Under Fine tuning on the Cruise page, each tile shows its current setting. Click a tile to open its setting below the tiles, and click Done when you've finished. Each one starts on a sensible choice, so you can leave them until you've seen a few emails.

Each tile shows its current setting. Click one to change it.
Each tile shows its current setting. Click one to change it.

What each email is for

This sets a goal for Cruise's emails. The choices are Let Cruise decide, Drive sales, Spotlight one thing, Announce something new, Stay in touch, Win back the quiet and Hear from customers.

The goal doesn't change what Cruise writes. Cruise keeps the goal with each email, so the Cruise dashboard in Reports can show how each goal did. Win back the quiet also changes who gets the email: if nobody is picked under Who it goes to, it goes to people who have gone quiet. You can give one email a different goal from its window on the Calendar. If that email is already written, click Regenerate for the new goal to change who gets it.

How each one looks

This sets how adventurous the designs are.

  • Play it safe: dark text on a white page, with your photographs shown plainly.
  • A good balance: mostly clean and simple, with a touch of your brand colour where it helps. Every account starts here.
  • More colourful: sections and headings in your brand colours, with the odd curved shape.
  • As bold as it gets: large blocks of colour and big headlines, sometimes set over your photographs.

Cruise uses designs that suit the setting and dresses them in your brand colours.

Four steps, from plain pages to big blocks of colour.
Four steps, from plain pages to big blocks of colour.

Headline typefaces

When Headline artwork is on, Cruise can draw an email's main headline as a picture, in a typeface that emails can't otherwise show. This setting chooses the kind of typeface: Let Cruise choose, Editorial, Clean, Bold, Friendly or Fashion. Each choice says which businesses it suits, such as Friendly for bakers and makers. With Headline artwork off, this setting has no effect.

A bit of polish

  • Animated GIFs turns one wide photo in an email into an animation of that email's photos. It starts off.
  • Use stock imagery lets Cruise use a stock photo where none of yours fits. It starts off, and while it's off Cruise leaves out any picture space it can't fill with your own photographs or products.
  • Headline artwork draws the main headline as a picture in a display typeface, sometimes on a pattern in your colours, and sometimes over the email's first photograph with your logo. When your logo is on the photograph, that email leaves out the top of your Header & Footer so the logo isn't shown twice. It starts on. The headline's words are saved as the picture's description, which many inboxes show when pictures are blocked.
Stock photos stay off unless you switch them on.
Stock photos stay off unless you switch them on.

Written ahead

This sets how long before each send Cruise writes the email, from 1 day to 2 weeks. It starts at 3 days. Writing earlier gives you longer to read and change each email. An email's window on the Calendar shows when it will be written, under Schedule.

Design likes and dislikes

Here you describe designs you've liked and things to avoid. Describe & Build reads these when it designs an email from your description. Cruise doesn't use them.

Your check-ins

This switches on check-in emails, which ask what's new in your business. Your replies give Cruise news to write about. A check-in can go to your account email, a team member's address or your verified sender address. Check-ins come with Cruise, so they stop if your paid plan ends. See Telling Cruise what's new.

What Cruise knows

This explains how to add news to your Calendar for Cruise, and lists What Cruise reads:

  • Your products: switch this off and Cruise won't show or name any product. It then writes from your photographs and the news you've given it.
  • Your data sets, each with its own switch. A set that's switched on lets Cruise mention what it says on the send day. Manage data sets opens Data.
What Cruise reads, with a switch for your products and one for each data set.
What Cruise reads, with a switch for your products and one for each data set.

Designs it can use

This shows every design Cruise can build an email from, and they all start ticked. Click a design to untick it, or click the magnifier on a design to see it full size first. You can search the designs, and filter them with the For and Look buttons.

Cruise doesn't use unticked designs. If every design that suits a particular email is unticked, it uses one of them anyway, so the email still goes out. With fewer than six designs ticked, expect repeats. Switch all on ticks them all again.

Untick a design to keep it out of Cruise's emails.
Untick a design to keep it out of Cruise's emails.