Template approval is where most community teams lose a week they didn’t plan to lose. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Category selection matters more than copy
The biggest single predictor of approval speed is category. Transactional beats marketing on every metric that matters — speed, approval rate, volume tolerance. If the message relates to a specific action the member took, it’s transactional. If you’re broadcasting, it’s marketing.
Placeholder discipline
Templates with 3+ placeholders get rejected more often than templates with 0–2. Not because placeholders are bad — because they signal marketing intent. Keep transactional templates lean.