Agency Client Onboarding Checklist

Get the client's documented ICP — firmographics, buyer titles, intent signals — and any persona research. If they don't have one, schedule a working session before strategy starts; flying blind on ICP wastes the first month of paid spend.

Request the brand book (logo lockup, color palette in HEX/RGB/CMYK, typography, tone of voice) plus access to their DAM — Bynder, Brandfolder, Frontify, or shared drive. Confirm logo usage rules and any do-not-touch assets before designers open Figma.

EU residents trigger GDPR (express opt-in, lawful basis), California triggers CCPA/CPRA (Do Not Sell or Share link), Canada triggers CASL (express or implied consent). US-only with no California exposure is rare; ask, don't assume.

Footer must show a valid physical address; unsubscribe must process within 10 business days across every sending platform. Pull the client's current suppression list out of HubSpot, Marketo, or Klaviyo and confirm it syncs to any ad-hoc sending tool a sales rep might touch.

Health clients need a BAA before any PHI touches a marketing platform. Pharma needs FDA fair-balance review. Financial-services broker-dealers require FINRA Rule 2210 review of communications. Flag this now — getting legal review in week 8 derails launches.

Set up the legal/MLR review queue with the client's compliance team. Document SLAs (typical: 5-10 business days for first review). Add legal as a required approver in the creative-routing workflow before any external send.

Inventory MAP (HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot), CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive), CDP if any (Segment, mParticle), web analytics (GA4, Mixpanel), and tag manager (GTM, Tealium). Note version, admin owner, and last audit date for each.

Get user-level access (not shared logins) to GA4, Search Console, Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, the MAP, and the CMS. Use the client's SSO where available. Document who holds the kill-switch admin role on each platform.

Lock down source / medium / campaign / content / term conventions in a shared doc. Without a single convention, GA4 reports become uncomparable across channels. Build a shared link-builder (spreadsheet or tool like UTM.io) and require its use for every paid and email link.

Walk every conversion event in GA4 DebugView — form submit, demo request, signup, purchase. The classic failure is a 'sign up' event firing on email-blur instead of actual submit, inflating conversions 5x and skewing budget allocation. Confirm fires on the success page or thank-you state, not interim interactions.

If the site uses a CMP (OneTrust, Cookiebot, Didomi), confirm Meta Pixel, LinkedIn Insight Tag, and GA4 only fire after consent. The common failure: banner promises consent-gated tracking; pixel fires on page load anyway. Test in incognito with the consent flow declined.

Allocate across paid search, paid social, content/SEO, email/lifecycle, and any ABM motion. Set target CPA, ROAS, and payback period per channel based on the client's unit economics — not on agency benchmarks.

Map content briefs to the funnel — TOFU thought leadership, MOFU comparison content, BOFU case studies and demos. Each slot names the target keyword cluster, search intent, persona, and CTA. Park ideas without briefs in a backlog rather than the calendar.

Lock weekly leading indicators (sessions, MQLs, pipeline created), monthly performance metrics (ROAS, CAC, payback), and quarterly business review topics. Confirm dashboard tool — Looker Studio, Tableau, or native HubSpot — and who owns the data refresh.

Open the Figma project with brand guidelines linked, channel-spec frames pre-built (Meta 1:1 and 4:5, LinkedIn 1.91:1, Google Display sizes, email hero 600×300). Brief copywriter on tone-of-voice rules and any banned phrases or competitor mentions.

Slack DMs are not an approval record. Route through a documented workflow with timestamped approvals from creative director, brand, legal (if regulated), and the client lead. Lanham Act comparative claims need a substantiation file attached before legal signs.

Email creative through Litmus or Email on Acid for all major clients (Outlook desktop is where renders break). Web creative against WCAG 2.1 AA — alt text on every image, color contrast 4.5:1 for body copy, focus states visible. Skip this and Outlook eats half your audience.

Confirm SPF, DKIM, and DMARC pass on the sending domain via EasyDMARC or GlockApps. Send a seed test to a 50-address inbox panel. List quiet for 6+ months gets a re-engagement campaign or sunset before any broad send — bounces destroy sender reputation fast.

Click every paid ad and email link in staging. Verify UTM string matches convention, landing page loads, GA4 records the session, and the conversion event fires on submission. Document any discrepancy and resolve before spend turns on.

Final go/no-go: creative approved, tracking validated, deliverability green, legal cleared. A 'No' here means we hold launch and resolve blockers — not push and patch in flight.

Log each blocker, owner, and target resolution date. Re-run the relevant QA gate after fixes — don't trust a verbal 'fixed it' on tracking or deliverability issues.

First 48 hours: check pacing every 4 hours. Auto-bid programmatic can blow daily budget by noon if quality scores are off. Watch frequency caps and brand-safety placements — DoubleVerify or IAS reports daily for the first week.

Watch hard-bounce rate (target under 2%), complaint rate (under 0.1%), and inbox placement via GlockApps seed list. Anything off means pause the send sequence, not push the next batch.

Walk the client through CPA, ROAS, MQL volume, and pipeline created against targets. Flag underperforming channels for reallocation before month two. Capture decisions in writing — verbal pivots in a Zoom call disappear.