The CRM
The admin side of your project — audience, email, commerce and affiliates in one place. What's in it, who can see what, and where to start.
The CRM is where you run the business behind your project: who your people are, what you send them, what they buy, and who refers them. It sits alongside the site you build in Genesis — the site attracts, the CRM keeps.
What's in it
| Section | |
|---|---|
| Hub Overview | The dashboard — revenue, health, priorities and analytics for a date range |
| Contacts · Lists · Suppressions · Tags | Your audience |
| Messages · Broadcasts · Automations | What you send them |
| Orders · Products, Coupons | What they buy |
| Affiliates | Who sells for you |
| Bookings | Who booked time with you, and what they can book |
| Settings | Timezone, business details, email sending, data import |
Who can see what
The project owner sees everything. Team members see only the sections their role allows — a member with no commerce permission simply has no Products or Orders in their sidebar, and empty sections disappear rather than showing a locked screen.
The email side — Contacts, Lists, Suppressions, Messages, Broadcasts, Automations and the Email sending settings — is additionally limited to accounts with email access. If your sidebar shows Users instead of Contacts, and there's no Email section, that's what's happening: contact ESTAGE support.
The dashboard
Hub Overview is the landing page. A date range at the top drives everything on it — today, yesterday, the last 7 or 30 days, this or last month, this quarter, or a custom range — and you can compare against the previous period or the previous year.
Under it, a summary line reads the numbers back to you in a sentence, and a setup card shows what's still outstanding. Then the cards:
- Net Revenue — money in for the range, against the comparison.
- Key Metrics — total contacts and community members.
- Hub Health — an at-a-glance score, with Fix → on whatever is dragging it down.
- Priority Actions — what needs you now, such as automations throwing errors.
- Growth Journey — how the business is progressing over the range.
- Hub Pulse — one metric plotted over time, with markers where broadcasts went out.
- Analytics Explorer — the same period broken down by offers, sources, email, community or content, with email quick-metrics beside it (deliverability, unique click rate, and email-attributed conversion).
Customize lets you hide cards you don't use and reorder the rest; the choice sticks.
Note
Cards that have nothing to show say so rather than displaying zeroes — "Not enough data yet" on a new project is normal, not a fault.
Where to start
If the project is new, this order saves the most backtracking:
- Settings → General — set your timezone and fill in your business details. Email won't let you create anything until the business details are there, so doing it first avoids being bounced back later.
- Set up email sending — the domain, a From address and an allowance. Some of it is DNS, so start it early and let it resolve while you do other things.
- Build the audience — import your contacts, create the lists they belong on.
- Write a message and send it as a broadcast.
- Automate the repeatable parts — a welcome sequence first.
Commerce and affiliates can wait until you're actually selling.