Aircall Sr. Partner Marketing Manager, Daniel Dawson profile picture

Daniel Dawson

Sr. Partner Marketing Manager at Aircall

12 questions answered
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Aircall Sr. Partner Marketing Manager, Daniel Dawson
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Partner Marketing

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Question
What are the most valuable marketing benefits you provide to 1/ consulting partners and 2/ technology partners?
Answer
At Aircall, check out our Aircall Partner Program: https://aircall.io/partners/ but in a nutshell: Channel Partners: - Rev share - Comarketing opportunities - Dedicated CAM Tech Partners: - Integration dev support and open API - Campaigns-in-a-box and partner marketing resources - Custom comarketing opportunities (top performing and strategic partners)
Partner Marketing
Technology partner
Service partner
Question
What are the most effective examples of co-marketing you've done or have seen recently? (What channels, resource types, etc.?)
Answer
One of HubSpot's top downloaded assets was a project I launched with them while at Aircall! It's a sales planning template. During our campaign period, we generated over 12k leads, globally. They host the asset on their site and see hundreds of organic downloads monthly. Check it out here: https://offers.hubspot.com/sales-plan-template I actually would love to see some innovation and freshness when it comes to comarketing! I've done all of the typical stuff (webinars, ebooks, content, discounts, bundles etc) and would love to see more B2B brands come together in more B2C style collaborations. Think about how Nike or Spotify collaborates with other partners and brands.
Partner Marketing
Technology partner
Service partner
Question
What have you experienced to be successful partner marketing tactics to generate leads for partners?
Partner Marketing
Technology partner
Service partner
Question
What can I ask from my tech partners to make it easier for us to get our customers to look at and use their software?
Answer
Why not ask your customers what they want? That's a great place to start and see what exactly your customers are looking for--from the way they want to digest and synthesize information, product updates or explore solutions from partners. When I worked at a VAR (value-added reseller) we worked with hundreds (literally) of ISVs (independent software vendors). We had to compile our solutions in an efficient and digestible way for our customer base. One way we did this was through a monthly webinar series that showcased our best partners in different aspects of business automation. By wrapping it up into a series with a boilerplate description, clear expectations and a short, captivating presentation format, we were able to easily cycle through partner solutions to our customer base. This also included polls during the webinar to lead score attendees for CAMs (customer account managers) to follow up with on higher-intent leads who wanted more info or a demo of the partner solution. Another component was incorporating a survey after each monthly webinar to poll our customers on which automation topic they wanted to hear from next--this would determine which partners we prioritized. Also, customer communications like customer email updates are a great way to cycle in partners. Have partners guest write blogs, workflow or how-to articles based on their solution expertise. Include excerpts, quotes, offers and discounts from your partners for additional exposure and value to your customers.
Partner Activation
Technology partner
Question
When you're focusing on growing partner marketing sourced pipeline, what are some issues you've seen that have resulted in failed campaigns/strategies?
Answer
I don't think there are failures when it comes to partner marketing. There's a lot of experimenting and learning due to the nature of partnerships--there are different types of partnerships, different partners per your industry and then every individual company has its own mix of complexities, resources, cultures etc. Honestly, I think one of the most ineffective "strategies" is trying to apply the same strategy or process to every single partner, and treat every relationship the same. This often comes out of positive intent like, "We want to be the best partner to everyone and treat all of our partners the same," but the reality is, that won't be effective--especially not in the long-term. When starting out with partner marketing campaigns and sourced revenue, and you don't have any historical data or ranking of your partnerships (Make sure you chat about this with your PAMs!), it's OK to be opportunistic and try many things with different partners...but keep track of these results and begin building a ranking and prioritization system for you partners. It will be key to your longer-term success. Also, as with any marketing, make sure you keep the end goal and results in mind from the beginning. A lot of times, we just default to a partner webinar, an ebook or some other type of marketing deliverable without actually thinking about what kind of results we want. Whether it's just brand alignment, exposure and top-of-funnel leads or higher intent more sales-ready leads for co-selling, the mutually agreed-upon result will dictate what kind of partner marketing activities need to happen.
Co-selling
Technology partner
Question
How does your marketing team usually work with your partner team to promote partners to customers?
Answer
There are multiple teams and an org structure laid out here, so I’ll try to answer it best according to how our team is currently organized at Aircall. For reference, I sit under—and always have—the demand generation org which is essentially our entire marketing team concerning revenue. Customer marketing has been under operations or product marketing for us. I work with our North American-based tech partner managers on their individual partner plans. This includes, but isn’t limited to: partner business development (new contacts and strengthening GTM relationship with existing partnerships), integration GTM launches (major integration updates), and generating new business through referrals, partner marketplaces and comarketing campaigns. When customers come into play, it’s generally for integration GTM plays or comarketing campaigns. For example, a joint offer for your partner’s customers and their offer for Aircall customers is a great demand gen play for partners reaching new audiences. We promote these via customer marketing through emails or our monthly customer newsletter. If you’re on Crossbeam, even better. You can identify specific populations of your prospects that might be a customer of your partner, shared open opportunities for co-selling etc. If we’re launching new integration updates from a partner that may meet our customer’s needs, we’ll segment out those customers and promote the update to them via marketing or even our CSMs. For comarketing campaigns like webinars, both partners have to be upfront if they’re willing to promote to their customer bases and that the content is relevant. I’ve found with bigger partners, their customer marketing is often controlled by a different team, so it may not be as streamlined to promote to them as one thinks.
Partner Activation
Technology partner
Service partner