🏴☠️ ⚡️ Issue #15 - OKR Tear Down: Partner Enablement to Drive Trial Sign Ups
Welcome! This newsletter is dedicated to acquiring and operating Micro SaaS firms. Join us every Saturday morning for a chapter of this month's issue...
Welcome back!
This month, we are officially transitioning to a weekly newsletter providing a chapter of the issue. The hope is to provide more consistent and digestible content.
Let’s get on with the show!
Part 1 — 🎯 DEAL TEAR DOWN - Software Suite for Wedding Venues with $98k ARR
Part 2 — ⚙️ OPERATING CONCEPT - A honey pot of investment memos from BVP
Part 3 — 🛠️ OKR TEAR DOWN - Partner Enablement to Drive Trial Sign Ups
Part 4 — 🏆 PORTFOLIO PERFORMANCE WRAP - Sprint #3 Highlights & Learning
🛠️ OKR TEAR DOWN
📺 WATCH:
📻 LISTEN:
As a point of departure, I’ve included the full OKR below to set the foundation for a teardown of our approach thus far…
OBJECTIVE: Establish partner channel enablement to generate 10+ trial sign-ups in August
KEY RESULTS:
Create and provide relevant assets to support ambassador communication with their networks
Create and provide collateral and talk tracks to enable ambassadors to position and differentiate Portfolio Company (Port Co)
Secure 3x affiliates, prioritized via performance for comparable vendors
With the OKR in mind, let’s quickly revisit the below…
COMPONENTS OF AN EFFECTIVE AFFILIATE PROGRAM:
Competitive Commission Rates: Provide affiliates with a worthwhile commission for each new customer they bring. This could be a fixed amount per new customer or a percentage of the customer's spend over a certain period.
Clear Terms and Conditions: Create a clear and straightforward agreement outlining the terms and conditions of your program. This should include how and when affiliates will be paid, what marketing practices are allowed, and other key details.
Reliable Tracking System: Use software to track the activity of your affiliates. This should track clicks, conversions, and sales, and attribute them correctly to the right affiliate.
Marketing Support: Provide your affiliates with resources to help them succeed. This could include marketing collateral like banners, social media posts, email templates, etc., as well as training and advice.
Strong Communication: Regularly communicate with your affiliates. Share updates, success stories, tips, and best practices, and also listen to their feedback and concerns.
Transparent Reporting: Affiliates should have access to a dashboard where they can see their performance stats, earnings, and payouts.
Enablement in the simplest sense is well defined above as ‘providing resources that help your affiliates / ambassadors success”…
CREATE AND PROVIDE RELEVANT ASSETS TO SUPPORT AMBASSADOR COMMUNICATION WITH THEIR NETWORKS
Here’s a quick list of the most common ambassador / affiliate marketing support domains:
Banners and Images: You can use a tool like Figma or Canva to design visually appealing banners in various sizes and formats. Ensure these align with your brand aesthetics.
Social Media Posts: Create template posts for various social media platforms. Tailor each to the platform's audience and format.
Email Templates: Draft compelling email scripts that affiliates can personalize and send to their audience. Make sure to include strong CTAs (Call to Action) and key selling points.
Blog Post Templates: Provide outlines for blog posts that affiliates can fill in with their own experiences or perspectives.
The above, like all content, boils down to creative (images) and copy (words). Creative is highly contextual based on your brand identity, Ideal Customer Profile and the Jobs to be Done. Copy offers more turn-key templates, often with performance data to support the structure, format, etc.
Here are some examples to bring this to life for “Announce yourself as an Ambassador”:
Social Template (Copy):
“Exciting news! I've teamed up with [firm], the game-changing software that's transformed the way I manage my [business domain / vertical]. Stay tuned for more details and how you can benefit from this partnership.”
Email Template (copy):
“Subject: Partnering with [firm] to Boost Our [business outcome]!
Body: Hi [Name], I am thrilled to announce that I have recently become an ambassador for [firm], a software that has significantly streamlined my [business domain / vertical]. In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing more about how [firm] has enhanced my [domain] and allowed me to focus more on [business outcome]. Stay tuned for insights, tips, and a special referral link for you to explore [firm] for yourself!”
Here are other examples based on the sentiment:
Referral Link Sharing
"Looking to streamline your [business domain / vertical]? Try [firm], the software I swear by, at an exclusive discount. Use my referral link [insert link] and enjoy a seamless [business outcome]."
Benefits Sharing
"Being a PERSONA is about [business outcome], not [persona pain point]. That's where [firm] comes in. Check it out using my referral link [insert link] to see how it can transform your [business domain / vertical]."
Journey Sharing
"From [persona pain point] to [business outcome], my [business domain / vertical] has come a long way, thanks to [firm]. If you're a PERSONA too, I can't recommend it enough. Use my link [insert link] to give it a try!"
CREATE AND PROVIDE COLLATERAL AND TALK TRACKS TO ENABLE AMBASSADOR TO POSITION AND DIFFERENTIATE [FIRM]
ChatGPT / similar is your best friend on this, here are some prompts to get you going:
For “Why [firm]?” —
“Please provide a competitive differentiation and position statement for [firm] based on the following format: For [target audience] that needs [pain point], [firm] is a [market category] which provides [differentiated benefits].”
For “[firm] vs Competitors” —
“Based on your knowledge of [firm], their ideal customer profile and relevant competitors, please provide an example blog post highlighting the top 10 software providers.”
“Please rewrite the blog post in a more condensed format, organized by the pros and cons of each vendor. Please write in bullet form.”
At this point, we have enablement pretty well covered. Let’s transition to affiliates (ie business entities vs users)…
SECURE 3X AFFILIATES, PRIORITIZED VIA PERFORMANCE FOR COMPARABLE VENDORS
Let’s start with establishing a scorecard to objectively compare and prioritize partners. Here are the primary attributes to factor:
Relevance: How closely does the affiliate's audience align with your target audience? This is one of the most important factors.
Audience Size: How large is the affiliate's audience? Bigger isn't always better, but a larger audience generally means more potential.
Engagement Rate: How active and engaged is the affiliate's audience? High engagement rates often signify a high level of trust and influence, which can lead to better conversion rates.
Promotional Methods: What marketing channels and promotional methods does the affiliate use? It's good to know if they use email marketing, social media, blogging, etc., and how successful they are with these channels.
Past Performance: How do they measure the success of similar partnerships? Beware of vanity metrics like visitors. This information can give you an idea of what to expect from a partnership with them.
From here, we’d need to enable our affiliate partners, which would require modifying the assets you created for ambassadors, though the heavy lifting is mostly done here. Affiliates should provide clear direction on the assets they need with best performing examples from their other vendor partners.
Lastly, a common pitfall is trying to light up a ton of affiliates at the same time. This leads to spotty and inconsistent results. Instead, sequence affiliates one or two at a time. Keep a super tight feedback loop and don’t move on until you see results or determine the partner is a dead-end. A few quality affiliates can change the game. Stacking systems and channels compounds over time…