Objective
Once an Automation is set live, our system only allows few changes to it. This article is intended to define which items can be edited after an automation is set live, how to enable editing capabilities, which items cannot be edited at all, and the current workarounds and limitations of the Automations feature.
Product
Marketing Campaigns - Free (1 Automation) and Advanced Marketing Campaigns plans. If you are under the Marketing Campaigns basic plan, you'll need to upgrade to an Advanced plan in order to have access to this feature.
User Account Permission/Role(s) Required
Primary administrator, Teammate with Marketing permissions
Procedure
Sending an automation to existing contacts
Currently, it's not possible to directly set an automation to "live" when associating it with an existing contact list that already contains contacts. However, you can follow these steps as a workaround:
- Create a New, Empty List: Start by creating a new, empty contact list within your account.
- Set Up Automation: Add the necessary entry and exit criteria to your automation. Once configured, set the automation to "live."
- Add Contacts to the List: As soon as you add a contact to this new list, the automation will trigger and send the first time.
If you already have a contact list:
Export and Re-Upload Contacts: After setting the automation to "live," export your existing target audience as a CSV file. Then, re-upload these contacts into the newly created empty list. This action will prompt the automation to send to these contacts, effectively working around the limitation of not being able to set the automation to "live" with pre-loaded contacts.
Editing an Automation
When editing a Live Automation, you can edit aspects of each email, such as the Subject Line, Email Pre-header and Email Content/Design.
While you can make changes to your in-progress Automation, it is important to keep in mind that there are some features cannot be edited once an Automation is set to "Live". Below is a list of what you cannot edit while an automation is live.
Limitation: Once an Automation is set live, you CANNOT:
- Edit Entry Criteria
- Edit Exit Criteria
- Change the List/Segment associated to the automation
- Edit the Intervals between emails
- Change the order of the emails
- Add emails to the series
- Delete emails from the series
- Edit Unsubscribe Groups
- Edit Categories
- Change the IP Pool used for sending purposes
Workaround 1 - Disabling the automation
In order to make changes to any of the items listed in the section above, you will first have to disable the automation.
Within your live Automation, navigate to the Automation Options dropdown and select "Disable Automation." This step will not erase progress spent on the creation of the Automation, but will allow you to make necessary edits and changes to your Automation.
The following are the items that cannot be edited even if the automation is disabled:
- Intervals between emails
- The order of the emails
- Delete emails from the series
Note: Any changes made to an automation will only impact newly added contacts in the series. In other words, if a contact has not received emails from an updated automation series, the contact will receive the updated versions.
Workaround 2 - Duplicating the automation
If you need to modify the items that cannot be modified just by disabling the automation, the best option is creating a new automation by Duplicating the previous one.
Note: Since this is a new Automation, existing contacts in the previous automation may not carry over.
1. Click the three dots to the right of the automation's name and select Duplicate
2. Click the button to confirm
3. Edit the new automation
Additional information