. Send email 1
2. Wait 1 week
3. Wait 1 week
4. Send email 2

No problems here, but when you delete the additional week wait step, anyone who was in the second wait 1 week waitstep (flow step #3), when they're done with that wait step they will not receive email 2 since that's now flow step #3, which they just exited.  

If this was just a one time batch campaign, then it should be fine to add an additional wait step.
A
Anonymous
November 22, 2014
Gregory - Alternatively I would suggest setting up another campaign and using the 'Remove From Flow' flow-action to just remove people from the running campaign.

When you're alright for them to start receiving e-mails  again, I would suggest creating a new campaign with 'Send Email' flow-steps, but you might want to put a condition which says If Not Sent Email A, then Send Email A. That way people who have already received Email A would not receive Email A. Again it depends on what exact flow-steps are there in the campaign you're referring to, but this would be another alternative.

Hope this helps. Thanks!!

 
Michelle_Tizian
Michelle_Tizian
New Participant
November 22, 2014
I've done what Dan has suggested before and it worked for me.  Just make sure to remove the additional waitstep the following week.  
A
Anonymous
November 21, 2014
I was thinking that, but was afraid it would get messy real quick as I would have to add in many waitsteps. I also worry about after next week, removing the waitsteps and what that would do.
Dan_Stevens_
Dan_Stevens_
New Participant
November 21, 2014
Can you add a wait step?  Assuming you already have a wait step for the next activity to happen, you would need to add a new wait step after the existing one.  You cannot simply modify it since Marketo has already acted upon it (in this case, wait xx days).
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