You can set up user permissions to permit a user to design, build and schedule an email campaign and, on completion, trigger an approval process for the campaign before it’s finally sent.
You can also enable a permission for other users to be able to approve these campaigns.
The account owner has permission to approve campaigns by default.
How campaign approval works
There are two user permissions which work together to form the basis of the campaign approval process:
Can send without approval
Users who do not have this permission enabled are not able to send an email campaign directly to your contacts. Instead, the campaign must be approved before it is sent. These users see a Send for approval option in place of the Send campaign option in the final stage of creating and sending a campaign.
Can approve campaigns
Users who have this permission enabled receive a notification when a campaign requires approval before sending, and can either approve or deny the campaign send.
Set up a user to require approval for campaigns
When you add a new user, or edit an existing one, you’re able to configure their permissions to control what actions they can perform, and which areas of the platform they can access.
Learn more in Restrict and grant user access permissions.
To require a user to need approval for campaign sends, their permissions should be set as follows:
Sender
This permission must be enabled.Can send without approval
This permission must not be enabled.
Set up a user to be able to approve campaigns
To enable a user to approve or deny campaign sends, their permissions should be set as follows:
Can approve campaigns
This permission must be enabled.Can send without approval
This permission must be enabled.
If the Can send without approval permission is disabled for a user, you can’t enable the Can approve campaigns permission for that user. This is to prevent users from approving their own campaigns.
Approve or deny a campaign
When a campaign is sent for approval, any users with the Can approve campaigns permission, as well as the account owner, receive an email notification which provides a link to the campaign in question.
Select Click here in the notification email to review the campaign content, settings and contacts.
Select either Approve & send immediately or Decline.
If the campaign is scheduled for the future, the option is Approve & confirm scheduled campaign.
If you select Decline, you are asked to enter a reason. Add this information, then select Confirm to send a notification back to the user who requested approval.
No notification email
If you’re a user with permission to approve campaigns, but you can’t access the notification email, you can complete the process from the Outbox tab. To do this, navigate to the Outbox then select the Review, approve, or deny link next to the campaign's name.
When you follow the link to the campaign summary, you are able to see whether another user has already started reviewing it, so that you don’t have to continue and double-up on work unnecessarily. If the campaign has been reviewed already, the user’s initials appear at the top of the summary page under Last reviewer.
If the Last reviewer field appears blank, this means no one has yet begun reviewing the campaign.
If the campaign is approved
The campaign is sent as scheduled. If approval occurs after the scheduled send date, the campaign is sent immediately. The user who requested the approval is sent an email to notify them that the campaign has been approved and sent.
If the campaign is declined
The campaign is moved from the Outbox tab and back into your unsent campaigns, available for editing. The originating user receives an email to notify them that the campaign needs more work, including the reasons specified.