Pause or Stop a Campaign Mid-Run

Pause or Stop a Campaign Mid-Run

Ability to pause or stop a campaign after it is already running. Ideally in the Admin view of Campaign Queue, you would be able to click on the Green Play button and pause a campaign or just all out stop a campaign.
13 Comments
Anonymous
Not applicable
I like this idea alot and we are planning on building something that will accomodate this as part of a Nurture module.  What is your specific use case for needing to pause the campaign?
Anonymous
Not applicable
One use case is simply for resource management -- if you've maxed out the # of campaigns running simultaneously, and you want to prioritize. You could pause the less important campaigns running, and then startup another campaign that's more urgent.

Or another use case is if you've started to run a campaign and realize that it's not what you want. Instead of this campaign hogging your system resources for the next few hours, you could just stop it altogether and focus on other campaigns.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Excellent examples - thanks for sharing.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Nice idea Patrick.

Sometimes after activating a campaign Marketo marks eligible leads as "Pending" without notification as to why this is occuring. Where this becomes a problem is when the Campaign Manager has specifically launched the campaign with a specific time in mind - eg. sending on a Tuesday at 4pm is more effective than sending at 11pm - but has no idea when the emails will be Delivered. This ultimately will effect email deliverability results and campaign effectiveness.

I've raised this with Marketo Support, but there isn't yet a solution to solve this - hence your brilliant idea!

Hopefully this feature will be released soon.

Cheers
Greg
Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi, while I like this idea, there are alternatives available:

1. Call Support.
2. Always set your campaigns to go out at least 10 minutes later so you can cancel it if you realize you left out that key link.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Another use is... gulp... someone hitting "run now" on a campaign with a horribly wrong smartlist.  As just happened to a colleague.  We couldn't think of a fast way to prevent any emails from stopping (that hadn't already been sent).
Anonymous
Not applicable
Could you perhaps insert a Remove From Flow step into the actual flow in order to kick everyone out (this seems like it would work for "pausing" a nurture flow as well, since otherwise people who have already started the nurture flow will continue to progress through it)? Trying to think of a stopgap measure while we're waiting on this feature... 🙂
Anonymous
Not applicable
I see the turn on/off functionality in the Engagement Program that Cheryl mentioned and really appreciate it - certainly makes everything feel safer during the set-up phase.

However, this would still be nice to have for other campaigns outside of the Engagement Engine.
Anonymous
Not applicable
So, we don't have the ability to pause and resume, but we now have the ability to stop a campaign that is running:
https://community.marketo.com/MarketoArticle?id=kA050000000LBtPCAW
Delinda_Tinkey1
Level 5
I love the ability to hard stop a running campaign, but agree that the pause functionality would be nice. We have some nurture tracks outside of an engagement program and are currently experiencing an issue with our unsubscribe link. I've canceled all other email sends, but don't have a great way to temporarily stop the dripping without breaking the logic for the people already in the flow.