What is Relay.app and how does it work?

Quick Answer: Relay.app lets marketing teams build AI-powered workflows that pause for human review before taking action. This makes it the right tool when full automation carries too much risk, such as publishing content, sending campaigns, or approving ad spend. You set the automation, define the checkpoint, and a human confirms before anything goes live.

Marketing automation breaks trust when it moves too fast. A campaign goes out with the wrong segment. A social post publishes before legal clears it. An AI-written email hits 50,000 inboxes with a pricing error nobody caught.

Full automation is not always the answer. The smarter approach is automation with checkpoints: let the machine do the heavy lifting, then let a human confirm before anything consequential happens.

Relay.app is built for exactly this. It combines AI-powered workflow automation with what it calls "human-in-the-loop" steps, approval gates that pause a workflow until a real person signs off. This tutorial walks you through how to set that up for marketing use cases, step by step.

What Makes Relay.app Different From Standard Marketing Automation Tools?

Most automation tools, like Zapier or Make, treat workflows as linear pipelines. Trigger fires, action executes. There is no native concept of "wait for a person to review this before continuing."

Relay.app is built around three core capabilities:

• AI steps that generate content, classify data, or make decisions using models like GPT-4
• Human-in-the-loop (HITL) steps that pause the workflow and request input from a specific person or team
• Multiplayer workflows where multiple people can act on the same workflow run simultaneously

For marketing teams, this combination solves a real problem. You can automate the drafting, routing, and formatting of content while keeping a human in control of what actually gets sent, published, or spent. Teams evaluating where this fits into a wider growth stack often compare it alongside other B2B SaaS digital marketing agencies and specialists that help operationalise campaign workflows.

When Do Human Approval Steps Beat Full Automation?

Full automation works well for low-risk, high-volume, repetitive tasks where errors are cheap to fix. Human approval steps are the right call when:

• The output is public-facing. Emails, ads, social posts, and blog content carry brand and legal risk. A human should confirm before these go live.
• The decision involves spend. Approving a budget increase or launching a paid campaign should not happen without a sign-off.
• The AI output is probabilistic. AI-generated copy, segment classifications, or content scores can be wrong. A reviewer catches errors before they scale.
• Compliance or legal review applies. Regulated industries (fintech, health, legal) often require a documented approval before any customer communication goes out.
• The audience is high-value. Sending to a VIP segment, a churned customer list, or a reactivation campaign warrants extra care.

The goal is not to slow everything down. The goal is to automate the work that does not need a human, and gate the moments that do. If you're pressure-testing where these review steps matter most, it helps to benchmark risk against broader B2B SaaS benchmarks for conversion, acquisition, and campaign efficiency.

How to Build a Marketing Workflow With Human Approval Steps in Relay.app

This walkthrough uses a content approval workflow as the example: a blog post draft is generated by AI, reviewed by a marketing manager, then published once approved. The same structure applies to email campaigns, ad copy, or social content.

Step 1: Create a New Workflow in Relay.app

Log into Relay.app and click New Workflow. Give it a clear name, for example "Blog Draft Review and Publish."

Select your trigger. For a content workflow, common triggers include:

• A new row added to a Google Sheet (your content calendar)
• A form submission via Typeform or a native Relay form
• A webhook from your CMS or project management tool

Set the trigger to fire when a new content brief is submitted.

Step 2: Add an AI Step to Generate the Draft

Click the + button to add a step and select AI Action.

Configure the AI step to:

1. Pull in the content brief from the trigger (topic, target audience, word count, tone)
2. Send a prompt to GPT-4 or your preferred model
3. Return a structured draft, including a headline, body copy, and meta description

A sample prompt structure:

"You are a content writer for [Brand]. Write a [word count] blog post on [topic] for [audience]. Tone: [tone descriptor]. Format: H1, three H2 sections, and a conclusion. Output the headline, body, and a 155-character meta description."

Map the output fields so the draft text is stored as variables you can reference in later steps. If content quality is a core growth lever for your team, you may also want to review how leading B2B SaaS content marketing agencies structure editorial workflows around AI-assisted drafting.

Step 3: Add a Human Approval Step

This is the core of the workflow. Click + and select Human in the Loop (or Approval Step, depending on your Relay.app version).

Configure the step:

• Assigned to: Select the marketing manager or content lead responsible for review
• Instructions: Write clear guidance for the reviewer. Example: "Review the AI-generated draft below. Check for accuracy, tone, and brand alignment. Approve to publish or reject with feedback."
• Inputs shown: Display the draft headline, body copy, and meta description inside the approval card
• Response options: Approve / Reject / Request Changes
• Timeout: Set a deadline (e.g. 24 hours) after which the workflow escalates or pauses

When the workflow reaches this step, it stops. Relay.app sends a notification to the assigned reviewer, who sees the draft inside their Relay inbox or via email. They review and respond directly from the notification.

Step 4: Branch Based on the Approval Decision

After the human step, add a Conditional Branch:

• If Approved: continue to the publish step
• If Rejected: route back to the AI step with the reviewer's feedback as additional context, then loop back to approval
• If Request Changes: send the draft to a human writer with the reviewer's notes attached

This branching logic means the workflow handles all three outcomes without manual intervention beyond the review itself.

