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Emails that send themselves2 min read

Pause the automatic emails for one student

Sometimes one person needs a break from your emails: a student who is ill, someone who has paused their course, a customer you are sorting out a problem with. You don’t want to switch the whole journey off for everyone else. You want to hold that one person.

The prompt

“Put [student’s name or email] on hold so they stop getting automatic emails for now. Tell me who you paused.”

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The tag is “on hold”. Give a contact that tag, in Contacts or by asking Bernard (“put Sarah on hold”), and every automatic email that falls due for them waits. Nothing is sent and nothing is thrown away while the tag is there. Capital letters don’t matter: “On Hold” works the same.

Taking it off. Remove the tag and their emails carry on at the next hourly run. One honest rule applies: anything that is more than 2 days late by then is dropped, not sent late. An email about week one makes no sense in week six. An email that was never held is never dropped this way, even if it went out late for another reason.

Only you can do it. Pausing and restarting someone’s emails is the account owner’s decision. A team member, or an assistant connected to your account, is refused, even when it can edit other tags. Bernard never adds or removes the tag unless you asked in that conversation, and it always tells you by name who it paused or restarted. Imports never bring the tag across.

One email a day, at most. Separately from the hold, nobody gets more than 1 automatic email a day from your journeys. If two fall due on the same day, the second waits until the next day rather than arriving in the same hour.

The other ways a journey stops for one person - unsubscribing, a refund, or finishing the course - are in Who actually receives my automatic emails?. To stop a journey for everyone, see Change or pause my automatic emails.

Questions people ask

How do I pause one person’s automatic emails?
Give them the tag “on hold”, or ask Bernard to put them on hold. Their emails wait while the tag is there. The journey keeps running for everybody else.
What happens when I take the tag off?
Their emails carry on at the next hourly run. Anything that is more than 2 days late by then is dropped, not sent late, so nobody gets a “welcome to week one” email in week six.
Who can add or remove the tag?
Only the account owner. Pausing and restarting someone’s emails is the owner’s decision, so a team member or a connected assistant is refused even if they can edit other tags. Bernard only does it when you ask, and it tells you who it paused.
Can an import put someone on hold?
No. If a spreadsheet or an ActiveCampaign export carries the tag, bernard leaves that one tag out and tells you how many people it skipped it for. Every other tag comes across.
Does pausing stop their confirmation email?
No. The one reminder to confirm a sign-up is not a marketing email, so the tag does not hold it. Everything else waits.
Do I need to approve anything?
When you ask Bernard to pause more than one person, it tells you exactly who first and waits for your approval. Pausing one named person happens straight away, because you asked for that person.

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