Which automation should I use?

For brands deciding how to message creators. Cruva has several ways to message creators automatically. The right one depends on who you want to reach and how much should happen after the first message.

The short version

• Reaching lots of new creators you haven't worked with? An automation with the Outreach audience.
• Reaching a specific set of creators you uploaded or saved? An automation with the Saved Lists audience.
• Messaging creators who already interact with your brand? An automation with the CRM Creators audience.
• Building a multi-step follow-up or retention journey? A Workflow.
• Answering a lot of incoming creator messages? AI Auto Replies.

The first three are the Outreach Audience options when you create an automation in Outreach → Automations → +New Automation. Each one can send a DM, a Target Collab invite, or Target Collab + DM.

Outreach: find new creators by filters

Use Outreach when you want to reach a lot of creators you haven't worked with yet. You describe who you want with filters (GMV, followers, categories, demographics and more), and Cruva finds matching creators across its affiliate database and keeps messaging new matches as it runs.

Good for: launching a product, filling your pipeline with new affiliates, recruiting creators in a new category.

See Outreach Setup and Best Practices.

Saved Lists: a specific set of creators

Use Saved Lists when you already know exactly which creators you want: a list you uploaded, or one you built from AI Search, Lookalike or Social Intelligence (for example, a competitor's top creators). The automation messages the creators on that list and nobody else.

Good for: a hand-picked shortlist, a competitor's creators, creators from an agency or a spreadsheet.

See Managing lists.

CRM Creators: creators who interact with your brand

Use CRM Creators when you want to message creators who already have a relationship with your brand: they requested a sample, posted a video or went LIVE with your products, generated sales, showcased your products, replied to your messages, or were added to your CRM manually.

You target them with a group, a set of conditions such as Sample Request Status, GMV, posts, Has Replied or tags. The group stays in sync, so as creators start matching the conditions they get messaged too. You can pick an existing group or choose Create New Group inside the automation.

Good for: messaging creators at any sample stage (waiting for review, shipped, rejected, posted), thanking creators after their first sale, nudging creators who received a sample but haven't posted, re-engaging creators who went quiet.

See CRM automations & groups.

Workflows: multi-step journeys

Use a Workflow (Outreach → Workflows) when one message isn't enough and what happens next should depend on what the creator does. A workflow walks each creator through steps you lay out on a canvas:

• Send a DM, a Target Collab invite, or an email.
• Wait a set time, or Wait Until something happens (they reply, their sample ships, they post).
• Branch with a Condition (for example, replied or not) and send each group something different.
• A/B Test two or more versions of a step by splitting creators across weighted paths.
• Add creators to a list or tag them along the way.

Good for: long follow-up sequences, onboarding and retention journeys, testing which message or offer performs better. Workflows are a Scale plan feature.

See Workflows.

AI Auto Replies: handle incoming messages

Use AI Auto Replies (Outreach → Auto Replies) when creators are writing to you faster than your team can answer. The AI replies to creator DMs using the responses you write: it answers questions about your product and offer, qualifies creators and moves them to the next step.

AI Auto Replies only answer creators who message you first. They never start a conversation, so to reach creators who haven't written to you, use one of the automations above.

See AI Auto Replies.

Common questions

Can I use more than one? Yes, and most brands do. A common setup is an Outreach automation to bring in new creators, CRM Creators automations for each sample stage, and AI Auto Replies to handle the replies they generate.

Should I use Saved Lists or CRM Creators for creators I've worked with? CRM Creators. A list is a fixed set of creators, while a group follows each creator's status, so it picks up new creators as they match and drops the ones who no longer do.

What about email? Email outreach is set up on the Email Campaigns page, not in Automations. Email campaigns use the same audiences. See Email campaigns.