Given the multitude of marketing channels that creative content is being produced for today, the impact of inefficient review and approval processes are not hard to identify.

For those working in the creative production universe (agencies, internal agencies and marketing teams), facilitating the review and approval can end up like chasing a shadow: Feedback and files are shared across  many disconnected email chains, Slack channels, phone calls, and intranet sites - or worse, physical printouts. Without a set review and approval structure, each content format, from written text to graphic design to video, often dictates its own separate production workflow.

Today’s modern marketing organization relies on a wide range of technology (MarTech) to create a multi-channel approach of relevant, personalized experiences for their customers and prospects.

In the spirit of continuous innovation, our product team brought forward the release of some enhancements and new features, scheduled for January, to today. Now that’s a reason to be cheerful as we move into the final few weeks of 2018.

There’s still plenty to be thankful for today and we’re not just talking about the endless leftovers awaiting you for lunch and dinner for the next two weeks.  We’ve also got a great lineup of new additions to Ziflow to be thankful for.

As with our last few releases, we continue to solve the complex online proofing challenges that our customers have to deal with. This release includes unique enhancements throughout the product that gives busy marketers and agency teams more options to tailor Ziflow to their review and approval process.

Given the immense competitive pressures in the agency world, differentiation is key in growing a business. It used to be that track record, customer roster and deep industry expertise were “enough” to create distance between you and others competing for the business. 

This release of Ziflow Online Proofing includes additions to our automated workflow capabilities, as well as new benefits in the area of proof viewing and administration. Keep reading to learn more about how we've once again simplified the review and approval process.

There is an opportunity in your organization to accelerate creative project delivery, and it’s hiding in plain sight - your creative content production, review, and approval processes.

One of the consistent development themes across our last few releases has been the idea of customer-customization; the ability to customize the online proofing process via automated workflow, custom domains, private comments and account level settings & defaults to name a few examples.  

Published June 7, 2018. Our most recent product release - available today - continues our theme of helping marketing teams & agencies obtain feedback on all their proofs as fast and efficiently as possible by expanding the file types supported in addition to some really powerful ways to help deliver your creative projects.

A great example of a company providing innovation in this area is Dynamicard. Dynamicard is a one-stop shop for innovative direct mail assets - most notably via their very popular die-cut plastic postcard offering. They also offer technology-based services such as tracking and analytics, as well as QR codes, further differentiating their offerings.

The proliferation of digital marketing channels has rapidly increased the demand for content from marketing teams. In addition, marketing cycles have shortened dramatically. As a result,  marketers need to produce more high quality content in less time. And each piece of content needs review at least once before approval and release.

It’s release day here at Ziflow! As we’ve covered on the blog before, the first few releases since our October launch were focused on the core online proofing use cases, a well as performance and scalability.

March was a very busy month for the Ziflow product development team. Today’s release includes several new capabilities, each aimed at helping marketing teams deliver their creative projects faster and more efficiently every day. Large, distributed teams, should especially take note of today’s release as we’re making it even easier for agencies and brands to adopt online proofing as a replacement to emails, printouts and sticky-notes as a means of providing feedback on creative content.   

Let’s take a look at a few of the highlights in this month’s release.

Automated Workflow
One of the most frequently requested features since launch, Automated Workflow, delivers a great new addition for teams with multi-stage review processes. If your review and approval process spans multiple teams inside or outside of your organization, you can now create a workflow to automate the proof routing.  

As a marketing professional, what are the biggest roadblocks that you run into on a daily basis? A growing workload? A lack of review processes and actionable feedback from management? You aren’t alone.
Creative marketing teams have more on their plate than ever before. They are required to produce more work product, often with fewer resources and less internal support. As the rise of digital marketing has shifted the industry landscape, companies and their creative teams have found it difficult to adapt to the rapid changes while maintaining the processes that help to drive high-end creative work in previous decades.

We’re excited to announce that we’ve decided to disrupt the online proofing market and update our product architecture to deliver our solution via blockchain technology.