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Co-marketing Through Email
Posted By: E-Marketing* on 6/1/2005 12:47 PM (CST) 125 Points
I am considering co-marketing with business partners that my company currently works with. The plan - so far - is that we send out a regular email to all of our customers (~250k), as do they (but to smaller groups typically). Our intent would be to add a section to our email for one of our partner's messages (logo, branding, etc.) in each of our emailings. Similarly, we would want them to do the same for us.

Ideally, each time we do this (either theirs in ours, or ours in theirs) we will have complimentary offers. For instance if we have a sale, then their product will offer a sale that works as an upsell. We currently commission each other for this type of arrangement so it is a win-win.

My question - how should we "barter this deal"? For instance, if we have 250k impressions / emails that we send out, should we be looking for them to have at least that many. So, for instance, if they have 50k on their list, then we ask them to include us on their list 5 times for each send we do with their name?

Thanks for taking your time to give me feedback.

Posted by: adammjw Member Response
6/1/2005 1:07 PM (CST)
Hi,

You are not specific abt. the products but I would be a bit afraid if you wil not kill off your own products with their upsell.Are you sure your clients will not think of substituting your products with theirs?
Another point to discuss are their customers also your target group?
Supposing you have done your own mailings before, what is your response rate? What is the response rate your co-branding company gets?
When commissioning each other you do it under your particular brands or not? Do your clients know you work with each other that close?Do they accept it?

I hope it helps a bit.

Adam
 
Posted by: michael Accepted Answer
6/1/2005 2:06 PM (CST)
It depends on each partners relationship with you. If you are sending out e-mails that create a great response and theirs generates no response, who cares how many times they send them.

The same maybe true in the other direction, but that's to your advantage.

Another consideration is the relationship your partners have with your customers. If they are past providers for them and the relationship ended on a bad note, you could find yourself in bad light.

Bottom line is who has the most to gain from this deal, you or them. We did something similar to this and got good response when we included ALL similar partners from whom our customers could choose. Results were good from our better partners and poor for our lesser partners. Go figure!

Michael
 
Posted by: E-Marketing* Author Response
6/1/2005 2:27 PM (CST)
Good points on the relationships our customers might have with partners who may not be so good, and also about the potential to kill off our sale with theirs.

Fortunately, we have pretty good partners generally, and very complimentary products. A person pretty much has to buy our product to use theirs, and vice versa. Sort of like bread and jam, eggs and bacon, or milk and chocolate. You could conceptually use each of them separately, but you really need one to make the other. Not that I am in the food business - I was just attempting an analogy.
 
Posted by: adammjw Accepted Answer
6/1/2005 3:57 PM (CST)
The question is if they split their mailings as per specific sub-target groups and come to around the same number of customers as you have or they simply do not have so many customers as you do.If such is the case and products are really complementary as you say, I would ask why they are not so popular with the public? They are new to the market?You got more brands than they do or they simply under-perform?
Perhaps it would be better to fit in their range into yours?

Adam
 
Posted by: billc24 Accepted Answer
6/2/2005 12:16 AM (CST)
I would be careful about basing your quid pro quo on how many e-mails are sent out. That is not the goal. The goal is sales.

My thought is that you and your partners should work out what you think is equitable for the first couple of cycles (literally specify which e-mails to how many, etc.) Remember, as commented before, you would rather contact 10 excellent prospects than 100 so-so prospects. While you are doing this, monitor as closely as possible how effective the program is to driving sales to each product line. Then sit down again, and based on the RESULTS, formulate an equitable arrangement.

I hope this helps! I think great things can come from good collaborations!

Bill
 
Posted by: mbarber Accepted Answer
6/2/2005 12:23 AM (CST)
Gidday David

First up congratulations for taking the step towards a co-op campaign.

The answer to your question is Yes.

And No.

What you are probably really concerned about is 'quality' of response. So the issue is not so much over how many get the message but how many respond to the message.

Also to ask for an equal weighting of email contact points presupposes that both companies will be offering similarly valued offers AND both offer similarly priced products or sevices. If that IS the case then you could probably start with the 'We do 10,000 and you do 10,000' and see how things pan out.

However if things are not even across all domains to start with then quality of list is more important than number of potential eyeballs.

So, consider valuing the list at a per transaction value.

If you are selling a product worth $1000 and they are selling a product worth $10,000, in theory you could ask for 10times the eyeballs of your co-op partner. Yes yes, there will be questions about fewer people spending 10K versus 1K and its just one way to proceed.

Another option is to ask for % of sale. Each of you swap 3% of the sale item. The more you sell the more you get. The issue then is not how many sales your list generated for them but how much income your list generated for YOU.

Finally a thought - list swapping should be seen as a way to add value to your current customers, not solely as an income producing stream. Keep asking yourself - 'are our customers feeling better about us because we are helping them gain products or services that we don't sell, cheaper than they could otherwise?' If the answer to that question is YES (and it should be if you do your offers well) what you are actually engaged in is a customer retention strategy that stops you losing customers to your competition and THAT is worth its weight in gold.
 
Posted by: E-Marketing* Author Response
6/2/2005 10:53 AM (CST)
Thanks very much everyone for all of your great ideas here. This is really helpful. Special thanks to BillC24 and MBarber - great insights!
 
Posted by: E-Marketing* Author Response
6/6/2005 10:49 AM (CST)
Thanks everyone. I'm closing this one out. I appreciate everyone's advice on this.
 
Posted by: adammjw Member Response
6/6/2005 11:15 AM (CST)
Hi David,

First off thanks for the points.Off the record I'm generally pro co-op or better said pro co-branding, altough thinking in maybe a bit orthodox way I would have much less qualms abt. it if the offering was further off your own range.The strongest argument I find pro is what Marcus pointed out as making your customers more happy with the project- that holds water.

Good luck

Adam
 


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