Online Ad Proofing for the Uninitiated

As an advertising agency, building successful campaigns is your bread and butter—but getting approval for everything isn’t easy. There are a lot of parts to ad creative: the copy, size, overall message, the images and graphics, and, most importantly, the call to action and contact info.

Each of these parts is integral to a successful ad campaign, and your clients want every aspect to be the best it can be. During the ad proofing process, that care can lead to a very in-depth and time-consuming course. This is only compounded when your proofing process is out-of-date and hindering the entire system.

Luckily, with the business world the way it is today, there are lots of ways to improve your ad proofing process—and one of them is upgrading to proofing software. Software such as Ashore can help you build a straightforward and effective proofing system that gets you approvals faster with better feedback throughout.

First, you need to consider your goals for the process and what features will help achieve them.

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What Are Your Ad Proofing Goals?

Depending on your current ad proofing process, you may be prioritizing different goals when thinking about improving or moving to an entirely new system. Your company may desire:

• A more organized process
• A quicker decision
• More quality feedback than you’re currently receiving

There are features that can help with each of those goals.

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An Organized Process

Proof Archive

While not part of the active sending and receiving process, the convenience of a well-organized proof archive cannot be overstated. You can easily stay on top of all proofs sent out by your team—especially helpful when someone takes a vacation.

Use filters to find proofs that have been approved (and need to be implemented) or not approved (requiring a new revision). For more personalized storage, use tags to sort proofs by campaign, company, or any other system that works for you.

Email Tracking

Nothing derails your ad proofing process like realizing you “sent” the email to the customer a week ago, only to discover it never actually sent. With Ashore’s handy email tracking, you can see the status of every email right on the proof timeline—whether it failed to send, sent, or was opened.

The proof timeline also provides a copy of each email you send, so you can review exactly what was said.

BCC

Keeping everyone on your team up-to-date can take too much time and energy, especially when new comments are popping up every few minutes. With Ashore, you can add other users to your workflow under a BCC so they’ll receive the same updates you do—saving time and effort.

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Better Feedback

Stacked Versions

If your approvers remember exactly what version one looked like and what they said, please share your secrets. Most people won’t dig through their email to find old comments and files. This leads to repeated questions like:

• “Did we change this color?”
• “What if we moved this to the left corner?” (where it was last version)

Ashore’s stacked versions make it easy for approvers to flip between old and new versions and see their previous comments, cutting down on redundant feedback.

Contextualized Comments

When comments are floating in email chains with no visual reference, matching them to the right part of the proof is a guessing game. Ashore’s contextualized comments solve this problem by placing notes directly on the proof, whether as plain text, a box, or an arrow—so reviewers can point out exactly what they’re referring to.

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Quick Decisions

Automated Reminders

An ad campaign may be a high priority for reviewers, but it doesn’t always stay at the top of their to-do list. Automated reminders keep proofs top-of-mind by sending notifications at customized intervals. The reminders stop once a decision is made.

Link-Sharing

Waiting for a reviewer to check their email isn’t always an option. Link-sharing lets you send the proof through Slack, Google Hangouts, text, or any other channel. Fewer steps mean fewer excuses not to review.

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The Biggest Goal: Approval

There’s no single feature that guarantees approval. Instead, it’s all of these tools working together to create an ad proofing process that helps you get approval faster. With Ashore’s customizable workflows, you can gain insights into metrics like:

• Average number of revisions before approval
• Average reminders needed to get a decision

The best part? All of these features are included in Ashore’s free account—so you can start improving your ad proofing process today.

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