Pausing a Sequence

[BrianR]

I think it would be good to be able to pause a sequence. Sometimes you put a prospect on a sequence and things happen... illness, weather (hurricanes) and there is no sense continuing sending them emails and making calls when you know they aren't going to be there. I think it would be good to be able to pause them and schedule them to restart at a later date... Thoughts?

[BrianR]

Hi Community,

The ability to pause and resume sequences is now live to all portals with access to sequences! You will be able to do this from the enrollment table of the specific sequence.

View a gif of sequences being paused

View of gif of sequences being resumed

When paused, sequences retain the time delay before the next step. So if a sequence that was scheduled to send on Tuesday is paused on Monday, and resumed on Wednesday, the next step will send on Thursday.

For those following this issue, the infrastructure changes needed to make this change were beyond our initial anticipation, so we appologize for the time spent waiting.

For those following our roadmap of priorities in sequences, we are currently focused on improving the visibility of contacts engaging with seqyences (opens and clicks)  and making improvements to the experience in the management of enrollments (better bulk management for pausing, unenrolling, etc.) 

Thanks,

Glen

[BrianR]

Some details on this beta for folks that are looking to get access:

We have finished the ability to bulk pause sequence enrollments, but at the moment we are still working on the ability to bulk resume sequence enrollments (which technically is actually the more complex part of the work!). There are also several usability issues that we are working to resolve. We hope to have the ability to bulk resume ready in the week following Thanksgiving. So for folks that do need access, this is how it will look:

https://www.loom.com/share/5b66bdd74a334380abb73f250cbb9547

[BrianR]

Hi Community,

We are now taking some calls to plan the scope of this project, and I am updating the status now to "In planning". If you would like to participate in our discovery and research, you can fill this short form and I will reach out about our next steps.

(this is an updated link from the one provided when we this item was "being reviewed")

As we learn more and make progress, I will update this issue, thanks everyone for your feedback and looking forward to hearing from some of you!

Best,

Glen 

[BrianR]

Hi Community,

We are now reviewing this with our team. If you would like to participate in our discovery and research, you can fill this short form and I will reach out about our next steps: https://forms.gle/oE5veMh4mLRzoMZX7

As we learn more and make progress, I will update this issue, thanks everyone for your feedback!

Best,

Glen 

[Fernihough]

I would like a feature to pause all active sequences by owner. For instance, when I'm going on vacation, I would like to pause all activity until I return. 

[Sankar]

I am also looking for this feature to pause all sequences. In my case, I had a problem with my email account and it's completely disabled to receive and send emails. Now, I can't pause or stop sending more.

[scottgorilla]

 +1

[katha]

+1

[JessieL]

Please! I would like to pause sequence on holidays so I don't come off as insensitive. 

[bkstaton]

I would also like to pause the sequence for individual contacts. For example, I received an auto-reply that said the contact will be back after the sequence is scheduled to have run its course. I'd like to be able to pause for that contact, make myself a reminder, then take the conctact live again after he/she returns. Would be great to include a feature that allows you to designate for how long you would like to pause the sequence so that the whole making myself a note part won't be necessary!

[mwoods]

This would be a very helpful feature!  The only workaround that I have found is to un-enroll everyone from the sequence and then re-enroll them at the step they were at at the later date but it's a time consuming process since you have to do each one individually.

[sjudson]

Now in beta is the ability to edit scheduled sequence emails. This will enable users to change the send dates and times of emails after a contact has been enrolled. Though this feature does not enable pausing of sequences, it will enable users to change send times in case of vacation/holiday. 

[Sankar]

Good one! Makes lot of sense.

[Dsoya]

Any update on this?

Would be great to pause individual sequences in the case of getting an OOO from prospects as well. I know you can unenroll contacts but it is pain and you can't float the emails after unenrolling then enrolling again.

[MFasken]

This would be helpful, pausing individuals is way too much work if you have a few hundred people in a sequence. This week is a perfect example, lots of people out for the week because of July 4th so I dont want any emails going out but there is no good way to stop them.

Need the ability to pause an entire sequence. 

[teddyf]

+1 not only would it be nice to pause a sequence, it'd be extra nice for steps within a sequence to be dependent on each other.

ie: if I have a sequence which has me call on day 1, day 3, day 5, and day 7...I think it'd be important if I get behind and miss the call on day 1 and do "call 1" on day 3 of having enrolled the user in that sequence, i don't think the 2nd call should also appear for me to do on day 3, the 2nd call should now be on day 5 because it was the cadence in between completed activities that was most important, not necessarily day 1, day 3, day 5, day 7 for sure, though options for each of these would be really nice! @sjudson

[CarlosM]

 This would be a great idea and seems a huge miss by Hubspot not to have this feature. If I am on holiday for two weeks I don't want to be mailing people who (if they reply) I then can't respond to until I come back. Furthermore, the automatic unenrol feature that occurs when someone replies doesn't work 100% of the time so I can end up emailing somebody again even when they have replied.

[KKJ]

I want a variation on pausing sequences. 

I want automation that doesn't trigger the next task in the sequence (we're using emails, call and LI touches in our sequences) to trigger until the last task due has been completed (which could be a call).

So, think that there will need to be a way to show a call result that either takes them out of the sequence or moves them to the next task, but not until the previous task is completed.

This is how Salesloft and Outreach work. kkj

[mfield]

Yes! This is greatly needed. I'm about to take off on vacation for 2 weeks and heavily rely on sequences. I currently have at least 400 contacts enrolled in a sequence that are scheduled for while I am gone, so it would be a LOT of work to manually update each sequence.

[timfresen]

This makes a lot of sense and I, too, haven't been able to figure this out yet.

It's an issue that happens frequently (when getting out of office replies, for example) and forces us to look at other solutions we need to buy next to Hubspot, which is a bummer because Hubspot doesn't come cheap.

[timfresen]

Needed. If only for out of office replies. There is no way of enrolling these contacts again as they will again receive the first mail in the sequence

[cstetter]

Users have the ability to edit their scheduled Sequence emails. Just navigate to the Sequences tool and click into the Scheduled tab. You can adjust the date and time of the send or the content of the emails. 

[CarlosM]

In reply to cstetter - yes we know we can reschedule individual emails but this would take a lifetime to defer all emails for a pending holiday. We need the ability to supend all emails for a given tme period. I am on holiday from 13th December to 3rd January and I could really do with this option!!!!

[teddyf]

Amen @CarlosM - we know we can reschedule dates and times for individual stuff...but it stinks. Not only is it important to be able to do this when you know you'll be out (like on holiday), but also when you don't know you'll be out (an inside sales rep often has 150 things to do in a day and they get behind, or go to a tradeshow, or they're sick...and so if they get behind then it all spirals into flames from there. Scott Judson, PM at HUBS knows my thoughts on this! 🙂 #outreach