Partner portal best practices to improve the experience
By: Katie Rowen
Is your partner portal experience as good as it could be? Revitalize your partner portals, and partners will thank you with increased engagement and business.
Channel programs feature no shortage of partner portals. It often seems like every core channel framework piece, whether it’s for incentives (CIM), channel partner relationship management (PRM), channel marketing (TCMA, asset management), or learning and training (LMS).
The brands with the best portal experiences are often the ones that partners prefer over others, boosting market share.
Tailor your partner portals to specific roles so they’re easy to use and relevant
According to our research, two-thirds of partners report they are disappointed with the portals they use most often, especially because they lack personalization.
If your portals are one-size-fits-most solutions, chances are they’re pain points for the partners they’re supposed to be helping. Personalized experiences keep the portals easy to navigate by making sure all information is clear and relevant. Simplicity is key.
Even if your portals are already personalized, you can still improve them to capture and maintain partner mindshare. An improved experience creates happier partners who want to work with you.
Let's dig into some of the best practices for partner portals we’ve found from our own client work.
Related: Check out real-world examples of personalizing the partner experience.
How to enhance the channel partner experience using partner portal best practices
We recommend shifting from basic partner portals to personalized partner engagement hubs, which focus on partners’ needs. The best practices for any partner portal can be grouped into three key categories.
- Integration and single sign-on (SSO)
- Communication and progress tracking
- Support and recognition
Here’s how the three best practices categories work together in an effective partner engagement hub.
1. Integration and SSO
To create partner engagement hubs, combine elements of various portals for a better user experience. Start by thinking about hierarchy and where you want partners to connect to the brand and partner program. Decide where they should enter the portal and make that the homepage (or the main portal access point).
Consider segmenting by role because each partner type might not need (or want) the same info on the homepage. Decide if it works best to give different types of roles special access to their most used tools. Here’s an example you could follow with your own role types or personas.
| MAIN PORTAL ACCESS POINT |
| Role Type or Persona | Key Focus Area | Main Program Use | Portal Homepage |
|---|
| Partner Owners | | - Agreements
- Planning
- Rebates
| PRM portal |
|---|
| Sales Reps | - Sales goals
- Personal income
- Customer impact
| - Incentives (SPIFs, promotions, contests)
- Support materials
- Training
| Incentives portal |
|---|
| Marketing Roles | | | TCMA portal |
|---|
| Service & Support | - Implementation
- Support
- Service
| - Product and service information
- Training
- Certification
| Learning and readiness portal |
|---|
The hard part about strictly segmenting by role is that sometimes a partner needs to access elements from other areas. You can make connecting simpler through an SSO and widgets on the homepage. Then partners can quickly move between landing pages and get where they need to go.
Adding widgets to homepages and creating an SSO can only go so far though. This is where a specialized partner portal, such as a partner engagement hub comes in handy.
By focusing on the partner experience, a partner engagement hub allows you to take the best pieces from every portal and pull them together (with true SSO) to make personalized homepages. It ensures information is relevant and useful for all partners, even the roles inside those organizations that support your joint go-to-market (GTM) strategies.
We helped one of our Fortune 100 insurance clients consolidate their disparate channel technologies into one portal with SSO. This engagement hub was used across three distinct audiences (and could even be scaled for more). With all information in one place, the agents and internal support teams gained the ability to have an overall view of program progress, to track ongoing certification and education efforts, and to redeem earned points and marketing credits.
As you make changes, conduct user testing in the hub to ensure the right elements are front and center for each role, partner type and region (global preferences matter a lot when improving the partner experience).
2. Communication and progress tracking
Using a partner engagement hub lets you add elements as your program progresses and communicate those changes across all your roles. These are some of the key communication and progress-tracking elements.
KPIs
Add widgets to share relevant data points and highlight progress toward goals.
| Partner Owners | Sales Reps | Marketing Roles | Service & Support |
|---|
- Program status
- Dollars spent
- Rebates earned
- Co-op earned
| - Progress to goal
- SPIF eligibility
- Requirements to earn
- Claim status
| - Leads earned
- MDF spent
- MDF available
| - Satisfaction rates
- Certification level
- Velocity
- Retention
|
Next-best action
Offer a suggested next step toward the goals you want partners to take. Even provide a behavior-based incentive for taking the step, if desired. Possible next-best action options include executing a new product campaign, submitting an invoice for rebate payment, registering a deal or adopting a new implementation checklist.
Feedback loops
Ask for feedback on anything that’s important. Use short pulse surveys (think 1–3 questions) instead of annual or semi-annual partner surveys that likely only get sent to partner owners. Use the partner engagement hub to ask the right questions at the right times to boost partner survey participation rate and gather valuable insights.
Gamification
Continue engaging partners through the hub to create more frequent users, higher satisfaction and larger releases of serotonin (the brain chemical that helps connect positive feelings to a program). Add fun gamification elements, such as earning badges for things like a log-in streak, viewing a set number of assets or a training course, or claiming a personal-best large deal. Personalized gamification reinforces the care you have for your partners, which is especially important in an era where partner mindshare and motivation are low.
3. Support and recognition
Support and recognize your partners by bringing internal resources together in one place. These support functions build up channel partner relationships between roles. Think field team access and support role access.
Field team access
Incorporate field teams in the hub to connect them with partners. Doing so helps both partners and reps. It puts the field team contact information in plain sight of partners who need it and it gives field teams increased visibility into the performance and adoption of channel incentives (e.g., marketing campaigns, goals, etc.)
A secondary benefit of field team access (and a fantastic channel partner relationship-building tool) is the ability to offer peer-to-peer recognition and ad hoc awards in the hub. Because partners and reps are in the same platform, they can connect in new ways like writing recognitions for jobs well done or milestones met (with or without a monetary award attached).
Consider giving field teams a fund of points to reward for on-site trainings, call-a-thon contests and other elements they might use while visiting partners. Clearly tracking everything in the partner engagement hub (versus a separate giveaway that pulls their attention in multiple directions) helps reinforce the value of your portal and technology investment.
Related: Discover five ways to support and enable field managers to go above and beyond.
Support roles
Similar to field teams, the hub can connect support roles like sales engineers, customer service reps and technician resources to partners. The connection enables additional tracking of requests and promotes your commitment to providing partners with the resources they need to do their jobs.
Motivate channel partners with a partner engagement hub
There’s a better way to use portals to enable partners.
If you focus on an engagement hub—one that lets you put the partner’s needs first while improving motivation, adoption and reporting—you’ll find it can be very effective at fostering relationships between partners and reps by putting what they need up front.
Ultimately, even if transitioning to a partner engagement hub is a future goal, take steps today toward making your partner portals as relevant and easy to use as possible. That way partners can start getting more of the portals’ benefits, while you get increased partner loyalty.
Ready to take your partner portals to the next level? ITA Group can help you make them more relevant and easier to use.