Editing, Pausing and Relaunching Campaigns

After you launch a campaign, there might be certain cases when you want to make changes to the campaign or pause the campaign.

If a campaign is in draft state, you can edit the campaign journey and campaign properties without any restrictions.
You can make limited changes to a campaign that is launched or paused.
You cannot make any changes to a campaign that is completed.
If you make changes to a launched campaign by adding triggers or moving triggers, the user journey in the campaign is affected.
You can also archive a trigger if required.
- When you archive a trigger, users who were last messaged by the archived trigger will fall out of the campaign, but may be eligible to re-enter the campaign.
- Archiving triggers will modify the campaign journey and can change the sequence of messages a user is eligible to receive in the future.

Note: You can edit the campaign name and campaign tags irrespective of the type of campaign or the status of the campaign.

Editing launched or paused campaigns

Consider the following points about editing launched or paused campaigns:

For existing triggers you can edit delays, filter criteria, send settings, and tracking parameters.
You can change the messaging template. When you change the messaging template, an A/B test is set up for the Entire Creative and a new variation is added. 0% users are assigned to the old variation and 100% users are assigned to the new variation. You can select the required messaging template for the new variation.
You can add a new trigger to the journey and make changes to this trigger as required. Once you Save the journey with the new trigger, the rules for editing a launched journey will apply to this trigger.
You can change the order of triggers by moving them to the left, right, up, or down.
You can copy triggers and archive triggers.
You can edit the campaign tags, campaign end time, messaging preferences, holdout test settings, and monitoring preferences on the Properties tab.
Journey re-qualification settings have different editing rules depending on the type of campaign
- For event triggered campaigns, you can change the "Re-qualify users" setting without pausing the campaign. However, if you want to change the "User can be in the journey" setting, you must first pause the campaign.
- For segment triggered campaigns, you can change the "Re-qualify users" setting without pausing the campaign.
For paused segment based campaigns (one time, recurring, and segment triggered), you can change the segment for the campaign that you have specified on the Journey Start trigger. However, if any of the triggers use a Triggering Transaction filter, you cannot change the segment.
For paused event triggered campaigns, you can change the triggering event if none of the triggers in the journey have filters that use attributes of the event.

User journey when triggers are moved

When you pause a campaign and re-order triggers, user journeys might be affected based on where a user is in the journey.

Consider the following campaign with triggers A, B, C, and D. Triggers A and D are siblings.

Consider that the campaign is paused and Trigger C is moved to become a sibling of trigger D. Now, Trigger A becomes the child of Trigger C. So instead of trigger order A -> B -> C, we now have trigger order C -> A -> B.

When the campaign is restarted, users are affected in the following ways:

Users who were queued for Trigger B when the campaign was paused will be sent a message for Trigger B and then will fall out of the campaign.
Users who were sent a message by Trigger B and were in hold state due to the delay will be evaluated after the delay period. Since there is no trigger to follow B, they will fall out of the journey.
Users who were queued for Trigger C when the campaign was paused will be sent a message for Trigger C and will then be evaluated for Trigger A.

Pausing campaigns

When you pause a campaign for any reason, the campaign stops sending messages to your customers until you relaunch the campaign. If dayparting is set for any of the triggers, we recommend that you pause the campaign outside that window so that users are not skipped when the campaign is relaunched.

When you pause a campaign and re-order triggers, user journeys might be affected based on where a user is in the journey. For more information, see User journey when triggers are moved.

Note:

If a campaign is paused because the system cannot process it, a notification is sent to the user who created the campaign and to the users listed in the Send summary emails section.
For example, if a segment in a segment triggered campaign has no conditions, the campaign is paused and an email is sent to the you so that you can fix the segment and relaunch.
If you pause the campaign, no notifications are sent. However, the action is recorded in the Audit trail.

Effect of pausing and relaunching a campaign

Pausing and relaunching a campaign affects the entry of customers in the journey and affects messaging as well. When a campaign is paused, information about customers who have already entered the campaign journey is saved for up to 32 hours.

Effect on user entry in a campaign

When a segment based campaign (one time, recurring, or segment triggered) is paused, the segment computation stops and no customers will enter the campaign.

If the campaign is re-launched within this window, the segment computation resumes and customers who were not previously messaged continue to enter the campaign.
If the campaign is re-launched after the 32 hour window, it is considered as a new campaign run. To avoid messaging customers who already were sent, you must update your segment to exclude those customers.

When an event triggered campaign is paused, further events will not trigger the campaign. No new customers can enter the campaign while it is paused. These customers might be skipped from the campaign.

Effect on user journey

Pausing has different effects on customers depending on what stage they are in the campaign.

If a campaign action (trigger selection or messaging) was supposed to occur, the customers will exit the campaign instead.
If any customers are queued due to a delay/Dayparting/Send time optimization on the trigger, the wait time will continue to count down.
- If the campaign is relaunched before the wait period is over, the customer will continue their journey in the campaign.
- If the campaign is still paused when the wait time expires, the customer will exit the campaign.

Example 1

If a customer has been dispatched from a campaign segment at the same time that the campaign is paused, the customer will exit the campaign.

Example 2

A campaign trigger has a dayparting window of 9 - 10 am. A customer was queued up to the dayparting window at 8:30 am. The campaign is paused at 8:45 am. The wait time continues to count down for the customer.

If the campaign is re-launched at 8:59 am, the customer is sent a message at 9 am and continues their journey in the campaign.
If the campaign is still paused at 9 am, the customer will exit because they were supposed to get messaged at 9 am but the campaign is paused.

Targeting dropped customers

When a campaign is paused, some customers might not receive messages from the campaign. You can create a segment of users that were not sent messages from this campaign using messaging activity criteria.