A campaign is a series of emails that automatically sends to a subscriber when they take a specific action (for example, signing up for a product or joining a waitlist).
Ideally, you’ll want to have your campaign fully set up before it starts to keep email delivery consistent.
That said, there may be times when you need to pause your campaign to make updates—like editing links, adjusting content, or changing the timing of your emails.
Pausing and resuming a campaign can affect when your emails are sent in the sequence.
In this article, we'll explore what happens when you pause and resume your campaign.
What happens if I pause & resume a campaign?
By default, pausing and resuming a campaign shouldn’t have a major impact on the timing of your emails.
As a general rule, Podia will do its best to maintain your original schedule when you pause and resume a campaign. So, if you only pause it briefly, your campaign timeline should stay mostly unchanged.
However, if the campaign stays paused for a longer period, you might notice some shifts in the email schedule.
Here's what happens depending on how long you keep your campaign paused.
If you pause and resume your campaign within 24 hours
If you keep your campaign paused for less than 24 hours, here’s what happens:
Emails that were scheduled to send during the paused period will go out within 15 minutes after you resume the campaign.
Any subsequent emails in the sequence for affected subscribers will keep their original schedule.
Emails that were not affected by the pause will continue sending as planned.
Here's an example schedule:
Oct 24 10:00 - ✅ Email goes out
Oct 25 08:00 - ⏱️ Campaign is paused
Oct 25 10:00 - ❌ Email does not go out
Oct 25 20:00 - 🕗 Campaign is resumed
Oct 25 20:10 - ✅ The email that was not sent this morning goes out (notice email does not wait until the next day at 10:00 to send)
Oct 26 10:00 - ✅ The next email in the sequence goes out
If you keep your campaign paused for more than 24 hours
If your campaign is paused for longer than 24 hours, here’s what to expect:
You may notice a delay in emails being sent after the campaign is resumed.
The system will wait up to 24 hours to try to preserve each email’s original send time.
Because of this, some emails may be delayed by up to one day before they’re delivered.
Emails that were scheduled to be sent while the campaign was paused will be sent within 24 hours after resuming, keeping their original timing.
Here's an example schedule:
Oct 24 10:00 - ✅ Email goes out
Oct 25 08:00 - ⏱️ Campaign is paused
Oct 25 10:00 - ❌ Email does not go out
Oct 26 20:00 - 🕗 Campaign is resumed
Oct 27 10:00 - ✅ Yesterday's missed email goes out
Oct 28 10:00 - ✅ The next email in the sequence goes out
We hope this helps clear up any confusion! If you have any further questions about email campaigns, please check out our other comprehensive help docs or click the purple icon to send us a message 💜