Emails & the email builder

The Emails page

Click Emails in your event's dashboard sidebar. The page opens with the Abandoned-cart reminder card (an automation — more on it below), a Create new email button, and your emails in three columns:

• Scheduled — queued for a future date. The card menu offers View, Cancel (move to drafts), and Duplicate.
• Sent — already delivered (or sending right now). You can view the email exactly as it went out, or duplicate it into a fresh draft.
• Drafts — still yours to edit. View, Edit, Duplicate, or Delete. A send that failed drops back here so you can fix and retry.

The email studio

Creating or editing an email opens a full-page studio. The top bar has a desktop/mobile preview switch, zoom, undo/redo, preview, Save, Test, and Review & send. Panels on the left rail hold your building blocks; selecting anything on the canvas opens its settings (content, spacing, colors) in the inspector on the right. Leaving with unsaved changes warns you first.

What you can build with

• Layout — 1, 2, or 3-column sections and a hero. You can also change a section's column count later from the inspector; going down a column keeps all your content.
• Elements — text, button, image, divider, spacer.
• Run This blocks — pieces that fill in from your event automatically: an event header (icon, name, date), the event icon, your sponsors' logos (pick a 1–4-per-row layout; it updates as you add sponsors), and Register buttons that link to your event page. App Store buttonsdrops in the Apple and Google badges, already linked to the Run This app. A Donate button appears when your event collects donations.
• My blocks — select any section on the canvas and hit Save as block to reuse it on any of your events. Run This content inside it stays dynamic.
• Photos — upload images, then use Swap on an image block to drop one in. Edit crops it to any shape, and a width slider sizes it.
• Templates — start from a built-in design (Announcement, Registration is open, Price goes up soon, Race day guide, Know before you go, Thank you + results, or Blank), or save your current design as your own template for this event.

Text tools

Double-click a text block to type. The floating toolbar covers bold, italic, links, bulleted and numbered lists (Tab inside a list makes a sub-bullet), and a highlighter with a color picker. The inspector's Typography section sets size, weight, color, alignment, and line spacing (None through Loose).

Preview text

In Send settings, the Preview text field is the grey line inboxes show after the subject. Leave it blank and most mail apps grab your opening words instead — usually a logo's alt text or a stray heading, so it's worth writing. Around 40–90 characters shows on most phones.

Choosing recipients

Under Recipients you pick one or more audiences — membership is worked out live at send time, so the list is always current:

• Current registrants
• Volunteers, or a single volunteer group
• Past participants (from earlier editions)
• Bookmarked / interested athletes
• Registrants of one sub-event ("5K registrants")
• If your event is hosted by a club you run: everyone who has ever registered for any of that club's events

You can also exclude groups — for example, email all past participants except anyone already registered this year. A live "Emailing N people" count updates as you change the selection, and the same number appears on the confirmation screen before anything sends.

Email type: essential info vs. promotion

Every email needs a type, and it decides who can opt out:

• Essential event info — race-week instructions, schedule changes, logistics. It reaches everyone who signed up and can't be blocked by a marketing unsubscribe. Because of that, it can only target people with a real stake — registrants and volunteers. Bookmarkers and past participants are off-limits for this type.
• Promotion — register-now pushes, discounts, newsletters. It automatically skips anyone who unsubscribed from marketing and carries an unsubscribe link.

Essential-info emails also offer "Also send this to anyone who registers later": anyone who signs up after the send gets the email too, alongside their registration confirmation, stopping automatically at the start of the race. The email's card shows it's still going out, and you can stop it from the card menu at any time (stopping can't be undone — you'd write a new email).

Send a test

Test sends a real copy right away without touching your audience. Your own address is pre-filled; add up to 10 more, and your co-directors appear as one-click suggestions. While your event is still a draft, tests can only go to your own address — publish the event to send proofs to anyone else.

Sending and scheduling

Review & send never sends in one click. A confirmation recaps the subject, the exact recipient count, who you're sending to and when, and reminds you that a sent email can't be edited or unsent. You and your co-directors get a copy of every send. Choose Send immediately or Schedule for later with a date and time — a scheduled email sits in the Scheduled column, where Cancel returns it to drafts untouched.

What the stats mean

Once delivery reports start arriving, each sent email's card shows: how many were sent, how many were delivered, then opens and clicks as a share of delivered, plus any bounces, unsubscribes, and spam reports.

The abandoned-cart reminder

The card at the top of the Emails page controls an automation, not a campaign: when someone starts registering and doesn't finish, they're automatically emailed a nudge to come back. It's on by default, and you control:

• When it sends — how many days after the cart is left, at what time of day (in your event's timezone). The card shows exactly when a cart left right now would be reminded.
• Which email goes out — the Run This default (which shows their cart and a button back to checkout — you can preview it), or a custom reminder you build yourself in the same studio. Each event has exactly one custom reminder; until you've built it, the default goes out so nobody misses a nudge.

Because it's an automation, the custom reminder's editor has no recipients, no schedule, and no send button — it says Sends automatically instead. You can still send yourself a test. The reminder never appears in the campaign columns, so it can't be sent by hand.

Looking for what your athletes see on their side? Notification preferences are covered in notifications, and posting announcements (rather than emailing them) lives on the event wall & announcements.