Campaign Approvals — Complete Guide

Campaign approvals let team administrators maintain quality control over outgoing marketing communications. When enabled, restricted team members must submit their campaigns for review before they can be sent. Managers can then approve, edit, or deny campaigns from a centralised approval queue. This guide covers how to configure approval settings, the submission and review workflow, notifications, and the approval history log.

Overview

The approval system sits between campaign creation and campaign sending. When approval is required for a channel, the Send Now button is replaced with a Send for Approval button for restricted team members. The campaign is saved with a “pending approval” status and appears in the approval queue, where account admins and managers can review, approve, or deny it.

Approvals are supported across all three campaign channels: Email, SMS, and WhatsApp. You can enable or disable approvals independently per channel. For example, you might require approval for email campaigns (which have the largest blast radius) but allow team members to send SMS campaigns freely.

The approval system is designed for organisations where multiple team members create campaigns but a senior manager or brand guardian needs to sign off before anything reaches customers. It prevents accidental sends, ensures brand consistency, and provides a clear audit trail of who approved what and when.

Who Needs Approval

The approval requirement is role-based. Here is who is affected:

• Restricted Client Users — Team members without full_access permission. These users see the “Send for Approval” button when approval is enabled for that channel.

The following roles bypass the approval system entirely and can always send directly:

• Admins — Platform administrators always have full send access.
• Client Admins — Account owners can always send without approval.
• Client Users with full_access — Team members explicitly granted full access bypass approval requirements.

Configuring Approval Settings

To configure which channels require approval, navigate to Campaigns → Approvals and click the Settings tab. You will see three toggle switches, one for each campaign channel:

• Email campaigns require approval
• SMS campaigns require approval
• WhatsApp campaigns require approval

Toggle each switch on or off according to your needs. Only Client Admins and Admins can change these settings. Restricted team members see the toggles but cannot interact with them. Changes take effect immediately — the next time a restricted user opens the campaign send page, they will see the updated button.

Submitting a Campaign for Approval

When a restricted team member creates a campaign on a channel that requires approval, the send step changes. Instead of the usual Send Now or Schedule buttons, they see a single Send for Approval button.

Clicking this button does the following:

1. The campaign is saved with a pending_approval status.
2. An approval request is created in the campaign_approvals table, capturing the campaign type, name, contact count, scheduled time (if any), and the submitting user.
3. All managers (Client Admins and Client Users with full_access) receive a notification email with the campaign details and a link to the approvals page.
4. If any managers have a mobile number on file, they also receive an SMS notification alerting them to the pending review.

The submitting user sees a confirmation message that their campaign has been sent for review. They can see its status in their campaign list, but they cannot send, edit, or delete it while it is pending.

Reviewing & Approving Campaigns

Managers review pending campaigns at Campaigns → Approvals. The Pending tab shows all campaigns awaiting review, with an orange count badge indicating how many are in the queue.

For each pending campaign, the table shows who submitted it, the channel (colour-coded badge), campaign name, target contact count, scheduled time (or “Immediate” for instant sends), when it was submitted, and three action buttons:

• Approve — Approves the campaign and either sends it immediately or schedules it for the specified time. If the scheduled time has already passed, you will see a warning that the campaign will be sent immediately instead.
• Deny — Opens a modal where you can enter an optional reason for denial. Denying a campaign permanently deletes the campaign record. The submitter is notified via email (and SMS if they have a mobile number on file).
• Edit — Takes you to the campaign editor so you can review the content, make adjustments, and then approve from there.

Approval History

The History tab shows a log of all past approval decisions. Each entry records the campaign name, channel, who submitted it, the decision (Approved or Denied with colour-coded badges), who reviewed it, when the review happened, and any notes (such as a denial reason).

The history tab displays the last 100 decisions and serves as a permanent record of your team’s campaign governance. This is useful for compliance audits, understanding team workflows, and tracking how quickly approvals are being processed.

Notifications

The approval system sends notifications at two key moments:

When a Campaign Is Submitted

All managers receive:

• Email with subject “Campaign Approval Required: [Campaign Name]”, containing the channel, campaign name, contact count, schedule, and a direct link to the approvals page.
• SMS (if they have a mobile number on file) with a concise alert and link.

When a Campaign Is Denied

The submitter receives:

• Email with subject “Campaign Not Approved: [Campaign Name]”, including the reviewer’s reason if one was provided.
• SMS (if they have a mobile number on file) with a brief notification.

Approved campaigns do not trigger a separate notification to the submitter — the campaign is simply sent or scheduled, and the submitter can see the updated status in their campaign list.

Best Practices

• Review promptly. Pending approvals create bottlenecks. Aim to review submissions within a few hours, especially for time-sensitive event campaigns. If a scheduled time passes before approval, the campaign will send immediately upon approval, which may not be the intended timing.
• Use the Edit button before denying. If a campaign is mostly correct but needs small tweaks (a typo in the subject line, wrong audience selected), edit it yourself rather than denying. This saves the submitter from recreating the entire campaign.
• Enable approvals selectively. If your team is small and trusted, you may not need approvals on all channels. Consider enabling them only for the highest-impact channels (email campaigns to large lists) while allowing lower-risk channels (targeted SMS to small groups) to be sent freely.
• Provide clear denial reasons. When denying a campaign, always include a reason in the denial note. This helps the submitter understand what needs to change and creates a useful record in the approval history.
• Review approval history monthly. The history tab can reveal patterns: are certain team members consistently having campaigns denied? Are approvals taking too long? Use this data to improve training and workflows.