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AlexW
Level 2
September 1, 2023
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Temporarily pausing a default campaign

  • September 1, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 3663 views

I hope this isn't a stupid question. I have a default campaign running a smart campaign. I need to pause it temporarily while I make some changes. How do I do this? The contacts running through are currently in a wait step so I'm hopeful this won't affect anything too badly. 

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Best answer by Darshil_Shah1

If this is a batch campaign, then you can make changes w/o Pausing the campaign with a lot less to worry about as compared to making changes to a live trigger campaign. Given that the changes get saved before the batch campaign's next scheduled run, you should be good. Additionally, to clarify reupdates to the Wait step: Any change to the wait step will only impact persons entering the wait step after the change. for all leads that were already ion the wait step when you changed it will not be impacted by the change. If you don't want to make changes to a scheduled/recurring campaign, you can always remove clear the schedule/recurrence, make changes, and then schedule it again (although I still think you should be good with making changes to a scheduled campaign as long as changes get saved before the campaign's next run).

 

Also, Abort campaign option is by and large for emergency use only (not for making updates), e.g., for the cases when you launch/run a campaign and immediately realize it was a mistake, aborting it is how you pull the emergency brake and stop the campaign mid-run. This will immediately stop campaign from processing any further qualified people through its flow.

1 reply

Darshil_Shah1
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Darshil_Shah1Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
September 1, 2023

Did you mean trigger campaign? Marketo doesn’t have a default campaign. There’s a Default program and it has a little briefcase icon. If your campaign is an active trigger campaign, then you can update the smart list with the campaign activated, but during the short moment when you’re making changes to the campaign and they get saved, the campaign would go into the invalid state (indicated by the campaign icon turning to a red bulb in the tree). Once the campaign is updated correctly without any errors and saved, the red bulb will again turn yellow. In this short period during the update, when the campaign is invalid, it wouldn’t be able to qualify new people. In most cases, this is not worrisome and isn’t a big issue, as the update doesn’t take more than a minute.

 

However, if you’re planning to make a lot of changes or want to test the updates comprehensively before, you can always clone this campaign, make the updates, test it, and then make changes to the live campaign, or deactivate the existing campaign, make updates, test it, and then activate it again. The only downside of the latter approach is that during updates and testing, it won’t be able to process new people. Also, existing people in the wait step would not be impacted in any cases and would continue the flow as long as you don’t remove them from the flow. If you’re updating the campaign flow, then people in the wait step will progress to the next flow step once they’re done waiting in the flow step. 

A
AlexWAuthor
Level 2
September 3, 2023

Apologies for the mix-up. I meant a default program. It's not a trigger campaign, however; it's a smart campaign with several batch sends within it. (The image below shows how it's set up.)

 

I can see within the schedule tab that I can abort the campaign, however I'm hoping that it's possible to pause it. (If not, of course, then aborting it will have to be what I do.)

Darshil_Shah1
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Darshil_Shah1Community Advisor and Adobe ChampionAccepted solution
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
September 4, 2023

If this is a batch campaign, then you can make changes w/o Pausing the campaign with a lot less to worry about as compared to making changes to a live trigger campaign. Given that the changes get saved before the batch campaign's next scheduled run, you should be good. Additionally, to clarify reupdates to the Wait step: Any change to the wait step will only impact persons entering the wait step after the change. for all leads that were already ion the wait step when you changed it will not be impacted by the change. If you don't want to make changes to a scheduled/recurring campaign, you can always remove clear the schedule/recurrence, make changes, and then schedule it again (although I still think you should be good with making changes to a scheduled campaign as long as changes get saved before the campaign's next run).

 

Also, Abort campaign option is by and large for emergency use only (not for making updates), e.g., for the cases when you launch/run a campaign and immediately realize it was a mistake, aborting it is how you pull the emergency brake and stop the campaign mid-run. This will immediately stop campaign from processing any further qualified people through its flow.

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