Automation and campaign statuses explained

For anyone trying to decode the colored badge on an automation or email campaign card.

The short answer

The badge on each campaign tells you exactly what state it's in. Green isn't always "good" and "Completed" is not a success trophy — it means the campaign ran out of new people to message. Click any badge (or its ? icon) for a tooltip. This is the full glossary.

Where to find them: Dashboard → Outreach → Automations or Outreach → Email Campaigns.

TikTok automation statuses

• Active — Good/Bad: Good · What it means: Running and sending now. · What to do: Nothing — verify via Activity Logs.
• Template — Good/Bad: Neutral · What it means: A pre-loaded onboarding template you haven't edited. Won't run until you make it your own. · What to do: Edit it, then start it.
• Draft — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: Missing a required field, so it can't run. · What to do: Open it; the tooltip lists what's missing (e.g. title, message type, list/group, products, invite message, contact email, DM message).
• Sleeping — Good/Bad: Neutral · What it means: Outside its scheduled time range, or already hit today's message limit. · What to do: Widen the schedule or raise the daily limit. Resumes automatically.
• Waiting for new affiliates / Low Affiliates — Good/Bad: Neutral · What it means: A query-based automation has messaged everyone matching right now. · What to do: Broaden the query, or wait — the affiliate database grows daily and it springs back on its own.
• Completed — Good/Bad: Neutral (not "done well") · What it means: Reached everyone available in its recipient source. · What to do: Add recipients / broaden the query. Follow-ups still send unless you stop it.
• Outreach Cap — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: Your TikTok Affiliate messaging limit is reached. · What to do: Wait for the weekly reset. See the caps article.
• Throttled — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: TikTok is rate-limiting the account from too much volume. · What to do: Lower the daily limit; auto-retries in 24 hours.
• Bad Product — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: One or more products are unavailable for collaboration. · What to do: Tooltip lists the product IDs; fix/remove them, then resume.
• Sensitive Text — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: TikTok flagged words in your invite/DM. · What to do: Rewrite the message; test via an Affiliate Center invite to find the trigger.
• Bad Email — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: TikTok is rejecting the contact email on your Target Collab invite. · What to do: Edit the campaign; set a valid contact email.
• Paused — Good/Bad: Neutral · What it means: You turned it off. · What to do: Resume from the campaign list.
• Archived — Good/Bad: Neutral · What it means: Removed from the active list, kept for history. · What to do: Restore or recreate if needed.

Badge priority: if several conditions are true at once, Cruva shows the most blocking one first (Sensitive Text → Bad Email → Bad Product → Sleeping → Outreach Cap → Completed → Paused → Throttled → Active).

Email campaign statuses

• Active — Good/Bad: Good · What it means: Sending emails now (paced to protect deliverability). · What to do: Nothing.
• Reauthenticate / Permission Issue — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: The connected mailbox revoked or lost permission. · What to do: Click Manage Emails → Refresh/Reauthenticate on that address.
• Sensitive Text — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: Flagged words in the message. · What to do: Rewrite the content.
• SMTP error — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: A custom-domain (SMTP) send failed; the tooltip shows the raw error. · What to do: Check host/port/credentials in Manage Emails.
• Outreach Cap — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: Hit your email sending limit. · What to do: Lower volume; it stays on hold until the sending limit lifts.
• Bad Email — Good/Bad: Action needed · What it means: The contact email on the invite is invalid. · What to do: Update it.
• Completed — Good/Bad: Neutral · What it means: Reached everyone available in the recipient source. · What to do: Add recipients.
• Paused — Good/Bad: Neutral · What it means: You turned it off. · What to do: Resume it.
• Archived — Good/Bad: Neutral · What it means: Kept for history. · What to do: —

Why "Completed" is the big trap

This is the most common misread. Completed does not mean "the campaign succeeded and messaged everyone" — it means "there is no one new left to message." That can be true even when the campaign only sent a handful, because:

• The recipient list resolved to 0 eligible creators (looked populated, but none matched/were active).
• Recipients were already contacted by this or another campaign (dedup).
• "Auto Resolve Conflicts" defaults to ON. If you turned it off, creators already targeted by another campaign are skipped (deduped) rather than pulled into this one.

That's why you can see "306 remaining" and "Completed" together — the remaining people are all ineligible for this campaign right now.

To verify what actually sent (including follow-ups): open the campaign → Activity Logs. Follow-ups appear as entries typed "Followup DM". Follow-ups keep going out after "Completed" unless you stop the automation.

Common problems

"I just set up an automation and it shows Completed, not Active." Its recipient source had no new eligible creators at creation time (empty/exhausted list, or a query that currently matches no one). Check the recipient step.

"It keeps going Completed even though it's not finished." Same cause — it's exhausting eligible recipients, not your full list. Broaden the query or add fresh recipients, and confirm dedup/conflict settings.

"Sleeping, but I'm inside my time window." Check the schedule's timezone. The window and the daily limit are each evaluated in their configured timezone; a mismatch makes it look asleep during your local hours.

"What does 'Waiting' mean?" It's the "Waiting for new affiliates" state — a query automation that has messaged everyone matching for now and will resume automatically as new creators enter your query.