Send it, or Ask me first
Two choices sit under the switch at the top of the Cruise page. You can pick one before you switch Cruise on.
- Send it: each email goes out at its send time. You can still open it on your Calendar first and change or skip it.
- Ask me first: each email waits on your Calendar until you click Approve.
Only the account owner or an admin can approve, skip, move or send a Cruise email, or change who it goes to or its goal. A team member sees a note saying so, and can still change the subject, the preview text and the design, and write a new version.
With Ask me first, SplashSend emails the account owner each time Cruise writes an email on its schedule, with the subject line and a Read it and approve it link. Switch off Email me when one is waiting if you'd rather check the Calendar yourself. If you switch back to Send it, emails that are already written go out at their send times without approval. One whose send time has already passed doesn't go out.
Open an email
Go to Calendar. In the Daily view, each Cruise email has a label on its day:
- Cruise · Scheduled: it hasn't been written yet.
- Cruise · Writing…: it's being written now.
- Cruise · Approve: it's written and waiting for you.
- Cruise · Ready: it's written, and it will go out at its time.
- Cruise · Sending: it's going out now.
- Cruise · Sent: it has gone out.
- Cruise · Skipped: you skipped that day.
- Cruise · Cruise is off: it's written, but nothing goes out while Cruise is switched off.
- Cruise · Too old to send: its time has passed and it won't go out, for example because it wasn't approved in time.
Click a label to open the email, with its subject line at the top and the email itself on the right.
Approve it
Click Approve, and the email goes out at its send time. If its day has already passed, it goes out within a few minutes of approving. You have four days after its day to approve a late email, unless a newer Cruise email goes out first, and the email's window tells you the last day, for example 5 Oct. On a larger screen the label on the Calendar shows it too, as Approve by 5 Oct. After that it isn't sent, and Cruise carries on with the next one.
If the email has been written again since you opened it, Approve asks you to look at the new version first, so you only ever approve what you've read.
Change it
- Subject line: click the subject at the top and type. A subject you write yourself is kept if the email is written again, and Cruise writes the email about it. Clear the box to let Cruise choose one.
- Preview text: the line under the subject is what most inboxes show after the subject. Type your own, up to 150 characters.
- The email: click Edit design above the preview. It opens in the designer in a new tab, and your changes go out with the email.
- Who it goes to: under Sending to, click Customise for this send, tick the groups and lists, and click Save. This changes this email only, and Reset to Cruise default undoes it. Once you've approved an email, it's marked As approved and goes to the people Cruise was set to send to when you approved it, even if you change Who it goes to on the Cruise page afterwards.
- Goal: pick a goal for this email only under Goal for this send.
Write a new version
Click Regenerate for a fresh version. It replaces the email, including any changes you made in the designer, and keeps a subject line or preview text you typed. With Ask me first, the new version needs approving again. If a new version can't be written, the email you had stays as it was.
If nothing has been written yet, Generate Now writes it straight away. It usually takes under a minute, and you can close the window while it works. You can write or rewrite up to 100 emails a day this way. Cruise's own writing on its schedule doesn't count towards that.
Send it now or skip it
- Send now asks you to confirm, then sends a written email straight away. It isn't offered for an email that's waiting for approval.
- Skip this send, or Skip on an email waiting for approval, cancels that day. Click it, then click Confirm skip. The rest of the schedule carries on. To bring the day back, open it and click Re-enable this send, and Cruise writes it again.
Move it to another day
In the Daily view, you can drag a written email's label, Cruise · Ready or Cruise · Approve, onto another day, as long as both days are after today. An email that hasn't been written yet can't be moved. The day you drop it on can't already have a Cruise email, and an email can't be moved while it's being written. A message confirms the move and offers Undo. The day you moved it from is marked as skipped, so Cruise doesn't write a second email for it. Undo puts both days back as they were.
After it has gone out
Open a sent email to see how many it went to, and its opens and clicks, under How it did. Full insights opens a page with the open and click rates, the most-clicked links, everyone it went to, orders credited to it and anyone it couldn't be delivered to. The Cruise dashboard in Reports shows every Cruise email together, including which planned days went out.