Every Thursday 10am PT / 1pm PT we have a weekly Q&A in our Slack community. Join us. 🙂


The complete partnership launch checklist

We had so much excellent community feedback, we built the The complete integrated partnership launch checklist as a permanent resource.


Sunir Shah
June 20, 2019 01:08:21 PM
@channel It’s our weekly Q&A time! Today’s question thanks to @Bradley Blinn is

What marketing activities do you perform before, on launch, and after a launch of a partnership?

What activities should you schedule with your partners?

Bradley Blinn
June 20, 2019 01:09:57 PM
You negotiated a partnership. You built the integration. You publicly announced the partnership. Everything is live. NOW WHAT? What activities should be done within 30 days, 90 days, and 6 months to grow the partnership?
Kelsie Skinner
June 20, 2019 01:16:11 PM
The first thing I typically do is set a meeting to sync our marketing teams and chat about calendars and where there's room to collaborate. Marketers like to think in longer term and not commit to too much up front that's then unrealistic to tackle. By talking calendars and what we both have slated, it allows for collaboration and often can make lead to a 2 birds, 2 stone situation. Deliverables typically start with a joint webinar or case study, and then see how you can repackage that in to new blogs, videos, speaking proposals, etc.
Robert Rand
June 20, 2019 01:21:07 PM
I like to treat each partnership as a unique relationship, but in general, I find that activities like (1) Providing Sales Training, (2) Engaging in marketing such as guest blog posts, webinars, eBooks, case studies, whitepapers, events, videos and podcast episodes, (3) Connecting people, such as through Slack, to allow folks on both sides of the partnership to communicate effectively, (4) Scheduling check-ins to help clear any roadblocks
Chris Lucas
June 20, 2019 01:35:08 PM
One of the things we did in the first 30 days was to find some common customers and people who were heavy users of both platforms. We would seed the integration with these folks and then seed the idea of a case study. That way in 60-90 days you already have folks who are ready to go vs finding those when you really need them.
Bradley Blinn
June 20, 2019 01:45:16 PM
the idea of seeding with a case study is great. So here's a question for 'ya: what if there are no mutual customers? This could be a new partnership and the mutual benefit is obvious, but there's no overlapping customers. Or you could be partnering with them because you've successfully developed a partnership with their competitors. simple_smile But again in both cases there are no mutual customers so you can't prime the pump for a case study..........So what do you do to help validate the partnership?
Chris Lucas
June 20, 2019 01:56:09 PM
I think the opportunity is the same. Often with in-app prompts you can identify those users who you think are good potential for the partnership. Give them “Beta” access to the integration and see if they are willing to give feedback and be a case study. Ideally you should have a best use case in mind and those customers should be top of mind already.
Chris Lucas
June 20, 2019 01:56:52 PM
Also, soft launching to a certain population of your users and soliciting feedback is a good way to get the same outcome

What 12-month goals should you set for your partnerships?

Bradley Blinn
June 20, 2019 01:10:13 PM
What 12-month goals should be set to measure the success of the partnership?
Kelsie Skinner
June 20, 2019 01:17:29 PM
Segment your sales pipeline by partner too. Track them as a lead source like any other marketing initiative. That will give you visibility on leads, opportunities and ACV attributed to partner referrals and/or partner content depending on the partnership's structure
Sunir Shah
June 20, 2019 01:40:26 PM
At FreshBooks I had a goal to make our integrated partners succeed by integrating with us.

I measured integrations on whether or not they could get 1% of our customers to activate on launch, it was a bad sign. Beyond that, they needed to get customer reviews going through the year and see account growth.

We generated continuous partner communication opportunities, but we expected fair trades in return.

So after 12 months, we would know the partners who we loved and partners who were disappointments.

How do you measure the success of your partnership program?

Bradley Blinn
June 20, 2019 01:22:14 PM
How are you measuring the success of your partnership program over time? 3 months into a new partnership what should be expected of the relationship? 6 months in, what is happening?

Understanding what these metrics are is important because you'll then be able to understand AND RANK your partners based on their engagement level. You'll then know which ones are on cruise control and which ones need some help.....
Robert Rand
June 20, 2019 01:26:51 PM
I'd say that it's also a good tool for keeping momentum in the relationship. Without long-term plans and communications, whether around sales, marketing, and/or support, it can be easy for the partnership to stop being "top of mind" for all parties.
Bradley Blinn
June 20, 2019 01:29:47 PM
excellent point Robert. Totally agree.
francesco rovetta
June 20, 2019 01:57:44 PM
having clear goals when discussing the collaboration, and translating them into KPIs (individual for the each partner and then jointly) make the partnership and its development/growth over time (not to mention the commitment) way more effective