Picture this: It's Sarah's third week as a marketing coordinator at a major bank. She's just finished designing a digital banner ad for a new home loan product, and now she needs to get it approved. She opens her email, attaches the file, and pauses. Who needs to see this? She checks her notebook where she scribbled down some names during onboarding. Creative director... brand manager... and wasn't there someone in compliance she's supposed to CC? She types in a few email addresses, writes "Please review and approve," and hits send, hoping she hasn't forgotten anyone critical.
Two days later, her manager pulls her aside. The banner has been reviewed by the marketing team, but it never reached legal and regulatory compliance - critical step for any financial services advertising. Worse, no one realised it was missing from the approval chain until the campaign was supposed to launch. Now there's a scramble to track down the compliance team, the launch is delayed, stakeholders are frustrated, and Sarah feels the weight of a mistake she didn't even know she was making.
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The Email Approval Chaos
For many marketing teams—even in large, sophisticated financial institutions—this scenario plays out daily. Approvals happen through a patchwork of emails, Slack messages, Jira comments, shared drives, and verbal confirmations in hallway conversations. There's no clear record of who approved what, when they approved it, or whether all the necessary stakeholders even saw the content.
Team members maintain their own lists of who needs to review different types of content. Someone updates a spreadsheet. Another person has a folder of "approval email templates" they copy and paste from. A third keeps detailed notes in their diary about which approval path to follow for different asset types.
It works... until it doesn't. Until someone's on leave and no one knows who should be covering their approvals. Until a new regulatory requirement means certain assets need an additional sign-off that half the team doesn't know about yet. Until a junior team member simply doesn't realise that home loan advertising requires ASIC compliance review.
Learn more about the common challenges of manual approval processes
The Hidden Complexity of Modern Marketing Operations
Marketing teams in financial services today juggle an extraordinary variety of projects and assets—each with its own set of requirements, stakeholders, and approval paths. A simple social media post about branch opening hours might only need a quick review from the social team and brand manager. But a Product Disclosure Statement or credit card terms and conditions? That requires sign-off from legal, compliance, regulatory affairs, and senior leadership.
Consider the different journeys these assets must take:
A digital advertisement for a savings account might need review from the creative team, brand guardians, and ASIC compliance—but skip the credit assessment team entirely.
A new brand asset or branch signage refresh requires approval from brand strategy, the executive team, and potentially external agency partners—but doesn't need to involve product managers or state-based regulatory teams.
A Product Disclosure Statement or Financial Services Guide must pass through regulatory compliance, legal review, risk management, and quality assurance—a completely different set of stakeholders than most marketing materials.
For compliance-heavy industries like banking, superannuation, or insurance, getting the wrong people to review content isn't just inefficient—it's a risk. Missing a required approval could mean non-compliance with ASIC regulations, brand inconsistencies reaching customers, or legal exposure. And getting the right people involved at the right stage of the process? That's the challenge that keeps operations managers up at night.
Enter: Purpose-Built Approval Workflow Software
This is where dedicated approval workflow software like Admation transforms the entire operation. Instead of relying on institutional knowledge, email chains, and hope, organisations can build structured, repeatable approval processes that ensure the right people review the right content every single time.
At the heart of Admation's system are Approval Templates—predefined workflow structures that map out exactly who needs to approve different types of content, in what order, and with what permissions. Think of them as digital blueprints for your approval processes.
For example, your "Financial Product Advertising - Retail Banking" template might specify:
- Creative review by the senior designer
- Brand compliance check by the brand team
- Legal review for claims and disclaimers
- ASIC regulatory compliance sign-off
- Final approval by the marketing director
Once this template is set up, anyone submitting a home loan advertisement simply selects this template, and the system automatically routes the asset through each stage, notifying the right people at the right time, tracking every approval and comment, and creating a complete audit trail.
No more forgotten stakeholders. No more "I thought you were sending it to legal." No more hunting through email chains to find out who approved what and when.
Discover how to manage compliance with Admation's approval workflows
But Which Template Do I Use?
Here's where even organisations using approval software can face a challenge. As your library of approval templates grows to cover all your different content types, campaigns, and compliance requirements, team members—particularly new hires—can still feel overwhelmed.
Looking at a list of seventeen different approval templates isn't much better than trying to remember seventeen different email distribution lists.
This is where Admation's latest enhancement changes the game entirely.
Intelligent Approval Template Recommendations
Admation's latest release introduces Approval Template Recommendations based on submission rules—a feature that transforms template selection from a guessing game into a guided experience.
