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.

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

Editing launched campaigns

Consider the following points about editing launched campaigns:

• You cannot make any changes to segment based campaigns (one time, recurring, and segment triggered) when they are in launched state.
• For event triggered campaigns, you can make the following changes:
  • For existing triggers you can edit delays, filter criteria, and tracking parameters. You cannot change the messaging template.
  • You can add a new trigger to the journey and make changes to this trigger as required. However, once you Save this trigger, you cannot change the messaging template.
  • You can change the order of triggers by moving them to the left, right, up, or down.
  • You can archive triggers.
  • You can edit the campaign end time, messaging preferences, journey re-qualification settings, holdout test settings, and monitoring preferences on the Properties tab.

Editing paused campaigns

Consider the following points about editing paused segment based or event triggered campaigns:

• For existing triggers you can edit delays, filter criteria, and tracking parameters.
• You cannot change the messaging template for an existing trigger. To use a different messaging template, set up an A/B test for the Entire Creative. Add a new variation, select the required messaging template, and assign 100% users to this variation. Then assign 0% users to the old variation.
• You can add a new trigger to the journey and make changes to this trigger as required. However, once you Save this trigger, you cannot change the messaging template.
• You can change the order of triggers by moving them to the left, right, up, or down.
• You can archive triggers.
• You can edit the campaign end time, messaging preferences, journey re-qualification settings, holdout test settings, and monitoring preferences on the Properties tab for both segment based and event triggered campaigns.
• For segment based campaigns (one time, recurring, and segment triggered), you can also 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

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.