Investment firms risk losing momentum around new product launches as lengthy marketing approval processes delay the distribution of promotional material, according to Red Oak, a RegTech provider focused on compliance review and content distribution.

The company spoke with sales and marketing teams at the Money Management Institute (MMI) Conference in Boston, where slow content approvals emerged as a recurring frustration. Teams reported that getting marketing material approved for a new product can take anywhere from a few days to more than a week, leaving firms unable to promote products promptly after launch.

In some cases, a product may already have been available for a week before the promotional material needed to support it is ready to send to partners. By that point, the launch may have lost its initial momentum, limiting sales teams’ ability to capitalise on the product’s arrival.

Sales teams want approved content to reach their distribution partners on the day a product launches. However, achieving this depends on how firms organise their compliance review processes, with approaches varying across the investment industry.

Some firms manage approvals through email, Outlook and SharePoint. While these tools may be practical for everyday communication, keeping materials and decisions across multiple channels can make it difficult to maintain a single source of truth. This can create challenges for teams trying to track decisions and ensure content has passed the appropriate checks.

Other firms rely on external reviewers to assess marketing materials, with some reporting waits of a week or longer. When content sits in a review queue, sales and marketing teams have limited ability to accelerate its release, even when a product is already available.

Source link