Best Practice Guide - Campaign Approvals

When Approvals is enabled, you will only be able to make a campaign live after it is approved or is made active by a user with the ‘Approve Campaigns’ permission.

Therefore, it is recommended that time is taken before Approvals is turned on to decide the groups and individuals who will be given the ‘Approve Campaigns’ permission. This permission should be assigned before Approvals is turned on to limit the risk that campaigns cannot be sent because approvers have not been setup.

Approval groups should consist of senior team members and users with specific brand or campaign knowledge.

The ‘Approve Campaigns’ permission can be assigned to groups and individual users. With this permission the user can approve ANY campaign they are able to edit.

The Approvals and Notes screen email notification provides a way for a suitable group with the required campaign knowledge to be informed of an approval request. It does not stop other approvers from working on or even approving the campaign.

Careful consideration should be made to campaign permissions if this is a concern.

Although individuals can be assigned the ‘Approve Campaigns’ permission, they are not available in approvals and notes for selection for notification emails. If individuals are required from a notification point of view a group of one should be formed with the ‘Approve Campaigns’ permission.

To take advantage of the approval notification emails, you must configure the SMTP server via an API call. This process is covered in the online Alterian product help.

In the configuration screen, you can add and adjust both the sender email and the “From” field of the approval notification emails. The addition of these elements enables Approval Email notifications.

It is recommended that users configure these elements around brands or campaign types, allowing email rules to be setup for users with specific responsibilities. Approval Email notifications are not required for the approvals process to be used.

When Approvals is switched on, campaigns that are in an Active state will continue as before. Campaigns that are paused can be restarted if no changes are made.

If changes are subsequently required for Active or Paused campaigns, they will need to go through the approval process before they can be resumed.

The user that moved the campaign into the pending approval state (requesting user) will receive campaign specific emails as the campaigns moves through the further states.

Once approved the campaign can be made active by any user.

Approving a campaign is a key part of the approval process. Any user who has approval permissions and access to a campaign can approve it. In a business setting is it likely only a limited group of individuals who would have the campaign knowledge to accurately assess the campaign and sign it off.

Approvers can use the Campaign View screen to identify the campaigns that have been moved to a Pending Approval state.

Alternatively, approvers may receive a notification email or be told by a colleague setting up the campaign that an approval task is at hand. As with all campaign state changes, when the campaign is approved the user that approved it and the date and time are recorded in the campaign log.

When an approver begins to approve a campaign, an email notification is provided when the campaign is moved to an Approving state.

Approving a campaign can be a complex process. The approver who starts the approving process may not be able to complete the task. This could be due to time constraints or a lack of understanding of the campaign. An email notification is provided when a campaign is moved into an approving state. If the approving process is stopped, the campaign is returned to the Pending Approval state for another approver to pick up. In this event, no notification email is sent.

It is expected that the approver that picked up the campaign for approval would leave notes on why they did not complete the task.

With a change of approver included, the process would look like this:

Throughout the approval process and in the days following approval, issues with the campaign may be found or changes may need to be made to the campaign.

With Approvals on, changes can only be made by moving the campaign back to an editing state.

There are two mechanisms to move a campaign back to an editable state:

• Withdraw Approval Request – Moves the campaign into an editing state. No notification emails are sent. This is available to all users.
• Rejection – moves the campaign into an editing state. Notification emails are sent to the requesting user and the original campaign approval group. Rejection is available to users with approval permissions only.

From a process perspective, rejection could be used by an approver if an issue is found and the approver requires another user to make the change. The approver should add notes to describe the issue.

Withdraw approval request could be used if the approver is happy to make the change themselves, is working on the campaign in conjunction with the person submitting the campaign or changes simply need to be made and time is not an issue.

Both mechanisms put the campaign into an editing state. The notifications are the key differentiator.

When the approval request is withdrawn, or rejected the campaign moves into the Editing state. There is no rejection state. However, the rejection will be followed up with a rejection notification email and the change will be noted in the campaign log.

When an approved campaign is cancelled or completed, the campaign locks are removed and any linked email creative locks are also automatically removed