Sooner or later, someone at every regulated firm asks a simple question about a piece of marketing: who approved this version?
The answer is often a search. Compliance approved version three in the review tool. Legal said "looks fine" in an email about version two. The product owner reacted to a screenshot in Slack that may or may not have been final.
Every one of those sign-offs happened. They are spread across three tools, and only one is tied to a specific version.
This article covers how to design a marketing approval workflow with more than one approver, and how Adclear's multi-level approval runs one so that every decision is recorded on the promotion itself.
Why sign-offs end up everywhere
Most financial promotions need more than one opinion. Product checks the facts. Compliance checks the rules. Legal looks at anything new. Brand wants a say on the big campaigns.
Plenty of review tools assume a single approver. The first approver uses the tool, everyone else uses whatever they have open, and the process holds together until someone has to reconstruct it.
The second failure is quieter. A promotion is two approvals into a three-stage review, the third reviewer is off sick, and the launch is Thursday. In most tools you wait, or you delete the review and start again, and the two approvals you already had disappear from the record along with the reasons behind them.
Design the chain before you open the settings page
Three questions shape a multi-level approval workflow.
Who has to agree? List roles and leave names out. People change jobs. The need for legal to see every new product launch stays.
Does anyone need to see someone else's decision first? If legal should only review copy compliance has already cleared, run the steps in sequence. If product and compliance can look at the same time, run them in parallel and save the wait.
What happens when someone says no? A rejection at any step should stop the chain. When the fixed version comes back, the people whose part didn't change should be able to keep their earlier approval.
Agree the answers with compliance and legal first. The settings are the easy part.
How Adclear runs a multi-level approval workflow
Adclear saves that design as a reviewer preset: the roles or teams involved, sequential or parallel, and the order of steps. An admin builds it once in Settings. Submitters pick it from a list, or get the default.
Roles and teams, with named people as an option
A preset stores roles such as Marketing, Compliance and Legal, or a team an admin has set up, so it keeps working as people join and leave. The same role or team can appear at more than one step.
When a marketer submits, each step is open to anyone in that role or team with permission for the promotion's jurisdiction, or narrowed to named people. A step can also point at an external reviewer, such as an outsourced compliance partner, who is always named.
Routing a step to a team is what takes the sting out of the holiday problem. When one reviewer is away, anyone else in the team can complete the step.
Sequential or parallel
In a sequential flow, step two opens once step one is approved. Use it when a later reviewer should only see what an earlier one has cleared.
In a parallel flow, every reviewer is told at once and nobody waits. Use it when the teams' decisions are independent and speed matters.
Either way, a promotion is approved once every required step has approved it. An approval on an early step completes that step and nothing more. A Reject or Request Changes at any step stops the chain and returns the promotion to marketing with the reviewer's comments.
Reviewers are told when it's their turn
Reviewers get an email and a Slack message when a step they can review opens: on submission, when the previous step is approved, or when someone changes the flow and a new step opens. Reviewers on a later step get a heads-up that the promotion is coming. Nobody has to keep refreshing a queue to find out whether the chain has reached them.
Fixed versions keep the approvals that still hold
After a Reject or Request Changes, marketing uploads the fixed version with the same preset. Adclear offers the approvals from the previous version that still qualify, and the submitter chooses which to carry forward. Everything else is reviewed again, and in a sequential flow review resumes at the first step that needs another look.
Changing the flow mid-review, with the cost shown first
If a reviewer is away or the wrong person was picked, an admin can reassign that step, swap the preset, or switch to a single reviewer, at any point, including after approvals are recorded.
Some of those changes discard decisions. Reassigning a step in a sequential flow discards that step and every later one; the earlier approvals survive. Swapping the preset discards every decision on the promotion. Before anything is lost, Adclear shows the current flow, the new flow and a Discarded badge on each decision that would go, and asks for confirmation. Cancel keeps everything.
What the record looks like
Every step, every decision and every version, on the promotion itself. While review runs, the submitter can see the steps, the current step and whose turn it is. Every change to the flow is logged with who made it.
When the audit question comes, the answer is one page.
Give routine content its own route
A new product launch might need three approvers. A resized version of an ad compliance approved last week needs far fewer.
Adclear's self-approval rules let compliance decide which content a marketer can approve on their own, by channel, product, jurisdiction and person. If no rule matches, the standard review workflow applies. The rules are set centrally and checked every time, so the chain stays in place for the content that needs it.
Frequently asked questions
What is a multi-level approval workflow? A review process where a piece of marketing passes through more than one approver, either in a set order (sequential) or at the same time (parallel), and is only approved once every required step has approved it.
Should approvals run in sequence or in parallel? In sequence when a later reviewer should only see work an earlier one has cleared. In parallel when the decisions are independent and turnaround matters.
What happens if a reviewer is unavailable? In Adclear, route the step to a team so a colleague can complete it, or have an admin reassign the step. Adclear shows which recorded decisions, if any, would be discarded before the change is confirmed.
Does a fixed version have to start review from scratch? In Adclear the submitter can carry forward approvals from the previous version that still qualify, and review resumes at the first step that needs another look.
See multi-level approval in Adclear. Book a demo.
Once you're booked in, we'll send you a free playbook on Financial promotions compliance for FinTechs.
