The cut went out on Monday with a note asking for feedback by Thursday. It’s now the following Tuesday.
The client opened the link once, there are no comments, and the delivery date in the contract hasn’t moved. Your editor keeps asking whether it’s safe to start on the color.
Most stalled approvals have an ordinary cause that you can deal with before the video goes out. The rest is following up at the right moments and having agreed, in writing, on what a late answer does to the schedule.
How many rounds a project needs is a separate problem, covered in how to stop endless revision rounds. This post is about the wait between them.
In short
- Most stalled approvals have an ordinary cause: no clear ask, too many people in the chain, a lost link or bad timing.
- Before you send, give a date tied to something the client cares about, name one approver and say what the round is for.
- Follow up the morning after the date, again two working days later with options, and then call.
- Put a feedback window, a day-for-day rule and a named approver in the contract.
- Release the edit slot when the date passes, and keep a record of how long each client takes.
Why clients go quiet
Silence rarely means the client is ignoring you. More often they don’t know what you need from them.
“Here’s v2, let me know what you think” doesn’t say whether this is the moment to question the structure or just to catch typos, and it gives no date, so it’s easy to put off.
Sometimes too many people have to see it. The marketing coordinator who got the link is waiting for the brand manager, who is waiting for legal to check a claim in the voiceover, and nobody on that chain thinks the delay is theirs.
Or your contact is waiting on their boss, who only needs to see the 20 seconds that changed and hasn’t been asked yet.
The link can also get lost in an email thread with eleven replies or in a WhatsApp group. Plenty of people won’t ask you to resend it, because asking feels like admitting they forgot.
And then there’s timing. A cut that lands on a Friday afternoon or in the week of the client’s product launch will sit there however good it is.
Before you send, make the answer easy to give
The checklist in how to share a video with clients for review covers the message itself. A few of its points decide how long you’ll wait.
Put a date on the feedback and tie it to something the client cares about. “Notes by Thursday so the final goes out on Monday” gives them a reason. “Notes by Thursday” on its own sounds like your preference.
Agree on one approver per video before the first cut. Others can comment, but one person on the client side says “approved”, and that’s who you follow up with. If legal or a director has to sign off, find out at the kickoff and put their time in the schedule.
Say what this round is for. A client asked to judge structure and pacing can answer after one viewing. A client who thinks they’re approving story, color, music and every lower third at once will wait for a free hour, which might be next week.
And check their calendar: if the launch is on Wednesday, don’t ask for notes on Tuesday.
How to follow up without nagging
Decide the cadence before the date passes, so you’re not wondering each morning whether it’s too soon to write.
Before the feedback date, say nothing, unless the link hasn’t been opened at all. If the access history shows nobody watched it two days in, a one-line “did the link get through?” is fair, and sometimes it’s the whole problem.
- The morning after the date, send the first follow-up. Keep it short, paste the link again so nobody has to dig for it, and say what the delay does to the delivery.
- Two working days later, send the second one and offer options instead of asking again.
- After that, pick up the phone. A third email in the same thread rarely gets read, and a two-minute call usually gets you the real reason.
A first follow-up you can adapt:
Hi Ana, a quick one about the launch video. We’d planned on your notes for v2 by yesterday so the final could go out on Monday. Here’s the link again: [link]
If it helps, send the big things today and the small ones tomorrow. And if Monday no longer works on your side, tell me and I’ll rework the schedule.
And the second, once Monday has come and gone:
Hi Ana, we still don’t have notes on v2, so the final didn’t go out on Monday as planned. If your notes come in by Wednesday, we can deliver on Friday. Or I can send the cut straight to Marcos, if he’s the one who needs to see it. Which works better for you?
Both say what the delay changes and give the client one easy thing to do.
What to put in the contract
Follow-ups go down better when the rules were agreed before anyone was late, so start with a feedback window per round, for example three business days from the day each version is sent, with notes that arrive later going into the next round.
Then say what a missed window does to the schedule. The fairest rule is day for day, where each day of delay moves the delivery by a day, plus a line saying the new date depends on the team’s availability, since the edit slot you held will have gone to another job.
Cover the long silence too. After a set period with no response, say three weeks, the project goes on hold and restarting means a new schedule and possibly a fee.
Some contracts treat silence after the window as approval. It’s a strong clause, and most of its value comes from both sides reading it at the start.
Name the approver, in the contract or the kickoff email. And tie the last payment to the final version being sent, or to a fixed number of days after it, so a client who goes quiet isn’t also holding your invoice. Have whoever writes your contracts check the wording.
Protect the team’s schedule while you wait
Give every video two dates, the one promised to the client and an internal one a few days earlier, and mark the card as waiting on the client while the cut is with them, so those days don’t count against the editor.
When the feedback date passes, release the edit slot. The editor moves to the next job, and late notes go into the next free slot. Say so in the first follow-up, so the new delivery date isn’t a surprise.
Keep a record of how long each client takes to answer, from the day a version is sent to the day you get approval or notes.
After a few projects you’ll know that one client answers within a day and another takes a week, and the next schedule you send the slow one should budget a week per round.
How this works in RecReview
In RecReview, sending a version to the client from the review page marks the task as waiting on the client.
With the ready-made workflow presets, that also pauses the internal deadline until the client approves or asks for changes, so the days with the client don’t eat your buffer.
The date promised to the client never moves on its own, and while the clock is paused the task stays out of the overdue count and the Overdue filter.
Clients with several videos see everything waiting for their review on the home page of their client portal, so the email thread isn’t the only way back to the link.
RecReview also measures how long each client takes to approve or ask for changes after receiving a version.
When a wait runs well past what that client usually takes, the person assigned to the task and the workspace owners and admins get a notification, and Home lists the task as waiting on the client.
From that row you can send the client’s main contact a short email saying the video is waiting for their review. It goes out only after you confirm, up to three times and at least 20 hours apart, and nothing is ever sent to the client automatically.
In Metrics, a response time ranking puts your slowest clients at the top, next to the studio average. The task panel shows a projected delivery that adds this client’s usual review time to your internal deadline, in amber when it lands after the date you promised.
