You’ve gone through the timely process of evaluating your partner/affiliate management options. Now it’s time to begin the process of going live on your new platform. Making the transition from one partner management platform to another can seem a little daunting. It might feel like shifting your entire partner base to a new provider is a huge undertaking.
The good news is that it doesn’t actually have to be all that difficult. Brands change providers all the time, and successful providers like Partnerize have carefully codified the best ways to make the process fast and straightforward. In addition, the right provider will have a Client Services team with you for every step of the migration process. They will help keep the focus on sequencing the migration process. But to make the process as successful as can be, there are a number of things that you can do. Here are five ways you can prepare for a smooth migration process.
1. Define Success
As with any project of this magnitude, it’s important to have a clear vision of what success looks like before you get the ball rolling on the technical side. Chances are you shared some of your most pressing goals during the sales process. At Partnerize, our internal teams have a thorough process by which we share these details with the relevant implementation teams. Now that you’ve signed on and are ready to move toward success, take a little time to ensure that you have outlined all of your goals and objectives. Our team will take you through a detailed series of questions and topics to ensure we uncover everything relevant to your success. They will also help you focus on, and prioritize goals, if needed.
Whether your main KPI is revenue, new customer acquisition, non-traditional partnerships or all of the above, having alignment toward the same objectives is paramount to reach success.
2. Prioritize and Refine Your Partner List
Because partner marketing is very relationship-centered, it’s important to migrate all of the partners that are a strong strategic fit for your program as quickly as possible. This will help maintain good partner relationships and ensure you deliver the key metrics (sales, new customers, AOV, etc.) that matter most to your business. All partners are not the same when it comes to driving revenue and scale. You should prioritize them, focusing first on partners that will drive the most incremental growth.
Ideally, you and your provider will work together to migrate all of your partners before relaunching your program. Because some partners take longer than others to move, prioritize your largest and most important partners first. Work closely with the Client Services team to ensure your top revenue drivers are migrated and live in the first week. Try to get those in the mid-tier for driving revenue live in the second week, followed by long-tail partners thereafter.
Your platform should facilitate frequent communication and insights sharing with your strongest partners to keep those relationships growing.
3. Incentivize Your Partners to Move Quickly
Partners have many competing priorities, just like any other organization. Give them an incentive to make migrating to your new platform one of their most important priorities now. One way to inspire them to action is through leveraging a lucrative offer if they move in a timely manner. This could be through bonuses, increased commission for a limited time period, or an incremental/tiered commission.
Don’t be afraid to get creative in your commission strategies. Partners are unlikely to act quickly unless there is a strong and timely motivator, so make sure you give them that motivation.
4. Allow APIs to Automate Time-Consuming Tasks
Keeping track of which partners have migrated can be surprisingly time-consuming if you do it manually. Daily or twice daily checks of each partner’s migration status means a lot of manual work, unless you leverage tools that make it much easier.
For example, Partnerize offers an API-based status tool that automatically pulls partner statuses from the new program, notifies you when partners have joined a campaign, and approves them in bulk to designated campaigns. By having Partnerize implement API-based data sharing with your existing tech stack, you will see greater efficiency and incremental profit from your new platform. Streamlined processes, better measurement, and fewer discrepancies will help you start on the right foot.
5. Monitor & Analyze
Once you’re fully live on your new platform, the next step is migration review during which you keep a close eye on performance and trends. Using comparison reporting capabilities, you can track various metrics such as conversions, order value, and commissions to see how your live partners are performing. This information will allow you to test different commission strategies to ascertain what works best for reaching your targets. Metadata will also help you monitor success rate.
Once your partner migration objectives have been met and the migration process is complete, you’ll want to work with the Customer Success team to continue to seek new ways to optimize partner performance.
