Channel Marketing Platform
Help Channel Partners Succeed with a Marketing Platform
Every organization with small business independent channel partners has an interest in seeing that their lead generation and marketing programs are as effective as possible. But small businesses (e.g., retailers, dealers) and sole proprietorships (e.g., individual agents) often do not have the scale needed to execute campaigns using best practices. That’s where we can help.
We can provide the data-driven marketing and technology needed to provide customized campaigns for groups of small businesses at scale. Here are two examples that illustrate our approach:
Case 1: Email Prospecting for Independent Dealers of a National Furniture Manufacturer
The manufacturer wanted to help its 300 dealers to generate foot traffic to its stores around major retail promotion holidays using targeted prospecting email campaigns in a radius around each location. We created an email template that allowed us to deploy dozens of campaigns at once with variable images and text, even including store hours and address.
The key hurdle was to sign up agents to participate. We achieved this by working with the corporate office to develop a series of emails and outbound phone calls to promote the program. In addition, we created a customized online form that allowed stores to sign up the current and future campaigns with email confirmation of all orders.
All dealers who signed up by the cutoff date for each holiday promotion would have one or more emails sent on their behalf. Corporate channel marketing staff were provided access to the database of registered participants to ensure that they were all qualified for the program. At the end of each deployment, dealers were provided with email campaign metrics including opens and clicks. Data on who received the email was provided to corporate so they could match back to dealer sales.
The program has been in place for more than a year and has grown consistently to the point where now more than 30% of all dealers participate in this program, even though they have six other options to choose from. Sales are up and corporate marketing is so pleased that a similar program is being rolled out to another distribution channel.
Case 2: Multi-channel Marketing for Independent Agents of a Regional Life Insurance Company
Agents earn marketing promo dollars whenever the sell a policy. They are able to use these funds with any of two dozen vendors. But redeeming funds often involved a great deal of effort with a vendor to specify the details of the campaign, so funds were not used. It got to the point where there was more than $1 million of unused funds which were not going toward lead generation programs or generating new revenue, as intended.
We developed a sign up form with various acquisition / lead generation campaign options including email only, multi-channel (email, digital and social) and social-only at various price points. We worked with corporate to develop the best targeting and creative assets for several specific insurance products. The online sign up solution allowed agents to easily create a multi-quarter email/digital/social media calendar and pay using promo funds, credit card or a mix of both. (Credit cards were not charged until just prior to each campaign.) In order to help corporate put maximum marketing funds to use quickly, we prioritized the program rollout to focus on those with largest balances first. For the largest balance holders we offered custom campaigns with their own branding.
Through the combination of a user-friendly sign up solution and proactive outreach to agents, half of program funds were committed to the program in the first six months. The available balance has dropped, but not by half…that’s because as new policies are sold, new funds accrue to the agents, creating a “virtuous cycle”. Corporate sales are up significantly and more and more agents, having heard positive word of mouth, are signing up every month.