Working with the EMEA partner marketing team at Motorola Solutions, it soon became apparent that while the resellers were bringing in revenue, an area for improvement was the low level of engagement in marketing. Like most vendors, the 80/20 rule applies to their channel ecosystem. With 80% of the revenue coming from 20% of the base. Evaluating the situation entailed surveying this top 20% group to gain qualitative feedback on what they thought about the “Co-branding Wizard” via a short survey. The CBW, as it is known, is a web-based marketing partner portal where resellers can, as the name implies, co-brand the assets from Motorola to run their own campaigns. These include; brochures, white papers, sales presentations, images, case studies, etc.

Analysing the partner feedback, it became apparent that the low engagement levels were due to two main reasons:

1. Outdated collaterals and assets
2. The CBW was unwieldy and difficult to use:
   • Collaterals weren’t categorized and organized in an intuitive way
   • The search function didn’t work
   • Adding your reseller logo & contact details was an onerous task (and often didn’t work)
   • The marketing assets were out of date
   • A LOT of resellers didn’t even know it was there!

Having put a significant investment case before the senior management team, we moved forward with a project to completely overhaul the CBW, including user interface, and install a back-end process to keep the marketing assets regularly updated. Based on feedback, we also launched a new function that was a “campaign in a box” so that channel partners can run their own local campaigns. This includes being able to book event/exhibition equipment from a storage pool, including stand-up banners, posters, and Motorola branded booth (stand) equipment.

To increase participation, we employed a specialist channel marketing agency to do a “test drive” of the new portal along with the partners. This was a 30-minute one-to-one instructor lead tour, available in five European languages. Booking the test drive became the call-to-action for the partners and proved to be very popular. Resellers sent in their company logo ahead of the session and we literally built a branded campaign for them in the web session in just TEN STEPS.

The Results
We decided to go upbeat and injected a bit of fun into the re-launch using a smiley face emoji in the campaign. Assets delivered:
• *Innovative direct mail piece
• Emailer
• Partner newsletter
• Posters
• Announcement articles in the channel press *Microscope
• Video
• Branded exhibition equipment

*Why innovative? This attention getting mail piece arrived in the post as an unhappy face on a card – stating “We’re missing you” – when you pull the get started tab, the face on the cover changes to happy.

The new Co-Branding Wizard was launched at the next European partner conference in Copenhagen as was an immediate success. In the 6 months before the campaign, only 20 partners had used CBW; once the campaign launched, usage topped 400 in just the first two weeks!

We want to improve our partner engagement