Congratulations! You’ve just finished (yet another) fabulous piece of content, and it’s ready to be sent for final review and approval. The question now is how do you keep the excitement and momentum going so that you get actionable feedback quickly?
The answer is review tiers. By organizing your review route into functional tiers you can make sure the right reviewers are brought in at the right time. This increases the efficiency and effectiveness of your review. The beauty of review routes in inMotion ignite is how flexible they are – you can mix and match route groups, tiers, and rules to your heart’s content. Get a head start on creating your routes with these customer-inspired route tiers!
1. The “Any Idea Is A Good Idea” tier
What it’s best for: Brainstorming
When you’re looking for a way to brainstorm ideas and get quick feedback, we recommend keeping your route simple with one tier and one group. This approach is particularly helpful when brainstorming on a rough draft strategy or direction with your direct team. You’ll find the insights provided via review are often times better thought out and more helpful than if you were to all get on a conference call together!
2. The “Gatekeeper” tier
What it’s best for: Working with Clients
When you want to make sure your work is on the right track or is far enough along to share outside of your team, it can help to create an internal review or “gatekeeper” tier. That way your work only makes its way to clients or external reviewers after being “Approved As Is.”
3. The “Decision Maker” tier
What it’s best for: Rush Projects
When you want to make sure everyone feels “heard,” but only one person’s opinion really matters, review groups make all the difference. Make sure your decision makers are in the “All Essential” group and place others in “Optional.” That way the review won’t progress until you get the key decision maker’s sign off.
4. The “Compliance Alliance” tier
What it’s best for: Checking the Fine Print
Sometimes all you need is a single person in legal or one of the members of your compliance team to provide their feedback to ensure you have dotted your i’s and crossed your t’s. In these cases, we recommend creating a “Some Essential” group that allows you to invite multiple members of a team to provide feedback, but ensures the proof route will progress as soon as you get one person to sign off.
5. The “Department Dance” tier
What it’s best for: Navigating Internal Politics
When you want to ensure multiple departments are invited for sign-off, but are worried about the potential bottlenecks that may ensue, you can take the previous tier one step further. Create a “Some Essential” group for every department you need buy-in from! If you require only one member of each department to sign-off, you’ve covered your bases without slowing your approval process down.
6. “Godfather” or “Godmother” tier
What it’s best for: Ensuring Actionable Feedback
Nothing is more important than making sure your reviewer feedback is clear and actionable. When you need someone to tell you to “leave the gun, take the cannoli,” we recommend creating one last tier with a single reviewer in it. Choose someone who can provide direction when a comment thread seems open to interpretation and has the ability to hide comments that should be ignored.
Get out of reply-all email jail and begin using dynamic, automated proof routes to secure the feedback you need, in the order you need it, when you need it. And bonus points – once you find a proof route that works well, you can easily turn it into a published template for future use!
Brittany Pais is the Director of Customer Experience at inMotionNow. With a background in digital marketing, project management, and product management, Brittany is off-the-charts passionate about the creation and support of phenomenal customer experiences.