Marketing teams have traditionally relied on email and/or hardcopy printouts to manage review and approval of marketing content. Those methods are no longer appropriate in an environment with increasing volumes of content, multiple stakeholders (internal and external), shrinking timeframes and within rigorous compliance frameworks. Email simply doesn't scale.

We have therefore focused on streamlining, and automating where possible, the actions and processes related to providing feedback in the creative process. Combining our markup tools with our intuitive commenting capabilities results in more clarity and context, which drives creative assets being delivered faster with higher quality.

What is Online Proofing?

Online proofing software, often synonymous with “review and approval software”, allows marketers to more easily share and collect feedback. They are positioned as improvements over traditional ad-hoc methods such as email, printouts or hallway conversations. The primary advantage that online proofing has over those traditional methods is the centralization of feedback in a single location and the increased precision/effectiveness of feedback.

It all starts with a piece of content - a design file, a PDF, web page, an image, etc. Files are uploaded to a secure server and then shared with a specific set of individuals. Settings can be leveraged to secure the proof to only known and authenticated reviewers.  When setting up the review group, the proof owner can also identify those team members with decision-making roles so that decisions can be documented - a fundamental requirement for pushing projects to next steps.    

Once a proof has been created and the reviewers identified, team members are notified and are able to access the proof via their browser.  This ensures that all team members are reviewing the same content in the same context; there are no risks of file types not being compatible, resolutions causing issues or file access excluding team members.   

From there, reviewers can collaborate within the content itself, providing comments, replies to comments and marking up specific areas of the content for precise and actionable feedback. It’s this precision of feedback which helps cut down on miscommunication, time loss and even rework due to missed feedback.  

Notifications can be set to alert team members of new comments being made, as well as any decisions made on a proof.

From there, a new version can be created and compared - down to the pixel level - to previous versions, so that team members can verify that required changes were made.