How to engage and convert new channel partners

When engaging with new potential partners, the approach really matters as with potential clients. If you’re receiving inbound requests from your website, it’s relatively easier since you’ll be answering to questions you have received or providing more information.

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Things change when you are doing an outbound campaign and are approaching new partners that match your profile. Through our platform, Elioplus, we send push notification to thousands of channel partners so we have seen some common patterns that work and some that don’t along the way. If you are using a similar service like ours to do the initial contact then skip the first couple tips.

We have tried different approaches to test the efficiency and still are in order to maximize the engagement rate in our communications, so here are a few tips:

• Keep your emails short and sweet, describe the main offering and maybe some key figures. When the potential partners reply then provide more detailed information. We initially used to send long descriptions about the partner program but have seen tremendous difference since we switched to shorter emails.
• The title plays a very significant role, so try to use a subject line that engages your recipients. It’s given that our users already know our service which is important but we have experimented with subject lines that have enabled us to reach an 80% in open rates.
• Do at least 3 follow ups, we’ve noticed that 4 is the ideal number for our service but have seen some companies that reach up to 7-8 follow up emails. Usually channel partners are caught up with internal workload so keep them alert about your offering.

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• Always use personalization if possible. If you have available data, use the recipient’s name, position and background to engage them. It shows that you have done your homework and you’re not using a generic template that you send to multiple companies.
• Ask for the appropriate person. Because most channel partners are small or mid-sized companies, there isn’t usually a specific position that takes the decision for adding new products to their portfolio. Sometimes it’s the CEO or the BD person, others it’s the CTO and it goes on. Therefore, try to ask for the appropriate person if you don’t come up with any results.

Many IT vendors manage all these communications in spreadsheets but we highly recommend to use a software tool to keep up with the workload and also use task reminders. On our platform, we have introduced a pipeline where our users can either move their leads into a pipeline dashboard or even add their own leads. This allows them to add notes and reminders for specific tasks like calls and meetings. Of course if you’re using a CRM that could also do the job pretty well.