Campaign Approval Workflows in Marketing Cloud Next

Campaigns that skip review reach inboxes with broken personalisation tokens, incorrect suppression conditions, compliance issues, or messaging that was not signed off by the right stakeholders. The cost of a poor approval process is paid in unsubscribes, deliverability damage, and damaged credibility with your audience.

The cost of an over-engineered approval process is paid in campaign velocity — a 5-layer approval chain for a 400-contact email is the wrong tradeoff.

This guide covers how to design a campaign approval process that is appropriately rigorous for the campaign type and risk level, without becoming the thing that prevents campaigns from launching.

The Approval Scope: What Needs to Be Approved

Not all campaign elements carry the same risk. Structure your approval requirements around what can cause damage if it is wrong:

Always requires approval before activation:

• Segment criteria (incorrect criteria can send to the wrong audience, including opted-out contacts)
• Email copy for external-facing sends (factual claims, compliance elements, brand voice)
• From-address and sender identity (incorrect from-address can be a compliance violation)
• Unsubscribe mechanism (legal requirement; must be functional)

Requires approval for first-run; template-based re-runs can use lighter review:

• Flow structure for first use of a new campaign type
• Email template (first use; subsequent uses with same template need lighter content review only)

Can use self-review for experienced team members:

• Scheduling details (send timing, wait window duration)
• Subject line variants when primary has been approved
• Minor copy edits that do not change the substantive message

The Two-Level Approval Model

For most B2B marketing teams, a two-level approval model balances governance with velocity:

Level 1 — Self-review (MOps) before seeking approval: The MOps team member who built the campaign runs through a standardised checklist before requesting external review. This catches obvious errors — empty tokens, broken links, wrong segment — before a stakeholder's time is used on a campaign that is not ready.

Level 2 — Stakeholder approval: A designated approver (typically the marketing manager, campaign owner, or marketing director) reviews and approves the campaign before activation.

For campaigns above a defined risk threshold (large audience size, compliance-sensitive content, first use of a new campaign type, executive audience), require an additional legal or compliance review.

[Screenshot: RACI diagram for campaign approval workflow]

A RACI diagram showing three roles: MOps team member (Responsible: builds, self-reviews, submits for approval), Marketing Manager/Campaign Owner (Accountable: approves content and audience, activates), Compliance/Legal (Consulted: reviews for compliance-sensitive campaigns above defined threshold)

id: approval-workflow-roles-responsibilities

The Pre-Submission Checklist (Level 1 Self-Review)

Before submitting a campaign for stakeholder approval, the MOps team member runs through this checklist:

Segment:

• [ ] Segment preview count is non-zero and in the expected range
• [ ] Exclusion conditions are present (opted-out contacts, current customers if applicable)
• [ ] Segment criteria reviewed against campaign brief — does it match the intended audience?

Email content (each email in the sequence):

• [ ] Subject line is populated and non-generic
• [ ] Preheader is populated and complements the subject line
• [ ] All Personalisation Points are populated with fallback values
• [ ] No broken personalisation tokens visible in the preview
• [ ] All CTA links are valid URLs pointing to the correct destination
• [ ] Unsubscribe link is visible and functional (tested via click)
• [ ] Legal footer is present (address, disclaimer, unsubscribe language)

Flow:

• [ ] Entry condition is correct
• [ ] All branch conditions are configured (no unconfigured branches)
• [ ] Exit conditions are present
• [ ] Wait durations match the campaign brief cadence

Sender identity:

• [ ] From-name is appropriate (person name or brand name, not a system default)
• [ ] From-email is from an authenticated domain
• [ ] Reply-to address is monitored

[Screenshot: Campaign approval checklist used before activation]

A printed checklist document with three sections (Segment, Content, Sender) each with checkboxes, a signature line for the MOps reviewer, and a notes field for flagging any items that were reviewed but had known acceptable exceptions

id: campaign-approval-checklist-template

Configuring Salesforce Approval Processes

Marketing Cloud Next campaigns are linked to Salesforce Campaign records. You can configure a Salesforce Approval Process on the Campaign object to create a formal, trackable approval workflow.

Setting up the approval process:

1. In Salesforce Setup, navigate to Process Automation → Approval Processes
2. Select Campaign as the object
3. Create a new approval process: "Campaign Content Approval"
4. Configure the entry criteria: campaigns where Status = Planned (the status before activation)
5. Configure the approval steps:
   • Step 1: Marketing Manager (identified by a custom Campaign field "Campaign Owner")
   • Optional Step 2: Compliance (for campaigns flagged with a "Compliance Review Required" checkbox)
6. Configure the rejection action: reset Status to "In Review" and notify the MOps submitter
7. Configure the approval action: update Status to "Approved" — the activation permission check in MCN can reference this field

[Screenshot: Salesforce Approval Process configuration for Campaign records]

The Salesforce Approval Process configuration screen for the Campaign object showing: entry criteria (Status = Planned), two approval steps (Campaign Owner in Step 1, Compliance email address in Step 2 for flagged campaigns), rejection notification configuration, and the final approval action setting Status to Approved

id: salesforce-approval-process-config

With this configuration:

• MOps completes the self-review checklist and sets Campaign Status to "Planned"
• The approval process triggers automatically and sends an approval request email to the Campaign Owner
• The Campaign Owner reviews and approves or rejects via email or Salesforce mobile
• On approval, Campaign Status updates to "Approved"
• MCN activation should only proceed for campaigns with Status = Approved

Balancing Governance with Velocity

A common failure mode of approval processes is that they become velocity blockers. Stakeholders take 3–4 days to approve campaigns; MOps team members build campaigns the same day they need to send.

SLA-based approval management:

Define and communicate a campaign submission SLA: campaigns submitted before [Day X] will be approved by [Day Y]. This forces earlier submission planning and gives approvers a clear expectation window.

Track approval turnaround time as a metric. If the median approval time is 3 days and campaigns are being submitted 1 day before launch, the process is not being followed — the problem is a planning discipline issue, not an approval process issue.

[Screenshot: Approval turnaround time tracking dashboard]

An approval SLA dashboard showing: median approval time 1.2 days (vs 1.5 day SLA target), approval distribution histogram (most approvals in 4-24 hours), top 3 bottleneck campaigns (approval pending 4+ days), and a trend line showing improvement over 3 months as the team adopted the new process

id: approval-turnaround-sla-tracking

Risk-tiered approval: Not every campaign needs the same approval rigour. Define tiers:

| Tier | Criteria | Approval Required | |---|---|---| | Tier 1 (Low Risk) | Internal audience, < 200 contacts, repeat campaign type | Self-review checklist only | | Tier 2 (Standard) | External audience, < 5,000 contacts, standard content | Marketing Manager approval | | Tier 3 (High Risk) | External audience, > 5,000 contacts, new audience type, or compliance-sensitive content | Marketing Manager + Compliance |

For a 2–3 person marketing team, most campaigns will be Tier 2. For a 6–10 person team with significant external communication volume, tiering reduces approval overhead for lower-risk work.

Summary

An effective campaign approval workflow catches material errors before they reach your audience, maintains stakeholder visibility into outgoing communications, and meets compliance requirements — without becoming the bottleneck that prevents campaigns from launching.

The pre-submission self-review checklist is the highest-ROI governance investment: it catches the most errors, requires no other team member's time, and takes under 10 minutes per campaign. Build this habit before building the Salesforce approval process infrastructure.

Want help designing an approval workflow that fits your team's scale and campaign volume? Pardive designs governance processes for Marketing Cloud Next teams from solo operators to 10+ person organisations. Book a free governance session.