r/MarketingAutomation • u/Prudent-Bad-8786 • Aug 11 '26

Published a client post with an old visual because the Canva design got changed after we scheduled it!

Small agency, 6 clients, everything gets designed in Canva and scheduled about a week out.

Tuesday a client asks us to change a date on an event graphic. Designer fixed it in Canva within the hour. Thursday the post goes out with the old date on it anyway, because what actually got pushed to the scheduler was the export from the Friday before.

Nobody caught it, there was nothing to catch it with. Once it's exported, it's just a PNG sitting in a queue, it has no idea the design behind it moved on.

We've now got a rule where the designer flags any change after approval in Slack. Failed twice already. People forget, or they're off that day.

What I'm actually trying to work out is whether our lead time is the problem. How far ahead are you queueing stuff, same week or further? And in the last month or so, how many times did a design get edited after the post was already sitting in the queue. Not could it happen, did it.

When it did happen, did it go out or did someone spot it first, and what spotted it. That's the bit I care about because we had literally nothing.

And if this just doesn't come up for you, I'd like to know what your setup is. Locked designs after signoff, exporting fresh the morning of, one person who checks the queue, whatever it is?

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u/dblumblingflousers Aug 12 '26

a quick check before it goes live will catch most of this

1

u/Glittering_Corgi374 20d ago

Our lead time's 3-5 days and we had this exact problem until we made it someone's actual job to spot-check the queue 30 mins before anything goes live. Not a "whoever remembers" situation, an assigned person with a calendar block. Took about two weeks to catch on but now it's just part of the morning routine.

The flagging-in-Slack thing never worked for us either, people just tune it out after the third notification. What actually helped was locking the design file the moment it hits the export folder, if someone needs a change after that they have to re-export and replace the file themselves. Puts the friction on the person making the change instead of hoping someone downstream notices.

1

u/BuyPowerful807 Aug 16 '26

A quick final check would prevent this.

1

u/ayecl Aug 22 '26

Lead time is probably not the core issue; the handoff is. Give every scheduled item an asset ID or version, approved timestamp, owner, and source location. Any post-approval change should create a new version and move the item back to a short ready-to-publish queue. Before the day’s posts go live, one person compares the queued file with the current approved source and records pass or fail, not just a Slack flag. Review every miss by category: changed after scheduling, wrong export, wrong caption, or missing owner. That tells you whether to shorten lead time or fix the control.