Context

When running plays in Unify, you may want to target new prospects at companies without re-engaging the same people from previous runs. Understanding how to properly rerun plays while targeting only new prospects is essential for effective outreach campaigns.

Answer

To rerun a play and target new prospects:

1. Duplicate your existing play

2. In the prospecting node settings, ensure "prospect for net new people only" is selected

3. Publish the duplicated play

Alternative method - Force-Rerun Specific Audiences: To force-rerun all qualifying records through a play without duplicating, set the play trigger to Manual and use Run/Send to Play from the Audience view to enroll the full audience again. This method gives you control over exactly which records to rerun without creating a duplicate play.

Important notes:

• By default, individual prospects cannot be enrolled in multiple sequences simultaneously, so you don't need to worry about sending duplicate communications to the same person. However, you can adjust this behavior via re‑enrollment rules in Settings → Organization → Sequences → Rulesets by enabling “Allow enrollment into multiple Sequences” and setting a minimum wait period between enrollments. Note that this protection applies to Unify sequences only, not external HubSpot sequences.

• To permanently prevent specific prospects from being enrolled in any future sequences (for example, if the wrong person was mistakenly targeted), create a People-level exclusion: Go to Settings → Exclusions → New Exclusion → People, define who to block (by specific emails or a custom field like status = exclude), enable the Sequences toggle to prevent future enrollments and remove them from active sequences, then save. Exclusions are continuously enforced and changes can take 30-45 minutes to propagate.

• Companies can run through the same play multiple times (especially when manually triggered), but prospects found in previous runs will not be re‑enrolled in sequences

• If your prospecting node is set to "use existing people in Unify or CRM," you may target the same people from previous play runs

  When using the “use existing people in Unify or CRM” prospecting setting, existing contacts must match your persona criteria; otherwise you may see “0 people found” even though contacts exist in your CRM. This is an important consideration when troubleshooting why your play isn’t finding expected prospects from your existing database.

• You can modify the existing play to target new records; duplicate only when you need to change audience criteria or want a separate tracking campaign.

Advanced Play Rerun Controls and Best Practices

When to Modify vs. Duplicate

• Modify the existing play (recommended for most cases): make changes, publish; the play will only run on new records unless the “rerun” toggle is enabled.

• Duplicate only when you need fundamentally new audience criteria, the “rerun” toggle is enabled, or you require a separate campaign for tracking purposes.

Advanced Retargeting Controls

Click the settings gear icon of any play to set specific retargeting timeframes, giving granular control over re‑enrollment behavior.

Important System Behaviors

• Warning vs. Reality: The system warns about re‑running records but will NOT re‑execute unless the “rerun” toggle is enabled.

• Duplication Impact: Duplicating and republishing a play reruns every record, while simply updating an existing play does NOT cause re‑enrollment of previous prospects.

• Scheduled Reruns: Enable the play's "rerun" setting and set a cadence (minimum 1 day) for ongoing automatic reruns. Note that this won't execute immediately but will re‑run on the configured schedule. The cooldown period cannot be set to 0 days; the minimum is 1 day.

• When to Use Duplication for Immediate Re-execution: If you need to immediately re‑execute a play on the same audience without waiting for the mandatory 1‑day minimum cooldown period, duplicate the play and run the duplicate instead.