What is Lead Pause?
Lead Pause lets you put individual leads in a campaign on hold without stopping the whole campaign. A paused lead receives no further campaign emails until you resume it. Everyone else in the campaign keeps sending as normal.
When you resume a lead, it picks up right where it left off. It does not restart the sequence and it does not skip ahead.
You can pause and resume leads by hand in the app, or automatically from the tools you already use, such as your CRM, Zapier, Make, n8n or Clay.
â ď¸ Important: Pause only stops campaign sequence emails.
The AI Reply Agent and Auto Follow-up keep running for paused leads. If a paused lead replies, the AI Reply Agent can still respond, and Auto Follow-up can still send follow-ups on that conversation. If you want no emails at all to reach a lead, turn these features off for that campaign or mark the lead as Completed.
Why Pause a Lead?
Sometimes a conversation moves forward outside of your cold email sequence. When that happens, the last thing you want is an automated follow-up landing in the middle of it. Pausing gives you a clean hold without losing the lead's place in the campaign.
Common reasons to pause a lead:
The lead booked a meeting and you want the sequence to stop while the deal is in progress.
A sales rep has taken over the conversation by phone, LinkedIn or another channel.
The lead asked you to reach out again later, for example next quarter.
You need to check something first, such as whether the company is already a customer.
The lead is part of an active deal in your CRM and you want one team member to own all contact.
Pausing vs. Completing a Lead
Pause is temporary. The lead stays in the campaign and continues from its current step when resumed.
Mark as Completed is final. The lead leaves the sequence and receives no more emails from that campaign.
If there is any chance you will want to continue emailing the lead later, pause it instead of completing it.
Which Leads Can Be Paused?
You can pause leads with the status Not Contacted or Contacted. These are the leads that still have campaign emails ahead of them.
Leads that have already replied, bounced, unsubscribed or completed the sequence have nothing left to pause, so they are skipped.
A paused lead keeps its original status. You will see a Paused badge in its status column, and hovering over it shows when the lead was paused.
How to Pause or Resume a Lead in the App
Pause a single lead
Open your campaign and go to the Leads tab.
Find the lead and open the Actions menu on its row.
Click Pause Lead.
To resume, open the same menu and click Resume Lead.
Pause or resume many leads at once
Open your campaign and go to the Leads tab.
Tick the checkbox next to at least one lead.
Click the pause icon in the toolbar above the table.
Choose one of the options:
Pause selected leads or Resume selected leads applies only to the leads you ticked.
Pause all leads or Resume all leads applies to every lead that matches your current filters and search.
Confirm in the pop-up.
Tip: Use filters first to narrow down the list, then use Pause all leads. For example, filter by a label such as "Meeting Booked" and pause every matching lead in one step. Large batches are processed in the background and may take a few moments to appear.
Find all paused leads
Open the status filter on the Leads tab and select Paused. The same filter is available on the All Leads page, so you can see paused leads across campaigns.
Automating Lead Pause With External Tools
This is where Lead Pause becomes most useful. Instead of remembering to pause leads by hand, let the tools that already know what is happening with a lead do it for you.
Example workflows
Meeting booked: When a lead books a call through Calendly or HubSpot Meetings, pause them in PlusVibe so no follow-up arrives before the meeting.
CRM deal stage: When a deal moves to "In Negotiation" in HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce, pause the lead. If the deal is marked "Lost" or "Nurture", resume them.
Multichannel outreach: When a lead accepts a LinkedIn connection or replies on LinkedIn, pause email so your team can continue the conversation there.
Phone call logged: When a rep logs a connected call in your dialer, pause the lead until the rep decides the next step.
"Reach out later" requests: Pause the lead now, then schedule a delayed step in Zapier, Make or n8n to resume them on a chosen date.
Existing customer check: When your billing or CRM system shows the contact became a customer, pause them automatically.
What you need
Your PlusVibe API key. See PlusVibe's API Documentation for where to find it.
Your Workspace ID.
The Campaign ID the lead belongs to.
The lead's email address.
To get Workspace ID
To get API Key
To get Campaign ID:
Set up the request
In your automation tool, add an HTTP or Webhook action with these settings:
Method: POST
Header: x-api-key with your API key as the value
Header: Content-Type set to application/json
Body: JSON, as shown below
To pause a lead:
{
"workspace_id": "YOUR_WORKSPACE_ID",
"campaign_id": "YOUR_CAMPAIGN_ID",
"email": "[email protected]",
"new_status": "PAUSED"
}
To resume a lead, send the same request with new_status set to UNPAUSED:
{
"workspace_id": "YOUR_WORKSPACE_ID",
"campaign_id": "YOUR_CAMPAIGN_ID",
"email": "[email protected]",
"new_status": "UNPAUSED"
}
In most tools you can map the email field directly from the trigger, such as the invitee email from Calendly or the contact email from your CRM.
Using the PlusVibe MCP Server
If you use an AI assistant connected to the PlusVibe MCP Server, you can also pause or resume leads by asking in plain language, for example: "Pause [email protected] in my Q4 Outreach campaign."
Good to Know
Replies still come through. Pausing only stops campaign sequence emails. You can still see the lead's conversation in Unibox and reply to them manually.
AI Reply Agent and Auto Follow-up are not paused. They continue to work on a paused lead's conversations. See the highlighted note at the top of this article.
Subsequences are included. Pausing a lead also holds it in any subsequence it belongs to, and resuming releases it everywhere. You only need to pause once.
The campaign keeps running. Pausing a lead never pauses the campaign or your email accounts.
Stats are not affected. Pausing and resuming do not change your campaign analytics.
Moving a lead resets the pause. If you move or copy a paused lead to another campaign, it starts active in the new campaign.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will a resumed lead get all the emails it missed at once?
No. The lead continues from its current step and follows your campaign schedule and daily limits as usual.
Why can't I pause a lead that has replied?
A lead that has replied, bounced, unsubscribed or completed the sequence is no longer receiving campaign emails, so there is nothing to pause.
My automation returned an error. What should I check?
Make sure the lead's status is Not Contacted or Contacted.
Check that the lead is not already paused when pausing, or already active when resuming.
Confirm the Workspace ID, Campaign ID and email address match the lead in PlusVibe.
Confirm your API key is correct and sent in the x-api-key header.
Can I pause a lead in every campaign it is in?
Pausing applies to one campaign at a time. If the same email is in several campaigns, send one request per campaign.
How long can a lead stay paused?
As long as you like. The lead stays on hold until you resume it or mark it as completed.