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How to Measure the ROI of Your Partner Marketing Campaigns

One of the most effective ways to reach a larger audience and increase sales is to leverage your partner ecosystem through marketing campaigns. A lot of activity goes into these campaigns and tracking them through your partner portal gives the insights needed to measure the ROI.

 

Why are partner marketing campaigns important? 

Partners are a valuable marketing tool because they often work with industries or countries that you haven’t engaged with yet and fit your ideal customer profile. Providing tailored marketing content to your partners makes it easy for them to hit the ground running. But without the right tools to measure the effectiveness of your work, it can feel like a waste of money. 

In fact, without an easy to use partner portal, partners struggle to understand the resources available to them resulting in less than 15% of partners engaging with campaigns. This is why it’s so important to have a tool to track the ROI of your partner marketing campaigns. By showcasing your successful partners you can encourage low performing partners to step up and close more business. 

 

Why is measuring partner marketing ROI important? 

Modern marketing has a lot of moving parts; without a system to verify successful marketing activities (and identify unsuccessful activities), you can’t track what works and what doesn’t. By measuring the ROI of your campaigns, you gain insights into which mediums, messages, and distribution channels resonate most with partners and their contacts.

ROI is best tracked in a partner portal, a powerful tool that collects data across all partners including how they are using their marketing development funds (MDF) and which campaigns receive engagement. You’ll also have insight into whether the cost of the campaigns result in enough new business to justify your partners’ effort.

To get started, view your partner portal usage, broken down by partner segments, and ask yourself these questions: 

•  How frequently do partners log in?

•  How frequently do they view upcoming marketing campaigns?

•  How frequently do they participate in those marketing campaigns?

•  Are they downloading the marketing collateral you’ve provided?

•  Are they utilizing their MDF when executing on these campaigns? 

 

Partner marketing best practices

Before your next partner marketing campaign kicks off, communicate to your partners the desired outcomes and overall goal of this particular campaign. 

Best practices include:

•  Confirming that partners reach new audiences for you and not marketing to leads with whom you already have a relationship.

•  Ensuring that these new audiences match your ideal customer profile. This can include company size, industry, role within the company, and potential budget alignment.

•  Communicating new campaigns effectively so your partners can act fast on marketing opportunities.

•  Providing something valuable for your audience in your marketing campaigns. For example, an educational webinar, an invitation to speaking engagements with a panel of expert speakers, or access to articles and ebooks about each industry you support.

 

How is a partner marketing campaign ROI measured? 

There are a number of KPIs that some partner portals automatically capture. This makes calculating ROI a straightforward and data driven exercise. 

 

KPIs for tracking ROI of all marketing campaigns: 

•  Conversion rate: The number of times a partner-specific tracking link is clicked on compared to the number of times that the tracking link has led to a completed sale. To calculate this, take the number of sales a partner directly generated then divide that by the number of clicks. Finally, multiply this new number by 100 to get the conversation rate as a percentage.

•  Cost per lead: How many leads did each partner bring in? A lead is anyone who gave their personal contact information in order to engage with the marketing campaign.

•  Lifetime value: How much value will this partner-generated lead bring to your business over the course of their time as a customer?

 

KPIs for tracking ROI of partner webinars and events

•  Lead generation by partner: Track how many leads each partner registered for a partner webinar. Even if the lead didn’t attend the live webinar, they are still opting into contact. Make sure each partner has their own unique tracking code to use in their promotion.

•  Registered vs participated: Track how many registrants actually attended the live event as well as those who watched the webinar on-demand.

•  Audience retention: how long did the attendees stay on and watch the webinar before they logged out?

•  Attendee engagement: Pull a report showing which attendees engaged during the live event including those who asked questions, answered polls (and their answers), responded to surveys, and downloaded any assets you made available. 

 

How to calculate ROI for webinars and events: Use the number of qualified leads generated by the webinar (and by each partner) and the overall lead to sale conversion rate.

For example, if your partner portal shows that 10% of qualified leads converted to paid customers, and the webinar generated 200 qualified leads, your ROI equals 20 sales.

 

KPIs for tracking ROI of content creation

•  Cost per click: Track clicks on landing page, register buttons, contact us forms, and download links

•  Articles and blog posts: Track unique visitors, page views, traffic sources, and visits per channel

•  Emails: track open rates, opt-out rates, and number of email subscribers

•  Videos and podcasts: Track views, unique viewers, viewer duration, channel subscriptions, comments, shares, and downloads 

 

KPIs for tracking ROI of MDF usage

•  Partner engagement: Track how often each partner views marketing campaigns

•  Partner requests: Track the tickets or cases submitted by each partner within your portal

•  Fund usage: Across all partners, track how many are using their funds towards the most effective programs

•  Partner growth over time: Correlate their sales success with how well they use their MDFs towards your partner marketing campaigns

Using KPIs and data points to generate insights

Now that you’ve collected data on which campaigns your partners are utilizing (or not utilizing), use these insights to improve the overall ROI of your partner marketing efforts. 

For example, If most of your partners are using most of their MDF across a range of campaigns, then they probably see a lot of value in the types of marketing campaigns you’ve provided. 

But if funds are under-utilized, or even expired, it’s time to evaluate how effective your campaigns really are and whether you have the right partners in place to accomplish your growth goals. 

Also, are the utilized funds resulting in new leads? If yes, do those prospects qualify and ultimately convert? Tools like Allbound enable you to directly connect marketing spending to partners’ lead acceleration, removing any ambiguity about the ROI of specific campaigns.  

By tracking the ROI of partner campaigns in your partner portal, you’re armed with hard data that can encourage partners to participate in campaigns togeneratemore sales. 

 

Takeaways About Measuring Partner Marketing ROI

If you’re not tracking the ROI of your partner marketing campaigns through a partner portal, you may be spending a lot of money on ineffectual marketing efforts. Try out a partner portal that automatically connects every KPI and that can make your partner network your most valuable distribution channel. 

Further advance your partner marketing knowledge with the following articles:

Channel Partner Marketing Plan ChecklistIn order to get the highest ROI from your partner marketing campaigns, you’ll need a thorough plan of action. Use this template to ensure your future promotional efforts are covered from all angles. 

The Guide to SaaS and B2B Influencer Marketing – Partnering with the right B2B influencer has the potential to deliver the highest ROI for your marketing campaigns. Check out tips for vetting candidates, growing your own, and industry examples to inspire tactics. 

Co-Marketing Activities and Ideas for Joint Promotion in 2023 – How do you know if your current partner marketing tactics deliver the highest ROI if you don’t try new strategies? Use this article to inspire new co-marketing materials and promotional strategies.

Tori Barlow