bethebrand VS. DXP platforms
Where each fits for regulated marketing teams
bethebrand is the financial promotions workflow, approval and asset management platform built for regulated financial services firms. It is used by banks, building societies, insurers, wealth managers and financial advice networks across the UK.
Most regulated financial services firms already have a digital experience platform (DXP), or are evaluating one. DXPs are powerful tools. They manage content delivery, personalisation and campaign orchestration across channels.
bethebrand does a different job. The two sit side by side, covering different parts of the same process.Not every regulated firm has a DXP and not every firm needs one.
Some manage their digital presence through simpler content management systems or publish through fewer channels. The governance challenge this page describes applies regardless.
This page is written for marketing and compliance leaders in FCA-regulated firms evaluating how their technology stack supports financial promotions governance.
What a DXP does well
DXPs manage, deliver and optimise digital customer experiences. Content management, personalisation, customer journey orchestration, analytics and campaign delivery sit at the core of what platforms like Sitecore, Optimizely and Adobe Experience Manager are designed to do.
For regulated firms, a DXP handles the distribution side of financial promotions effectively. Content goes out to the right audiences, through the right channels, at the right time. Personalisation works. Analytics reports are available.
Upstream vs. downstream jobs
Every financial promotion or controlled piece of content in a regulated firm follows a path. It is drafted, reviewed, challenged, amended, signed off, evidenced and then published. The DXP platform owns the publishing, downstream end, of the process.
However upstream is where compliance decisions are made. This is the job of a financial promotions approval platform: a regulated marketing workflow system that governs how content is reviewed, signed off and evidenced before it reaches any delivery channel.
Most DXPs offer some form of content workflow: review stages, publishing permissions, approval steps. For general marketing content, these may be sufficient. For financial promotions that require named compliance sign-off, documented rationale and audit-ready evidence under SM&CR, the question is the same as with any generic system.
Can the platform be configured to meet those specific requirements? And who is doing the configuring?
A DXP workflow designed for content operations is not the same thing as a compliance approval process designed for regulatory accountability.
The features may overlap on paper. The depth, the specificity and the evidencing standard required are different.
Getting a generic platform to that standard takes specialist configuration by people who understand the regulatory environment and that is rarely what a DXP implementation team is set up to deliver.
“bethebrand operates as two main things for us: an asset store and an approval process tool. It’s the go-to area for signed-off assets, from mandatory regulatory documents to promotional items.”
Where each system fits into a workflow
The clearest way to see how a DXP and bethebrand relate to each other is to follow a single financial promotion from drafting to publication.
Drafting
A marketing team creates a new savings campaign. The copy is drafted, reviewed internally and refined. At this point the content exists in bethebrand, where the team works within a structured workflow. SeeDynamic runs automated pre-approval checks against the firm’s own rules, flagging issues before the content reaches formal compliance review.
Review and approval
The asset moves through a multi-stage approval chain. An internal reviewer and a named compliance approver each review the content in sequence. At each stage, the reviewer’s decision, rationale and any amendments are recorded automatically. If the compliance reviewer rejects the asset, it routes back to the right person with the full history intact.
Sign-off
A named senior manager gives final sign-off. Their approval, including their identity, the date and the version they approved, is recorded as part of the audit trail. The asset is now approved for publication.
Handoff to the DXP
The approved asset moves into the DXP for delivery. From this point the DXP does what it does best: publishing to the right channels, applying personalisation where appropriate and managing the digital experience.
Six months later
An auditor asks for the full approval history of that savings campaign. The DXP can confirm when and where the content was published. bethebrand can produce the complete pre-publication trail: every version, every reviewer, every decision, every amendment, every sign-off. No reconstruction needed.
“[Before bethebrand] it took a while to find the latest version of a signed off asset. Everyone agreed there must be a much better way to manage the sign off and storage of assets.”
AI in DXP platforms
Sitecore, Optimizely and Adobe Experience Manager are all embedding AI into their core offering. AI-driven personalisation, dynamic content assembly, automated A/B testing and AI-assisted copy generation are becoming standard capabilities across the category.
For most marketing teams, this is genuinely useful. For regulated firms, it introduces a question that the DXP itself is not set up to answer.