Instead of presenting users with an overwhelming list of options and asking them to choose, the system now actively guides them to the right choice. Here's how it works:
When you submit an asset for approval, Admation automatically analyses the details of your submission—what type of deliverable it is, which campaign it belongs to, which markets it targets, the tags you've applied, and even your department and role within the organisation.
Then, behind the scenes, the system matches these details against predefined recommendation rules that administrators have set up on each approval template. Templates that align with your submission rise to the top of the list, clearly flagged as "Recommended."
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How It Works in Practice
Let's return to Sarah's scenario, but this time with Admation in place:
Sarah has just completed that digital banner ad for the home loan product. Instead of composing an email and trying to remember who to include, she logs into Admation and clicks "Submit for Approval."
She fills in the basic details: it's a digital display ad, it's part of the "Home Loan Winter Campaign," and it's tagged for the retail banking division. When she reaches the template selection screen, she notices something helpful. At the very top, highlighted as "Recommended," is "Financial Product Advertising - Retail Banking."
The system recognised that:
- The deliverable type is "Digital Display Ad"
- It's tagged with the specific home loan campaign
- Sarah's role is "Marketing Coordinator"
- The asset is assigned to multiple Australian states
All of these criteria matched the recommendation rules set by the operations team, so the right template surfaced automatically. Sarah selects it with confidence, and the banner flows smoothly through creative review, brand compliance, ASIC regulatory approval, and state-based market sign-off - exactly as intended. She can see exactly where the asset is in the approval chain at any time, and the system automatically reminds approvers when their review is due.
Meanwhile, across the building, James in the legal department is submitting a Product Disclosure Statement update. When he reaches the template selection screen, he sees "Regulatory & Compliance Review - PDS" flagged as recommended, because the system detected:
- Deliverable type: "Legal Document - PDS"
- Tags: "Regulatory," "Product Disclosure"
- Submitter department: "Legal & Compliance"
No guesswork. No delays. No missed approvals. Just the right process, applied every time, with a complete audit trail showing exactly who reviewed and approved the content.
The Templates That Rise to Meet You
Administrators can set recommendation rules based on multiple conditions:
- Deliverable Type – Is it a video, print ad, social post, or regulatory document?
- Campaign Assignment – Which product or initiative is it supporting?
- Market Assignment – Is it for NSW, VIC, QLD, or national coverage?
- Tags – Does it carry labels like "Brand," "ASIC Compliance," "External Partner," or "Product Launch"?
- Organisation – Which business unit or brand does it belong to?
- Submitter Department – Marketing, Legal, Sales, Product?
- System Role – What permissions level does the submitter have?
When one or more of these conditions align with a template's rules, that template is elevated to "Recommended" status and appears at the top of the selection list. The more criteria that match, the more confident users can be that they've found the right fit.
From Manual Chaos to Intelligent Automation
The transformation from email-based approvals to intelligent, automated workflow management delivers benefits that ripple across the entire organisation:
For teams still using manual processes: The shift from scattered emails and spreadsheets to centralised, structured workflows eliminates the chaos. Every approval is tracked, nothing falls through the cracks, and you have a complete audit trail for compliance purposes.
For organisations already using approval software: The intelligent recommendations take you to the next level, reducing the learning curve and ensuring consistency even as your approval requirements grow more complex.
For new team members and contractors: The learning curve flattens dramatically. Instead of requiring extensive training on which workflows apply when, the system becomes a guide that meets them where they are.
For compliance-heavy organisations: Risk decreases significantly. The right stakeholders see the right content at the right time, reducing the chance of compliance failures or regulatory issues. And if ASIC ever comes knocking, you have complete documentation of your approval processes.
For operations and workflow managers: Fewer questions, fewer corrections, fewer assets bouncing back because they went down the wrong approval path. You can focus on strategy instead of playing email traffic controller.
For the entire marketing team: Consistency improves. Everyone follows the same best practices, not because they've memorised seventeen different approval scenarios, but because the system helps them navigate to the correct one.
The Bigger Picture
In an era where marketing operations are more complex than ever—spanning multiple brands, regions, channels, and regulatory environments - smart automation isn't a luxury. It's essential infrastructure.
For teams still managing approvals through email and shared drives, the move to purpose-built approval software like Admation represents a fundamental shift from reactive chaos to proactive control.
And for teams already using Admation, the new Approval Template Recommendations transform what was once a point of friction and uncertainty into a seamless, guided experience. The system doesn't just store your workflows; it helps your team navigate them intelligently.
Because the best tools don't just do what you tell them - they help you know what to do in the first place.
Ready to see how admation's intelligent workflow recommendations can transform your team's approval process? Whether you're just beginning to explore marketing approval software or looking to enhance your existing Admation workflows, discover how the latest release can help ensure the right approvers review the right content, every single time.
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