Partnerships make scaling possible in B2B marketing. I cannot overstate this. The greatest software platforms of our generation couldn’t have scaled the way they did without partnerships. For example, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, Stripe, Shopify, etc, could not have grown the way they did without an army of integration partners, resellers, and services partners around them filling in the white space of their offerings.

Alone, no company can meet every single customer's needs. But when they organize into an ecosystem of software companies that serve the same buyers, build integrations to work together, and go to market together, each company goes further and serves its customers better.

In that context, each company must have access to data on where its customer and prospect overlaps are with others in their ecosystem. 

BUT access alone is not enough. While knowing which companies work with your partner orgs is better than not knowing, the real outcomes result from having that data integrated into your CRM and automation platform.

Integrate, Then Leverage

If you want your partnerships to drive revenue, having data matters, but what’s more important is how you leverage that data. 

When I say leverage, I mean the real definition of leverage. The one where you receive an outsized return with minimal input. In the technological sense, leveraging occurs when you use software or code to increase efforts infinitely without having to put in a bunch of resources (time, money, etc).

Integrating partner data is the key to achieving leverage. Here are some examples of ways that partner data should be leveraged to drive outsized impacts for your business.

Leveraging Partnership Data

Joint Marketing Efforts

Whether you and a partner are sponsoring a field event together, putting on a joint webinar, or bringing a new use case to market, you first need a list of overlaps:

• Shared customers,

• prospects of one but customers of another,

• and prospects of both

Ideally, this information is piped into your automation system.  

From there, you can create lists for each group of prospects, and send them a targeted message. 

For example: 

• Joint customers are all notified of integration updates or new features that impact an integration

• Prospects of one but customers of another are invited to a webinar where a recognizable brand walks through how they leverage the integration to drive results for their business 

• Dual prospects are invited to a happy hour in their local city to learn about the joint use case

Ideally, these are automated invitations set up with (for instance) a HubSpot workflow, based on lists or a field on the contact.

Personalization 

Once the offer and the audience have been determined, partner data in your CRM can power the personalization of this outreach. 

Hi <<Name>>,

I know you’re leveraging <<Partner 1>> and <<Partner 2>> alongside our solution. We’re writing to let you know that our recent feature launch can impact your usage of <<Partner 1>> in XYZ ways. 

Join us next week for a webinar where we walk through the changes. 

Imagine getting that note yourself. Personally, it would blow me away. Not only are they aware of which tools I'm using alongside theirs, they are letting me know that my use case can be improved and they’ll show me how to do it. 

Accuracy and Speed

If you’ve been in marketing, sales, or success for any duration of time, you likely have found yourself in this type of situation before: 

• You want to send a personalized note to prospects about a partner update. To build the list you have to join the Sales team’s weekly standup and ask them which of their prospects are working with that partner.

• When you want to message joint customers that you’ll be in town for a partner’s annual event, you have to ask the Customer Success team to fill out a spreadsheet of which customers are working with that partner. 

Inevitably you have to follow up three times with an AE, or rope in the Head of Success.

Not only does this manual work alienate your colleagues and take a very. long. time… but it is also never totally accurate. With the old way, you miss people or you make mistakes—and both are costly. 

With the new way, you reach everyone with a highly personalized note, and your inter-functional relationships don’t suffer in the process.

See Integrations and Leverage In-action

Reveal is teaming up with Wistia, Arrows, and HubSpot live on June 4th, 2024 to demonstrate (in the weeds, like actually how to do things) how to put on a joint webinar from an integration operations perspective.

• We’ll start with building a partner list to promote a webinar to 

• Show how to create automated emails to the different groups of partners 

• Explain how to follow up after the webinar 

• And lastly, how to send a list to the SDR team to qualify and book meetings for sales

You can see the other event sessions and register for the event here: https://arrows.to/happycustomers

Wrapping up

To leverage partnership data, integration is crucial. Having the information is not enough—it has to be usable in the systems where you live, breathe, and do most of your work.

When you integrate your partnership data into your CRM and automation platforms, you can save time, personalize your engagement, and increase the accuracy of your work.

Embrace the power of partnership data to drive outsized returns and elevate your go-to-market strategy. And don't miss the opportunity to learn hands-on strategies at our upcoming event with Wistia Live, Arrows, and HubSpot on June 4th, 2024. Register now and take the first step towards revolutionizing your marketing efforts.