Are you prepared for a marketing compliance audit?

Can you say confidently that your sign-off process adheres to your marketing compliance strategy?

Do you know how you went from version 1 to version 10, and exactly what occurred in-between? Who was involved, when a proof was viewed, whether a change that was asked for was actually made? Who were the pair of eyes across the material? Did the right teams of people get involved at the right times? Were the external parties asked to be accountable for their contributions to the marketing compliance piece?

Maintaining a digital trail that shows how a brand material was circulated and finally approved is essential for marketing teams in all sectors (not just banking, pharmaceutical, healthcare, insurance and government). As a manager of the marketing process, you need to look to lift the burden that compliance brings to your team, and to make sure everything still ticks the audit trail boxes, but with the automation and ease your team needs.

Here’s our list of essentials for marketing compliance

1. Who needs access to what.

You must show that only the right people have access to your marketing material – that no work is leaked inadvertently, or on purpose. PageProof’s fully encrypted service ensures only the right people can decrypt and view the proof, satisfying the most rigid of security checks with its patented, unique approach to data security in the MarTech arena.

2. Clear commenting and actions.

Vague comments can be confusing and misunderstood. Your proof must be clearly marked up and comprehended by all those involved. There also must be a clear view of what was asked for and ignored, was marked for action, and what was completed and changed. Ask yourself how easily this is seen between versions of the file? And how quickly can you give this information to your auditor?

With PageProof, our smart compare does all the hard work of ‘spot the difference’ for you, and comments are clearly marked as ignore, to-do and done.

3. Decisions that are accountable.

Of course, not only who said what on a proof is important, but who gave what decision and when is just as essential. PageProof’s audit log is accessible on all our plans and clearly shows a timeline of when events on the proof occurred, and because adding external parties onto a proof is just as simple as adding their email address, you can quickly give an auditor access to view the proof, all its versions and audit trail from start to finish along with the decision everyone involved gave.

4. When is just as important as who.

A question that is key to compliance is ‘when did a person or team become involved’ in the signoff process. This needs to be controlled down to versions and often before or after another team has completed their review. In other words, workflows are essential in ensuring that not only is feedback gathered in a timely manner, but in a precise order.

Example: the sales team need to have their say before marketing, but only at the last stage is legal involved to sign off on the small print.

Be prepared with PageProof

Compliance might seem like a scary thing to put in place, but PageProof ticks all the boxes for a compliance audit (and more) with ease. Make sure you’re prepared and chat with one of our team today about how our online proofing platform can meet, and exceed your organization’s needs.