Schedule a campaign to start and end

On the Scale and Enterprise+ plans, you can give a campaign a start date and time, and an end if you want one, so it goes live and ends on its own. You set this on the campaign's Schedule tab.

Before you start

On the Free plan, the Schedule tab is greyed out, and hovering over it shows Available on Scale with an Upgrade plan button. See Change your plan to upgrade.

NotiFeed, NotiPop, NotiSell and NotiEmail campaigns have a Schedule tab, except NotiFeed and NotiPop campaigns created from the SKIO integration. Theme Launcher sets its dates in its own editor: see Schedule a theme switch with Theme Launcher.

Set a start and end

1. Create a campaign, or open one with Edit, and click the Schedule tab.
2. Choose Run the campaign according to the schedule with a defined start and end date.
3. Pick a Start date, then a Start time.
4. To end the campaign on its own, tick Set end date and pick an End date and End time. Leave it unticked to run until you stop it.
5. Click Save campaign.

A new campaign with a start date is saved as Scheduled, whatever the status button at the top of the editor shows.

Date and time rules

• Times are in whole hours. If you pick today's date, hours that have already passed are hidden.
• The start must be at least 2 minutes from now, or you see Date must be in future. The end must be after the start, or you see End-date must be greater than start-date.
• These two checks only run for new campaigns. When you edit a saved campaign or a duplicated copy, make sure the end is still after the start.
• Times use the time zone of the computer you schedule from, not your store's time zone, so convert them first if the two differ. The editor and the Campaigns list show times in your computer's time zone too.

What happens on schedule

Until its start time, the campaign waits as Scheduled and shoppers don't see it. Then:

• At the start time, it becomes Active and starts showing on your store. If Send an email when a campaign is live is ticked under Settings > Email notifications, Atomato also emails the addresses turned on there. See Choose who gets Atomato email notifications.
• At the end time, it becomes Completed and stops showing. If a NotiSell campaign has a discount, the discount is switched off at the same time.

The schedule runs on Atomato's servers, so you don't need to keep Atomato open. To check it, click Campaigns in the sidebar. The Scheduled tab lists campaigns waiting to start, and the Schedule column shows each campaign's start and end dates, with onwards when there is no end. Hover over the dates to see the exact times.

Change or remove a schedule

Open the campaign with Edit in the Campaigns list, or Edit campaign on its summary page. Change the dates on the Schedule tab and click Save campaign. The new times replace the old ones. When you save, the campaign is set to Scheduled if the start is still ahead, or Active if it has passed, even if it was paused.

To remove the dates, choose Run campaign continuously and save. A campaign that was waiting to start goes live straight away, unless you click the status button to switch it to Draft first.

To start a scheduled campaign early, change its start date and time in the editor. The earliest you can pick is the next whole hour. Avoid Start Campaign on the summary page for a campaign with an end date: it clears the dates in the editor, but the campaign can still end at its old end time.

To run a completed campaign again, use Duplicate as draft from its Edit menu in the Campaigns list. The copy opens in the editor and keeps the old end date, so set a new start and end on its Schedule tab before you save. For more, see Pause, end, duplicate or delete a campaign.