Free marketing approval workflow template

An approval workflow is the ordered set of stages a piece of work passes through before it launches. The point is to make sign-off predictable: everyone knows who reviews what, in what order, and what counts as approved.

A workable template names three things for each stage: the stage itself (for example legal review, brand review, final sign-off), its approvers (by name or role), and the advance rule (whether every approver must approve or any one is enough). Add what a rejection does, which is usually return the work to production with a comment.

Written down, that is already useful. The weakness is the same as any document: it relies on people following it. A reviewer can be skipped, an order can be ignored, and the workflow becomes a suggestion.

Cohiva Campaign makes the workflow real by enforcing it on the server. Stages run in order, each can require all approvers or advance on any one, approvers can be internal users or external email-only guests, and a rejection routes the task back to production with the reviewer's comment. A client cannot mark something approved by itself, and the whole chain feeds the append-only audit and the compliance gate at go-live.

A useful way to design the workflow is to match the rule at each stage to the risk it carries. A routine social post might pass a single quick brand check, while a regulated advertisement runs through brand, then legal, then a senior sign-off, with every approver required at the legal stage. Setting the advance rule per stage means a team does not have to choose between a slow process for everything and a loose one for everything; the heavier review applies only where it is warranted, and the server enforces whichever shape the team configures.

Start a free trial of Cohiva Campaign to put a non-bypassable go-live gate behind every launch.