If you’ve ever worked on content at a marketing or social media agency (or with any cross-functional marketing team for that matter) you already know that the content workflow is never as simple as “we create, clients approve.”
Sometimes the account manager needs to approve first.
Sometimes the creative director wants a final look.
Sometimes legal needs to sign off before anything leaves the building.
And yes… sometimes a client is waiting on all of that.
Over time, we realized that Gain’s old Approver role didn’t reflect this reality. It treated “approving” as a type of user when in real life, it’s an action that many different kinds of stakeholders perform during the content process.
So today, we’re excited to introduce a clearer, more flexible way to manage roles in Gain, designed around how teams actually collaborate.
Why we made this change
As agencies and teams grew on Gain, we heard a consistent message:
“We need clearer separation between our internal team and our clients, but they both need to approve content.”
Our old structure didn’t quite support that.
- The Approver role grouped internal and external reviewers together.
- It didn’t reflect the fact that internal stakeholders often play a critical approval role.
- And it created challenges when trying to understand who belonged where in the workflow.
So we rethought the entire model, starting from a simple realization:
Approving content isn’t a role; it’s part of the collaboration process.
And anyone throughout that process should be able to do it.
With this philosophy, we created two role groups that reflect who someone is to your organization, not just what they can do.
Meet the new model: Team Members and Clients
🌟 Team Members
Team Members are your internal collaborators: the strategists, creators, managers, designers, publishers, and internal stakeholders who keep campaigns moving.
And here’s the key shift:
Anyone on your internal team can now approve content.
Yes, even Contributors.
This change reflects what we’ve seen in countless real workflows: internal approval often happens in multiple layers before content ever reaches a client. Now, Gain supports that naturally without forcing you to label someone as an “Approver.”
Here’s a quick look at Team Member roles:
- Contributors – Create/edit content, send to approval, and now approve content too.
- Publishers – Everything Contributors can do, plus schedule and publish social posts.
- Admins – Full access to workspaces, publishing, and channel connections.
Internal collaboration stays flexible, and clearly internal.
🤝 Clients
“Approver” never quite captured what external stakeholders really are: Clients.
Now the naming finally matches the relationship.
Clients can:
- Receive content for review
- Request changes
- Approve or reject items
- View everything assigned to them on their approval calendar
But the biggest improvement?
🎉 Clients can now connect and reconnect their own social channels.
This has been one of the most-requested features from agencies. No more navigating logins, hosting screen-share sessions, or chasing down the one person who has all the correct permissions in Meta’s Business Manager. Clients can connect their own channels to Gain and your team can better spend their time doing what they do best: creating and publishing.
The result?
New client onboarding becomes easier and your team has more time for what you actually hired them to do.
And don’t worry if you’re happy with your current setup; we won’t tell your clients! This feature is optional and you can still connect and reconnect channels the same way you do today. You can turn it on and off for any Clients you want. It’s up to you.
🤔 But what if everyone in our workflow is internal?
Our new Team Member/Client model aligns perfectly with the majority of Gain users: agency teams who manage multiple external clients. But for some of you, your clients may be internal people. Let’s say, for example, that you’re part of a brand team with in-house creatives. In that case, you can assign your internal stakeholders the Client role. That way, everybody’s role in the content approval workflow will be reflected in Gain.
Under the hood: How the transition works
To make things seamless:
- All Gain users with the old Approver role have been transitioned to Clients.
- Team Members who were also Approvers in other workspaces are now Contributors in those workspaces.
- And if someone has access to multiple accounts, they can still be a Client in one account and a Team Member in another.
You can review or adjust all roles at any time under People in Account.
What this means for your workflow
This update isn’t just about renaming roles; it’s about reflecting the true rhythm of content collaboration.
Teams review internally.
Clients review externally.
And sometimes those internal layers matter just as much (or more!) than the final external approval.
Now Gain supports that complexity, without making it feel complex.
The goal is simple:
A more intuitive, more accurate model that supports the real way teams create content together.
Looking ahead
This is a first step. The new role system sets the foundation for future improvements to workflows, permissions, and collaboration inside Gain.
Thank you for growing with us and for inspiring changes that genuinely improve the way content teams work! 🚀