Step 5: Connect the Publish Action

For the approved branch, add the relevant publishing action. Relay.app connects to 200+ apps, so this could be:

• WordPress or Webflow: Create or update a post via API
• Buffer or Hootsuite: Schedule the content for social distribution
• HubSpot: Create a blog post draft in your CMS
• Notion: Move the page from Draft to Published status
• Slack: Post a message to your #content channel confirming the publish

Add a final notification step to inform the original requester that their content is live.

Real Marketing Workflow Examples That Use Approval Gates

Email Campaign Approval Before Send

Trigger: New email brief submitted via Typeform
AI step: Generate subject line variants and email body
Approval step: Email marketing manager reviews copy and selects the best subject line
Action: Approved email is pushed to Mailchimp or HubSpot as a draft, ready to schedule

Why the gate matters: A misfire to your full list is costly. The approval step costs 10 minutes. The risk reduction is worth it. Teams building this process alongside CRM automation often also assess B2B SaaS HubSpot agencies or B2B SaaS inbound marketing agencies for implementation support.

Ad Copy Review Before Launch

Trigger: New campaign brief added to Airtable
AI step: Generate three ad copy variants per platform (Google, Meta, LinkedIn)
Approval step: Paid media manager selects the preferred variant and confirms targeting
Action: Approved copy is sent to the relevant ad platform via API

Why the gate matters: Ad spend starts the moment a campaign goes live. Human confirmation before launch prevents budget waste on unreviewed creative. For paid acquisition teams, this kind of process often overlaps with the work of B2B SaaS PPC agencies and B2B SaaS performance marketing agencies.

Competitor Content Alert With Editorial Decision

Trigger: RSS feed detects a new post from a competitor
AI step: Summarise the post and score its relevance to your content strategy (1-10)
Approval step: Content strategist reviews the summary and decides whether to respond with a new piece, update an existing post, or ignore
Action: If actioned, a new content brief is created in your project management tool

Why the gate matters: Not every competitor post warrants a response. The AI does the monitoring and scoring; the human makes the editorial call. This is especially useful for search-led teams working with B2B SaaS SEO agencies or B2B SaaS SEO experts to prioritise competitive content opportunities.

How to Set Up Escalation and Timeout Logic

A common failure mode in approval workflows is the bottleneck: the reviewer does not respond, and the workflow stalls indefinitely.

Relay.app handles this with timeout and escalation settings on human steps:

1. Set a response window. Define how long the workflow waits (e.g. 8 business hours).
2. Add an escalation path. If no response arrives within the window, Relay.app can notify a secondary reviewer or send a reminder to the original assignee.
3. Define a fallback. If the step times out completely, route the workflow to a "Needs Review" holding queue rather than letting it fail silently.

This keeps workflows moving without removing the human gate. If your team is scaling approval logic across channels, it may also be worth reviewing B2B SaaS marketing ops agencies that specialise in workflow design and governance.

What Relay.app Does Better Than Zapier for Marketing Approval Workflows

Zapier is built for trigger-action automation. Adding a human approval step in Zapier requires a workaround, typically a form, a wait step, and a conditional check, which is fragile and hard to maintain.

Relay.app treats human steps as first-class workflow components. The approval card, the notification, the response capture, and the branching logic are all native. You build the approval gate in the same interface as every other step, with no duct tape required.

For marketing teams running workflows where brand, legal, or budget risk is involved, this is a meaningful difference. It is particularly relevant for teams evaluating broader execution partners across top agencies or looking to find an expert for workflow strategy.

FAQs

What is a human-in-the-loop workflow in Relay.app?
A human-in-the-loop workflow in Relay.app is an automated sequence that pauses at a defined step and waits for a person to review, approve, or provide input before continuing. The human step is built natively into the workflow, not bolted on as a workaround. This makes Relay.app well suited to marketing tasks where AI output needs sign-off before it becomes public or live.

Can Relay.app be used for marketing campaign approvals?
Yes. Relay.app supports email, ad copy, and content approval workflows where an AI step generates the output and a human step gates the send or publish action. The workflow pauses, notifies the reviewer, captures their decision, and branches accordingly. This removes manual coordination while keeping a human in control of the final action.

How is Relay.app different from Zapier for marketing workflows?
Zapier is a trigger-action tool. Human approval steps require workarounds in Zapier and are difficult to maintain. Relay.app includes native human-in-the-loop steps, escalation logic, and multiplayer workflow support, making it a more reliable choice for marketing teams that need automation with built-in review gates.

Is Relay.app suitable for regulated industries like fintech or health?
Relay.app's approval steps create a documented review checkpoint before any customer-facing content or communication goes out. For teams that need an audit trail showing who approved what and when, this native approval functionality is more reliable than manual processes or workaround-based automation in other tools.

How many apps does Relay.app connect to?
Relay.app connects to over 200 apps, including HubSpot, Mailchimp, Airtable, Notion, Slack, Google Sheets, WordPress, and major ad platforms. This means the approval workflow connects to the tools your marketing team already uses, without requiring a custom integration layer.