When you correspond with your partners, are you inundating them with too much information? After all, if you have a robust channel program with many different departments all working together there’s a possibility that your partners can get 1-5 communications from your company per week. Then multiply that by the other vendors they sell. It's amazing partners listen to you at all. This is why it's so important that vendors communicate internally to schedule partner communications so that partners don’t get bombarded.
Here are some tips on how vendors can get their communications with partners are just right.
Select One Communication Point Person
One way to streamline the communications process with your channel is to have one person monitor the communications schedule and approve communications before they are sent. The person who controls this job should be a strong, confident personality with a clear organizational knowledge who understands your channel’s business objectives and how to communicate clearly without overwhelming your partners. They should advocate on behalf of the partners in the event that communications become too frequent or infrequent
Create and Maintain a Public Communications Calendar
Though you might have a point person on the staff that is in charge of maintaining a balanced communication schedule, it’s important that schedule is updated regularly and posted in a public, internal forum. I recommend that companies refrain from disrupting their own coworkers with repetitive calendar invites or a long email chain. Instead, keep the schedule posted to an internal wiki, shared through an internal network, or if your company is using Google’s mail apps, you should have the ability to share calendars within your entire company’s Google calendar network
Group Minor Communications into Monthly/Bi-Weekly Newsletter
After you’ve selected a point person for partner email communications and created a monthly calendar of communications, you should be in a good place to determine the priority of your communications.
While in the past you might have sent an email every time there was a new partner webinar or training video available, consider adding less timely communications and information to an already existing partner newsletter. This will give potency to messages which do stand alone (these should be your most important communications) and also provide plenty of fresh content when it’s time for vendors to put together your newsletter for the month.
Use Social Media in Coordination with Email
Though email is a fantastic tool for nurturing your partners, you certainly don’t want to alienate your partners with too many email correspondences. That’s why it’s so important to enhance your email program with social media. By encouraging partners to connect and follow your company on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and any other social media sites, you’ll be able to reach them more often in a less disrupting way.
You’ll add transparency to your partner program offering (which may attract new, qualified partners) and keep communication channels open with partners who may not be very engaged via email, but really respond to social tools.
What are some tips you have for gaining the right balance with partner communication? What are some pit-falls you recommend avoiding?