Message Approval provides a method of communication among your team to ensure a message is complete and ready to send to contacts. The message approval session provides a way to share notes and feedback about an email send.
⚠️ Using the message approval feature removes the ability to create recurring sends on a weekly or monthly cadence.
Setting Up the Approvers
Approvers are the people who give the final confirmation that a message is confirmed and ready to send. Approvers can also deny approval and provide feedback for improvement. Before you can begin you must select who is an approver.
💡 Approvers must have a Listrak account and access to the list where approval messages will be scheduled.
Navigate to Settings > Email Settings List Settings.
Navigate to the message approval section.
Toggle On the Require approval for all sends and conversations?
Select your designated approvers using a checkbox next to their usernames.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Commit Changes.
The Approval Process
When a user is creating an email that requires approval, the message must be one-time send scheduled for a future date.
⚠️ The immediate send and recurring options are grayed out on the authoring page.
When the message is ready to be submitted to the approver, the non-approver can add notes to the submission in the notes area.
The notes will be shown as part of the notification email sent to approvers and in the message approval history. The Schedule to Send button is replaced with a Submit for Approval button.
Submitting a Message for Approval
Click the Submit for Approval button and you'll be taken to the confirmation screen. The confirmation screen will include the Branding and Authentication Audit and the MultiPass sections.
Add approval notes as needed in the Notes section. These will be sent to the approver in the notification.
Click the Submit for Approval button on the confirmation screen. A confirmation message will appear.
Messages pending approval will be shown with the Pending Approval icon. If edits to the message are required before it has been approved, click on the subject line to be taken back to the authoring page. After making the changes, the message will need to be resubmitted for approval. That is also the process if the scheduled date or time needs to be changed.
As a message goes through the approval process, a history is kept showing the notes and approval actions that have been taken. The history is displayed in the notification emails and under the Notes section of the authoring page.
Approving a Message
When a message is submitted for approval, a notification email is sent to all the approver(s) chosen. The notification email will display the approval history and notes, as well as a preview of the message rendered with personalized content where appropriate. If the approver is not actually subscribed to the list, default content would be shown.
Click the approval link to log into Listrak to approve the message.
Make edits to the message as needed. You can also add comments in the notes section for the author or non-approver to see.
Click Approve Message (or Deny Message).
Upon approval or denial, the non-approver requesting approval will receive a notification message with the approver's actions and any notes. If a MultiPass message was requested, it will be created once the original message has been approved.
💡 Once a message has been approved, it can be subsequently denied when it is in the scheduled state. If a MultiPass was enabled for an approved message, and the parent message is subsequently denied after the MultiPass was created, the MuiltiPass message will be deleted from the system. Also, if a non-approver modifies an approved message with a MultiPass message and resubmits for approval, the MultiPass will be deleted. If a message in the scheduled state is modified by a non-approver, it will revert back to the pending approval state and the approval process will continue.