5 Steps to Avoid When Communicating with Channel Partners

“Your channel partners are not all going to be interested in the same information since they all belong to different markets.”

We are all looking to improve our channel communications strategy. Don’t be fooled into thinking you can apply the same approach to prospects, partners, and customers. In order to deliver news effectively, you must treat them as individuals.

Check out our quick list of what to avoid when it comes to communicating with your channel partners.

1. Don’t use ‘nurturing’ emails– Partners are an audience you should know well, nurturing emails are not necessary for their communication. Instead, send them informative, useful content that appeals to their company interests. This will encourage better overall engagement.
2. Don’t send the same newsletter to all recipients– Your channel partners are not all going to be interested in the same information since they all belong to different markets. We suggest personalizing their content and only sending them information about the products they sell or are part of their partner tier.
3. Don’t include too many images– Beware that some recipients have, by default, blocked images from appearing in emails. Always be sure to include a decent amount of text to ensure the recipient knows what the email is about. (Adding too many images can also have the catastrophic effect of directing your precious newsletter into your recipient’s spam folder, never to be seen again.) To ensure this does not happen we adhere to the 60/40 rule – 60% content and 40% images.
4. Don’t Spend too long creating a newsletter– The review, approval and creation process is often a tediously long affair. The longer this process takes, the more outdated the content will be by the time you send it. Instead, focus on speeding up the creation process. You can do this by either reducing the approval and creation process or alternatively using a tool, such as Impartner News on Demand, which enables articles that have been added to the tool to be sent to applicable users alongside other relevant content.
5. Don’t forget how your partners read these newsletters – The email account your recipient uses will affect how your newsletter is displayed in their inbox. Paying special attention to areas such as ‘preview text’, the line of text which will appear below the subject line, is a great way of providing a synopsis of your email and encouraging recipients’ to click and find out more. This is taken from the main body of your email, and we recommend it be no longer than 50 characters.

At Impartner, we deliver news quickly and efficiently to segmented lists with News on Demand. Want to learn more about this great new tool? Click here to schedule a demo. Stay tuned, next week we will be sharing the most effective ways to deliver news to your channel partners.