Campaign creation involves many moving parts, but the biggest challenge is often working across departments. When stakeholders have packed schedules and the legal team is perpetually busy, getting the necessary approvals and feedback in a timely manner can be a struggle.

That's why having a well-structured revision and feedback cycle is crucial for moving quickly and efficiently. Clear deadlines and sufficient time for all parties involved prevent your marketing team from being stalled, allowing them to move on to the next amazing campaign.

In this episode of Thread the Needle, Brittany Watson, Business Strategist at Stitch, walks through how to optimize your feedback and revision cycle, including:
〰 Understanding the campaign process
〰 How to define key Stakeholders
〰 Consolidating and logging feedback
〰 Getting your final approvals

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Transcript:

Hello. My name is Brittany Watson. I am a Business Strategist here at Stitch, and today we're going to be talking about process optimizations, specifically surrounding the feedback and revision cycle.

So what we're going to talk about: First, we're going to do a little bit of level-setting when it comes to what the feedback and revision cycle is, and then we're going to talk about three key areas for improving your overall process and optimizing it to get campaigns reviewed, tested, approved, and live as fast as possible so you're getting the most out of Braze.

To do that, we're going to talk about your stakeholders, how to consolidate your feedback in the best way, and then how to streamline the actual approval process for launch. To kick us off, I want to level set on just what the campaign process is and what we're talking about today.

This is an incredibly high-level and simplified version of a campaign process, but it probably looks relatively familiar to you. Starting on the left side is the overall intake when it comes to a new campaign or canvas that you plan to build out and launch. That could be your actual creative briefs or any version of an intake document, sometimes called a campaign request form, that all falls in that first step.

Then you have your conversations, your actual meetings around what this work's going to entail. You can begin to delegate that work out to the respective teams that are going to own those different work streams. Those actual assets are created. Sometimes there's some data work that is done here as well.

Then you move into the CRM team, who is building that campaign or Canvas. This could be an email, a push message, or an in-app message actually being developed. Then you have some deployment configurations, and this is where you get into a lot of testing, proofing, feedback, revisions, and hopefully approvals. That can be kind of a vicious cycle.

That's what we're going to focus on today. Once you get through that, hopefully you are launching quickly and moving into more of the analytics side of monitoring, reporting, and making strategic optimizations and decisions based on those results. Again, where we're going to focus today is more on this build-feedback-revision cycle that a lot of my clients can get stuck in and lose a lot of momentum.

We're going to talk about how to hopefully avoid that today. Finding some efficiencies, these are the three main areas where I have seen a lot of clients have success. The first one is defining your key stakeholders. It's important to really define who these people are going to be and to what degree they're going to need to be involved throughout the entire process. The earlier we define who these folks are going to be and give them a heads-up, the smoother things will work out down the road.

Second is consolidating that feedback. Many campaigns and canvases require lots of different team members or maybe completely different teams across your organization to work on their respective pieces that then all get put together at the time of build. So how do we get all of those different people with all of those different priorities to put all of their feedback in one place and in a manner that works?

And then number three, hopefully the easiest part, is getting that final approval. But the thing to keep in mind here is that oftentimes the final sign-off is coming from someone who may not have been involved in the day-to-day every step, and so it's important to get it on their radar and make sure they understand your goals for the campaign so when it comes time for them to approve, they can do that quickly.

We're going to dive into each of these a little bit further. The first one, step one here, is defining key stakeholders. I have some considerations or recommendations for you to think through. First, who should be involved in every step, right? Some people are going to be involved in every step of the way, every different piece, whether that's designers, copywriters, or any of your data architecture team to make sure that we have the data needed to power these campaigns. Who's going to be involved in all of those conversations?

On the other side of that, who needs to only see the final product? They know that this is happening from start to finish, but they don't necessarily care to be a part of every conversation. They more so want to see everything once it's been compiled and put together before we move into the final approval and launch.

The biggest thing to keep in mind when thinking through these people is: Are any of these people executives with limited availability? We want to make sure that we're keeping that in mind when it comes to our overall timeline and giving them a heads-up when things are going to head their way, hit their desk, and need their attention.

The more we can plan for that at the time of kickoff, the better. Another thing to keep in mind is any legal review or approval. Oftentimes, legal teams are in high demand, and there are not a ton of individuals working through the queue of work, so this is another aspect of just keeping that timeline in mind that is really going to do you a lot of favors down the road.

Also, are we working around any PTO, office closures, holidays, or maternity leaves, right? Sometimes things pop up unexpectedly, and we take that in stride, but if there are any people whose attention we will need and we know they're going to be out of office, how do we flag this to them so we know that it's either going to hit their plate right before they're out or be waiting for them upon their return so they are ready to review?

The last thing to keep in mind when defining your key stakeholders is: How are all of these people actually going to view the tests of your campaign or canvas? Are they being provided mock-ups in a PDF? Or are they being provided a Word doc when it comes to copy? Are they getting a true test send of the campaign, whether that is an email or a push message? Are they going to be sent that on their actual device in their actual inbox? Are they going to view these by logging into a proofing tool? Litmus is commonly used, where you can then view and give feedback right there live in the tool. And last but not least, inside Braze—are these individuals actually going to be logging in within Braze itself to then view the build from there to give their notes? Keeping that in mind also allows you to make the best decisions about who should be those stakeholders and whether they are accurately prepared with the correct access to give their approval or feedback.

