How do I make changes to my active Campaign?

After creating your campaign, it is a good idea to update the content regularly. Adding new messages, or applying different tags, is a great way to manage what subscribers are receiving in your list. This article will walk you through how to make changes to an active campaign and what to look out for when making these changes.

Step By Step Instructions

1. Go to the "Campaigns" page and click the name of the campaign or hover over the right panel and click the "Edit" icon.
   
   
   
   
2. Next, you will want to update the actions on the campaign canvas. For this example, we will be adding an additional "Wait" and "Send Message" action.
   
   
   
   
3. Drag an additional "Wait" action between the last "Send Message" and "Apply Tag" actions.
   
   
   
   
4. Set your desired wait time. Then, drag in a "Send Message" action between this new "Wait" action and the "Apply Tag" action.
   
   
   
   Note: You'll notice that the Campaign cannot be published at this point. You'll see in the upper right there is a "Checklist" section. Clicking this will provide you with any remaining items that need to be updated before you can activate. In this case, you'd need to choose a message to send in the spot indicated.
   
   
   
   
5. Next, assign the desired message to this "Send Message" action. You can choose from one of your existing messages or create a new message.
   
   
   
   
6. After assigning a message to this "Send Message" action, the Item Indicator will turn green.
   
   
   
   
7. Publish your changes by clicking the "Publish Changes" button.
   
   

And that's it! You've successfully updated your campaign with new actions.

How do changes affect subscribers already in the campaign?

There are a few things to be wary of when making changes to your campaign. First, subscribers who are already passed the new actions that you add will not receive them. In the example above, we added a wait action and new message after the second message in the sequence, but before the "Apply Tag" action. This is important to note because if a subscriber already finished the campaign and reached the "Apply Tag" action, they would not receive the new message that you added. If you want to ensure that all of the existing subscribers in the campaign receive the new message, you would want to add the actions at the end of the campaign. Campaigns are open-ended, so once a subscriber finishes the campaign, they will continue to progress with any new messages you add to the end of the sequence.

You also want to avoid reordering any existing actions or deleting existing wait actions. Subscribers stick with the last action that they received, so let's say you moved a one-day wait from right after the first message, to right after the third message in a sequence; any subscribers who were in that wait period will stick with the wait. When you move the wait, those subscribers also move with it and will continue receiving messages from that new point. Now, let's say you completely deleted the wait action instead; any subscribers who were still in that wait period would move to the next action in the Campaign. Since the wait action was removed, subscribers will need to move forward into the next action. It can take up to 15 minutes for the subscribers to move to the next action after an existing wait action they're in has been deleted.