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Not too long ago, everyone was discussing how email marketing is a thing of the past. Then, digital marketing specialists everywhere realized, and I quote, that "Email marketing is not dead." Frankly, I agree. I've seen firsthand how emails, especially newsletters,...
Does your marketing team use approval software for its workflow? If not, it’s high time to consider adding it to your content workflow. An approval workflow software ticks off all the boxes: it speeds up content delivery, reduces mistakes, improves communication, and keeps all the stakeholders involved.
Read on to find the best tools to optimize and automate your approval process.
Approval software is a tool that allows you to easily review, comment and approve content. It enables teams to collaborate and communicate efficiently, ensuring timely feedback exchange and much faster delivery.
Approval software helps to streamline work and reduce errors by building an review and approval process. A well-defined and documented workflow solution enables your team to create content faster and includes all reviewers in the process without additional bottlenecks.
Social media approval process in Planable
An approval process includes all types of creations within an organization where each stage needs a person’s approval before moving to the next step. For instance, in a content approval workflow, each step involves specific roles and responsibilities, layers of approval, review processes, deadlines, and checks for content quality.
Depending on team size and management expectations, approvals can slow down your projects if they’re not managed quickly. Understanding where all necessary approvals lie in your workflows helps you plan, so work with teams and leadership to find a happy balance where you have the right checks and balances in place without micromanaging and delaying progress.”
— Elisa Montanari, Head of Organic Growth at Wrike
Marketing works on tons of content, from social media captions to images, videos, and printables. So here we gathered the best approval workflow tools to fit any creative and marketing team.
Planable always puts collaboration first, whether it’s content creation or approval. The content approval platform helps content creators work on all types of written content, including blog articles, newsletters, and social media posts.
Collaboration and approval workflows in Planable
Keeping easy collaboration and content approval in mind, Planable has an intuitive interface that needs minimum onboarding for less tech-savvy clients. From collaboration and approval to scheduling social media posts, this tool makes it all the process as easy as pie.
Key features:
Custom approval levels in Planable
Planable offers flexible pricing starting at $33 per month based on the number of workspaces, and features. The platform also has a free plan that includes 50 scheduled posts.
Before Planable, it would take me four hours to get a post approved. After Planable, it’s 15 minutes. It really saves me time. And I can take on more clients because I have more time.
— Monique R., Social Media Director, A+1 Digital Strategy
Even though Planable integrates with the most important social media platforms and provides sleek analytics tools, it has no social media listening features.
Planable is the perfect marketing approval software for creating custom approval workflows and automating them. With flexible pricing, visual content presentation, and extensive collaborative features, Planable fits any marketing team like a glove.
Marketing agency workflow in Planable
The easiest tool I have found for approval workflows. Planable is the easiest tool I have found for uploading content with a simple approval workflow that makes it easy to go from draft to published with client’s approval It is cutting down the time required to go from drafted posts, through the necessary approvals and getting things published.
— Teryl Brouillette, Founder & CEO at Electric Kite Media
ProofHub is an online project management and collaboration tool that helps teams streamline their general workflows and stay organized. Besides approval functionality, it offers other tools to improve communication and simplify project management.
Key features:
ProofHub paid plans start at $45/month.
The cheapest plan includes the minimum set of features: proofing, file versioning, notes, etc. To use workflows, custom roles, and reports, users have to upgrade.
ProofHub is a complex project management solution with basic approval workflows. It suits those looking for a combination of task management and approval software.
Filestage is an approval software that allows teams to set up approval workflows on the spot. It’s a centralized platform where teams can review and provide feedback on videos, images, text docs, and PDF files.
Key features:
Filestage has a free version for small teams and freelancers and three paid plans starting from $49/month.
Automated email notifications are lagging.
Filestage is an approval management software that helps various marketing teams build approval workflows and speed up approvals.
Approval Studio is a design-oriented approval workflow software with many features supporting visual proofing. It has integrations with Adobe Creative Cloud to ease the creative team’s everyday work and reduce the number of “final” file versions.
Key features:
Approval Studio’s four paid plans start at $45 per month.
Few integration options.
Approval Studio is a remarkable tool for design teams who can benefit from its review instruments, visual comparison, and smooth approval workflow.
Wipster helps video teams deliver content faster and easily fly through complicated marketing approval processes. Besides proofing, the platform publishes the ready-to-go and approved content to integrated platforms like Vimeo, Wistia, and others.
Key features:
The platform bills per user and set of features. The paid plans begin at $19.95 per user per month, and Wipster also has a free version.
Creators can only share links to individual videos, which takes more time.
Wipster works for video creators best. It has many integrations to avoid time-consuming rendering and speed up the video review process.
Celum covers the whole content supply chain and combines it with the Kanban methodology. The approval system supports documents, videos, and images. Celum concentrates on workflow automation using statuses and ad-hoc pipelines for different projects.
Key features:
Celum has one paid plan for $24.90 per month per user.
Celum’s pricing lacks flexibility with only one defined plan.
Celum is a workflow automation software for building customizable content pipelines. It’s a good fit for a team of 10+ people creating an automated approval workflow.
GoVisually is an approval management software for visual feedback on creative pieces. The platform supports PDFs, designs, and video content. It’s a handy and straightforward tool that makes content approval easy by keeping all the efforts in one place.
Key features:
GoVisually paid plans start at $20/month for solo creators and $30/month for teams.