Personalisation engines can alter the content a customer sees based on their profile, behaviour or segment. Dynamic content assembly can combine approved components in new configurations. AI-assisted drafting can generate or adapt copy at scale. Each of these changes what a customer receives.
If a personalisation engine serves a different risk warning to different customer segments, who approved each variation? If AI-assisted copy changes the emphasis of a product benefit, where is the compliance sign-off? If dynamic assembly produces a combination of components that has never been reviewed as a whole, what is the audit trail?
These are governance questions, not technology questions. The DXP can deliver the content. It cannot necessarily answer for how each variation was approved.
bethebrand is actively developing AI functionality with governance and auditability at the centre of how we approach it. Our position remains that deterministic automation suits explicit rules that need enforcing consistently and generative AI suits contextual support and refinement.
Both need to sit within a workflow that records decisions, not just outputs.
Read more in our report: Governing AI in Financial Promotions
What bethebrand adds to a DXP environment
bethebrand covers everything upstream of publication. By the time content reaches a DXP, it has already passed through a structured, evidenced approval process. The compliance trail is complete. The audit record exists. Accountability is documented.
Our platform provides:
- Asset storage, organisation and distribution
- Workflow and approval management with named sign-off and documented rationale
- Asset lifecycle management including controlled withdrawal and archiving
- Automatically generated compliance audit records
- Multi-party review across internal teams, agencies and senior managers
- Single sign-on and access controls suited to complex organisational structures
- Automated pre-approval content checks through SeeDynamic, reducing rework before formal compliance review
bethebrand has spent more than 20 years implementing financial promotions workflows alongside UK financial services marketing and compliance teams. That means we know how approval processes actually run inside regulated firms, the exceptions and the edge cases. We configure the platform around how your organisation works rather than handing you a generic tool and leaving you to close the gap.
That distinction matters here specifically. A DXP implementation team will configure the platform for content delivery, digital experience and campaign performance. They are unlikely to have deep experience of FCA-regulated approval processes, Consumer Duty evidencing or SM&CR accountability structures.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need bethebrand if I already have a DXP?
For most regulated firms, yes. A DXP manages digital experience delivery: content, personalisation, journey orchestration and analytics. It may also offer content workflows and approval steps, but these are designed for content operations, not regulatory compliance. The pre-publication governance that regulated firms are accountable for, structured approvals with named sign-off, documented compliance rationale and audit-ready evidence, requires a system and a team built specifically for that job. bethebrand handles what the DXP was not designed for.
What if my DXP already has approval workflows?
Many do. The question is whether those workflows meet the evidencing standard that FCA expects. A DXP approval step that records “approved by user X on date Y” is not the same as a compliance workflow that captures the rationale for approval, documents how risk flags were resolved, records the specific version that was signed off and maintains the full trail in an audit-ready format. If your DXP workflow can do all of that, it may be sufficient for your needs. In our experience, most cannot without significant specialist configuration that the DXP vendor is not set up to provide.
What does the FCA expect from firms using DXPs to deliver financial promotions?
The FCA does not regulate technology platforms directly. It holds firms accountable for the outcomes their systems generate. Firms must be able to evidence that appropriate compliance oversight took place before publication, regardless of which platform delivered the content.
What is the risk of relying on a DXP alone for financial promotions governance?
The primary risk is an evidencing gap. DXPs manage content delivery, not the compliance decision trail that regulators expect. If a firm cannot produce a full named approval trail for a financial promotion without manual reconstruction, that represents a governance weakness. A DXP alone is unlikely to resolve it because pre-publication governance is not what it was built for.
Which DXP platforms do regulated financial services firms typically use?
Regulated firms use a range of DXP platforms including Sitecore, Optimizely, Adobe Experience Manager and others. The platform used for content delivery does not determine the compliance architecture required. Regulated marketing teams need dedicated workflow, approval and evidencing capability regardless of which DXP is in place.
How does bethebrand work alongside an existing DXP?
bethebrand governs everything upstream of publication: structured approval workflows, named sign-off, audit trails and controlled asset management. Once content is approved, it moves to the DXP for delivery. The two systems cover different parts of the process.
A DXP is the right tool for managing how customers experience your brand digitally. However it was not designed to control and evidence what happens before content reaches a customer.
bethebrand was built for that job. If your DXP handles the downstream, bethebrand handles the upstream and the two work together.