On the right-hand side here, it's just a general log that I have seen clients have a lot of success with when it comes to defining their key stakeholders. You can see this is very simple: just the individual's name, their email address, and whether they are going to be a tester or just an approver. Sometimes we're checking things like personalization, sending out a ton of different proofs and tests. Is this person going to be involved in all of that? Or do they want to see what we're considering the final version for final approval? You might want to include other things on a document like this, like the team that they might be involved in. Are they in design? Are they in copy? Do you want to keep a log of any out-of-office notifications that we mentioned? It depends on your organization, but again, a simple version that I've seen a lot of success with. This helps identify everybody and also serves as a way to let them know, "Hey, this is going to come down the pike here in the coming days or weeks, so be ready for it."

Once we have everything built out and we start to send those tests to our key stakeholders that we've identified, there's the concept of how we actually consolidate all of that feedback. As I mentioned, oftentimes it's a plethora of team members potentially working on very different teams within the organization. How do they expect those tests to get to them? How are they notified that it is time to go in and review and provide their feedback? Do they have access to a log or a document in which they are expected to put their actual feedback? We're going to talk about the example on the right here in just a second.

Another thing to keep in mind is after somebody gives their feedback, their job isn't necessarily done. Those revisions are going to be made, and those new tests are going to be sent out. It's fair to expect those individuals to then go and review the new test to make sure that the update was made in the way they expected it to be.

Last but certainly not least, when proofs are hitting people's inboxes, it's really important to give them a deadline for when you need that feedback by. If it's not somebody's number one priority, it's not the top campaign that they're living and breathing every day, it's really easy for things like this to get pushed off. Knowing that we're working on a timeline and have a launch date in mind, narrowing that window in which they are expected to give their feedback is extremely helpful.

On the right side, again, this is simplified. Definitely work to flesh this out in a way that fits your organization best. Here you can see the actual feedback. Every line is different feedback; it's not all going in one line. This allows us to easily see what has been updated and what still needs to be updated, including who the person is that is putting that feedback there. This enables us to hold that person accountable to the revision they requested and ensure it has been made accurately.

"Feedback Address" is the most helpful column, especially if there's a lot of feedback that could potentially be coming to your team. The default is "No"; you put in a new request that has not yet been addressed. The next step is, hopefully, that it turns green to "Yes," indicating that piece of feedback has been addressed. Sometimes it turns yellow if there's additional follow-up, a question, or a clarification. This enables you to see those different pieces. The person who made that request can handle the conversation pretty seamlessly in that way. I always include an additional notes column. This is mostly helpful when it comes to those yellow statuses, in the sense that there's additional feedback or questions before the change is actually made. If you were to get a request and have a conversation offline about what that request really means, you can then have a place to put your notes that you connected with that individual. Here's some clarification, etc.

A pro tip is to have a revision log that is the same for every single campaign. This will do wonders when it comes to building your team's habits of logging any changes they need made in one spot. If it is always set up the same way, your team will quickly learn to look for the revision log that goes with the campaign they're currently reviewing, helping build that habit. Another pro tip is to put a yellow or red highlight at the top of the revision log for the due date for all revisions. This way, there's no excuse; the reminder is right there in the log for everybody to get that feedback in for you.

Step three, our final approvals. The hope is that this is your easiest step, but there are a lot of gotchas that pop up here. First, is the person or team truly knowledgeable about the campaign from the beginning? As you remember, identifying those key stakeholders at kickoff is really beneficial, and this is why. If it is an executive on your team or it is being sent to a queue of legal requests, just having those people already familiar with what this campaign is, what the goals are, and what they are actually reviewing is only going to make this go smoother. Versus a request hitting their desk, they're completely unfamiliar with it, and you are then having to bring them up to speed, hopefully answering all of their questions in a timely manner and then expecting them to sign off on something. The earlier that we can fill that knowledge gap, the better.

What area are they actually approving? By the time you're getting to final approvals, I do not expect this email or campaign to land on someone's desk and for them to be combing copy to find a missing comma. At this point, they are truly saying, "Yes, this fits the overall goal or idea of the campaign. It serves it well. It looks great. It meets the legal criteria. We're not promising something that we shouldn't be." At that point, they can give it a thumbs-up for launch.

One other thing to keep in mind here is timelines. Legal teams sometimes take forever to review, and executives are really busy, often traveling. Just make sure it's on their radar and give them a deadline. If that works within your organization, giving them a deadline for that final approval is key to ensuring you get it in a timely manner. My pro tip here is to give those people a deadline that is before your go-live date. If it is an individual, give them a day or two at a minimum. If you know this has to get sent through legal and your legal team typically takes a week or two, get it to them early and let them know a date that is prior to your go-live date. Just in case there are delays or they come back with something that needs fixing, there's nothing like saying, "Hey, we need your approval on a Thursday so this can launch on Friday," and then they give you a revision on Thursday, and you're re-entering this feedback, revision, feedback cycle.

In summary, five tips to enhance and optimize your revision and feedback cycle. Number one: remember that an efficient revision process truly starts at the time of kickoff. Number two: give everyone who is going to need to review a heads-up so they can plan accordingly. Number three: consolidate all of your feedback into a single document and limit the amount of time people have to review so we can keep things moving forward quickly. Number four: once revisions are made, expect those who requested the changes to confirm that it now looks good and is up to par. Number five: make sure that any and all final approvers, especially executives or legal teams, are on deck, understand the desired outcome of the campaign, and are ready for a timely turnaround prior to launch.

Hopefully, three simple ways to optimize your overall campaign process to streamline, get things documented in one source of truth, and make sure everybody is on the same page so the process is as smooth as possible, and you can push your campaigns live. Thanks!