Making sure your affinity partnerships are mutually beneficial and productive can take up a great deal of time and resource. How do you maintain and develop your network, while still being resourceful with your time? A dedicated affinity partner portal can give you the best of both worlds. To build stronger partnerships and still have time to get everything else done, use a portal to:
1. Streamline – one dedsicated channel
Think about Google. One simple search box that’s easy to use. It’s no secret that people want the quickest and simplest route to finding information. Make things accessible for your partners by keeping everything in one secure space, with clear signposting. Using one shared space helps you effectively manage and share content, streamlining communication. It also decreases the volume of calls to your helpdesks and support centres.
2. Share! Provide a secure space to swap information
Create a secure, branded or co-branded portal for your partners to log in and access incentives, resources, news and updates. A dedicated portal shows you value the partner relationship and have invested in tangible resources to support it. Sharing resources and news online allows you to better engage partners. The more you engage your partners, the better the relationship and the stronger your business partnership.
3. Increase engagement
Keep your communities engaged with live feeds, news and information. If you have several partnerships, choose a portal that enables you to build different homepages for specific communities. Create engaging, tailored content that strengthens relationships with your partners and shows off your company’s skills and culture. Creating a forum for feedback and comment brings you closer to your partners and gives you valuable insight.
4. Save time, work smart
Work out which aspects of your communication could be automated through a portal, freeing up your time. A portal that creates automatic alerts for your partners and pushes content to them can save you time and increase engagement. Ralph Lauren switched to an online portal to distribute seasonal collateral to their partners and saw a 34% increase in engagement from Fall 2014 to Spring 2015. They were also able to track downloads and follow up on suppliers based on their activity.
5. Get to know your partners
Build a picture of your partners and what engages them through your portal. You can then tailor and adjust your content to boost results and increase engagement. Use quick polls and surveys to capture people's attention and get fast decisions and insight. Monitoring and acting on behaviour allows you to quickly adapt and develop your portal, creating a greater return on investment.
6. Get moving
There’s nothing worse than needing to get something out into the world but being held back by dependency on other departments or stakeholders. Remove barriers by choosing a portal that either fits in with departmental constraints (IT, Brand etc) or that’s web-based and needs no integration or involvement from other departments. When you’re in control of your portal you can really get things moving.