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Troubleshoot a campaign that isn't sending

Your campaign is launched but nothing seems to happen, or some contacts stopped along the way. Go through these checks in order.

The campaign has no contacts yet

  • The badge reads Enrolling… Swimlane is adding the first contacts in the background. With ICP match on, nobody is enrolled until every contact of the source has been rated, which can take a while on a large list.
  • The card reads Waiting to enroll contacts and start sending. Check the source:
    • The list is empty, or your filters exclude everyone. Open the campaign with Edit and look at the Audience screen.
    • Only new arrivals is on: people already in the list are skipped, and only contacts added afterwards will enter.
    • The contacts are archived. Archived contacts never enter a campaign.
  • The badge reads Draft. The campaign was saved but never launched. Click Continue setup on its card, go to Review and click Launch Campaign.
  • The badge reads Paused. Click the play icon to resume it.

Contacts are enrolled but nothing goes out

  • Your office is closed. The Campaigns page shows Your virtual office is closed… with the time actions resume. Nothing is lost.
  • A daily limit is reached. Open Settings → Usage. If a ring is full, campaign invitations and messages wait for tomorrow's reset. They count as Deferred on the card and show Waiting for daily limit in the Queue panel (see Follow background tasks in the Queue panel).
  • A delay is still running. A step with a 3-day delay runs 3 days after the previous step finished. Check Delay before this step on each card of the flow.
  • Actions are spaced out. Invitations and messages leave one after the other, with a random pause of up to 10 minutes between them. A large batch takes time.
  • Your LinkedIn account is disconnected. Campaign actions can't reach LinkedIn until you reconnect it (see Reconnect LinkedIn when the session expires).
  • Your subscription isn't active. Campaigns don't advance without an active subscription.

A contact left at the connection request

On the board, the contact is in Completed without having been invited, and the card counts them in Filtered out. Two causes:

  • They were already a connection. Swimlane never invites an existing connection. Put an If connected condition before the invitation and message them on Yes.
  • Their connection degree was unknown. Swimlane only invites contacts it knows are not connected to you. Use Enrich with LinkedIn on your list before launching, especially after a CSV import or a commenters import. A contact who has already left this campaign doesn't enter it again: they can only be reached by another campaign.

A message wasn't sent

  • The step's message is empty. An empty Send Message step never sends anything.
  • A condition changed. Just before sending, Swimlane re-checks the conditions that led to the message. If the contact replied in the meantime, for example, the message is skipped and the contact moves to the other branch.
  • LinkedIn refused it. Swimlane tries three times. After that, the step is marked as failed and the contact stops there. On the board, they stay in the column of that step. This can happen, for example, when LinkedIn doesn't let you message someone who isn't a connection.

A like or a poke did nothing

  • Like last post: the contact has no post to like. The step completes and the flow moves on.
  • Poke: there's no existing conversation with the contact. The step completes and the flow moves on.

Someone replied and still got a follow-up

A reply never stops a sequence. Put follow-up messages on the No branch of a Replied to message condition, with a delay long enough to leave time to answer (see Campaign conditions and branches). The steps of a launched campaign can't be changed: create a new campaign with the right branches, and pause the old one.

The numbers look off

  • Reply Rate divides replies by messages, not by people.
  • Replied only updates when your conversations sync.
  • Pending is derived from other counters: read it as an indication.
  • A board column named after a step shows the contacts currently at that step, not the ones for whom it's done.

See Read your campaign results for the exact definitions.

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