Users mention excessive email notifications and a steeper learning curve for clients.
GoVisually is a minimalistic yet efficient tool for teams working on visual projects.
Aproove is a full-scale work management software. Aproove’s proof tool supports over 180 file types, and its workflows are straightforward: with one multi-tool for annotations, they require little onboarding.
Key features:
The Aproove Classic plan costs $750 per month.
The tool is expensive for most small to medium businesses.
Aproove is an enterprise-class online proofing tool with vast customization options that would suit big teams with generous budgets.
ReviewStudio enables creative teams to review and collaborate on over 100 media formats, including PDFs, images, videos, and docs. This approval workflow software has intuitive UX and offers automated workflows for faster delivery.
Key features:
The tool has four paid plans starting at $20/month.
The mobile version is less user-friendly than the desktop one.
ReviewStudio has extensive functionality for reviewing creative content and suits design teams who want to get targeted feedback fast.
The idea behind approval software is simple: streamline approval workflows while keeping all the necessary decision-makers in the loop.
But how do you choose the best approval workflow software for your team? Here are five features you want your tool to have.
An asset library helps teams stay on brand and quickly access their digital assets, including logos, images, videos, GIFs, etc. Plus, having all your reusable elements in one place significantly speeds up the creation and approval processes.
Media library in Planable
Some types of content need more attention than others. Customizable approval workflows provide teams with flexibility while avoiding bottlenecks in the pipeline. Some tools offer multiple options, like Planable, for instance.
Multiple approval settings in Planable for easier content review and approval process
Workflow automation speeds up the process and improves communication. Automated notifications inform team members of pending approvals or remind them of an approval request that needs attention. They help teams stay on top of their workload and avoid delays.
Notifications about approvals in Planable
Version control tracks and records every change in the content. Team members ensure they all stay on the same page working on the latest up-to-date file and can quickly revert to previous versions. It comes in handy for complex projects with many stakeholders and multiple revisions.
Activity log and version history in Planable
You want your best approval software to provide straightforward collaboration next to the reviewed content. With tags, comments, attachments, and notes, creators and approvers stay on the same page. In Planable, you can add text suggestions, and even create internal notes for your team’s eyes only.
Say, a digital marketing agency is creating a social media campaign for a client. The campaign has many posts, each with its caption, visual, and focus.
The approval process for every post includes a) the agency’s team member, b) the client’s team member, and c) one of the stakeholders. No post goes live without all of them giving it a go.
Imagine the number of emails and approval requests! In such chaos, missing a deadline (and your sanity!) is easy. But, the right approval software saves the day for clients and creators, making the approval processes swift and accurate.
The agency can easily share the posts with all stakeholders and gather feedback and approvals in one place. Built-in notifications, approval checklist templates, and transparent communication enable teams to track approvals and stay updated on the content status.
So, how do you convert your stakeholders to using an approval workflow software? Here are some tips.
Explain the benefits of using the approval software to your clients. Present your stakeholders with two scenarios:
The second scenario requires much less time from the stakeholder: it’s straightforward, easy, and efficient. Eventually, what matters for the business is that approval workflow software tools significantly improve productivity and save time.
Invest some extra time into onboarding your clients: schedule a video call where you’ll break down the approval process into actionable steps. Choose an approval tool with a straightforward and user-friendly interface so that even the least tech-savvy stakeholders will find it easy to use.
Remember to be patient with your approvers: some people catch on faster than others. Guide them through every approval step and ensure they understand the workflow.
Clear instructions will save you time in the future and reassure stakeholders that approval workflow automation is not as scary as it might feel at first.
When introducing your approval workflow software to the stakeholders, take the lead for the first couple of times. If you want their approval on a press release, highlight some of the parts you’d like them to pay extra attention to. Leave a few comments as anchors so that your reviewers answer your questions, rather than face a plain wall of text.
Taking the lead will help stakeholders get accustomed to the software and document approval workflow. They’ll get used to the tool and its functionality, and their first instinct will be to add comments and communicate with your team through the platform.
Sending a GIF with a cat giving thumbs up instead of writing “ok” next to the reworked design is faster, more visual, and more pleasant.
Many platforms make it fun to provide feedback, and your team should take advantage of it to sway stakeholders to the approval workflow software side. Planable, for instance, allows users to add emojis, GIFs, and images to the comments, making document reviewing and approving more interactive.
Besides, with more than just dry comments, stakeholders are more likely to highlight what they like in your content instead of only concentrating on fixes and tweaks.
Give stakeholders the reins when they get a hold of the software and the approval process. It empowers them to take ownership of the process, and increases engagement. Combined with clever onboarding and a well-documented approval workflow, it makes sign-offs easier. Stakeholders are more likely to prioritize their feedback when in control.
You can still support them with an approval checklist or provide all the necessary details in the comments to add context. It will ensure faster approvals.
Are you ready to transform your approval workflow? Approval software aids marketing, design, and social media teams in delivering content faster and smoother, and benefits both creators and stakeholders. By using the right tools, you can streamline your workflow, enhance collaboration, and reduce the risk of errors. Whether you’re a small team or a large organization, the right approval software can make all the difference in delivering high-quality content on time, every time. So, why wait? Keep your team on the fast track!
Content marketer with a background in journalism; digital nomad, and tech geek. In love with blogs, storytelling, strategies, and old-school Instagram. If it can be written, I probably wrote it.
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