Pausing different contacts for different amounts of time

[Debra_Monkman]

I'm receiving a lot of out of office emails where someone is on an extended leave for illness, maternity, summer break, etc. As each person's return date is different is there a way to mark them suspended or pause them for their specific time without having to create a new smart campaign for each person? I'd like to automate this so I can suspend them for when they are out and unsuspend them when they return knowing each person's date is different? The only option I'm considering are different campaigns for different times e.g. one month, 3 months, 6 months, etc. and place different people in corresponding campaigns but I'm hoping there is an easier option.

thanks!

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Set a Date field like Next Resume Date to

{{system.date}} + <number of days> days

Then run a daily batch to unpause people who have a non-empty Next Resume Date AND whose Next Resume Date is today.

[SharonP]

I might be missing something here, but this solution still requires manual intervention - both to change the "today" date and to run  the campaign ad hoc.  I'd like to have an operational program scheduled to run every week without my babysitting its settings.

Is there no way to automate this process?  No dynamic system date token to represent "today" every time a scheduled campaign runs?

[SanfordWhiteman]

It's completely automated. I don't know what you mean.

[Michael_Florin]

@SharonP - are you asking if you can automate the process of writing the out-of-office end date into Marketo? Siftrock/Drift can do that.

[SanfordWhiteman]

True. Maybe @Debra_Monkman didn't realize those responses aren't even going to Marketo in the first place... you can't automate things that are effectively offline.

Once you tell Marketo something happened — which could be a Boolean that you simply check in the UI, and that triggers a flow — the rest is automated.