Deliver with Confidence: Approval Workflows Across Adobe Journey Optimizer

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Introduction
Modern marketing demands speed—but not at the cost of accuracy, brand integrity, or compliance. Whether you’re creating journeys, sending policy updates, or launching cross-channel campaigns, every message matters. That’s why having a structured way to review and approve assets before they go live is essential.

Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO) offers a powerful solution through Approval Workflows, ensuring that every customer experience is reviewed, approved, and auditable—not just for marketing, but across all AJO use cases.

In this blog, we’ll walk through a real-world enterprise use case, explore how Approval Workflows solve governance challenges, and share practical steps and tips for making the most of this feature.

The Challenge: Disjointed Reviews, Risk of Error, and Compliance Delays

A global insurance provider faced a recurring bottleneck: every marketing message and policy update had to be reviewed by Legal and Compliance before it could be activated. The process was time-consuming, error-prone, and lacked visibility.

Key challenges:

• Manual approvals via email or Slack with no audit trail

• Delays due to unclear reviewer roles and responsibilities

• Frequent rework and back-and-forth between teams

• Lack of control over unauthorized message sends

• Time-to-market for important policy updates was getting affected

The Solution: Approval Workflows in Adobe Journey Optimizer

To bring structure, speed, and compliance into their operations, the insurance provider adopted the Approval Workflow feature within AJO.

How to Use the Approval Workflow in AJO

Whether you're building a journey, composing a transactional message, or deploying an operational alert, the approval process is simple and efficient:

1. Create your journey or campaign in AJO.

2. Click “Submit for approval” from the top-right dropdown menu.

3. Select approvers from your team.

4. Approvers receive notifications, and can review, comment, approve, or reject.

5. Once all approvals are in, you’re ready to activate the asset.

You can track approval status, history, and comments directly from the journey or campiagn view.

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Customer Impact: Marketing with Confidence

What started as a compliance safeguard has evolved into a strategic collaboration tool adopted by some of the world’s leading organizations.

Top companies uses Adobe Journey Optimizer’s Approval Workflows to streamline internal governance, ensure messaging compliance, and accelerate time-to-market—without compromising on control or brand integrity.

Let’s look again at the global insurance provider’s story:

Customer: A global insurance provider
Challenge: Needed to send timely policy updates and offers to segmented customers, but every message required approval from Legal and Compliance—often leading to delays or inconsistencies.

How Approval Workflow helped:

• The marketing manager builds the journey and drafts the message.

• She submits it using the “Submit for approval” option in AJO.

• Legal and Compliance approvers are automatically notified.

• Approvers review and provide feedback or approve directly in-platform.

• Once approved, the system unlocks activation—ensuring legal checks are complete and no unauthorized send happens.

Whether you're a regulated bank, a global payments leader, or a high-compliance enterprise, Approval Workflows offer a scalable framework to reduce risk and improve delivery confidence.

Tips for Maximizing Approval Workflow

To make the most of the Approval Workflow and minimize delays:

• Set clear approver roles: Assign appropriate owners for Content, Legal, Compliance, and Branding.

• Use comments effectively: Encourage specific feedback within AJO to avoid email threads.

• Leverage notifications: Keep everyone aligned and aware of pending approvals.

• Define internal SLAs: Set expectations for review timelines to keep things moving.

• Use Approval Policies: Automate rules to enforce mandatory approvers or approval sequences.

Learn how to set up Approval Policies to streamline governance across the organization.

Result: Structured Reviews, Faster Launches, and Zero Compliance Misses

The insurance provider’s adoption of AJO’s Approval Workflow transformed their go-to-market efficiency. Teams now move faster, with full compliance confidence, and have reduced time wasted in fragmented review cycles.

Key benefits achieved:

• Faster turnaround

• No unauthorized or unreviewed sends

• All approval activity logged and traceable

• Better collaboration across departments

Reference Links

Explore more on Approval Workflows in Adobe Journey Optimizer:

• Overview of Approval Workflow

• Creating Approval Policies

• Submitting a Journey or Message for Approval

• Review and Approve Requests