Delivering seamless engagements at every touchpoint is imperative, and to accomplish this companies with distributed sales models (brands that work with dealers, franchisees, and independent retailers, for example) must empower partners at the local level. At Ansira, we have the unique perspective of working across many industries, using our proprietary technology to help brands effectively reach and engage local customers by providing partners with a simple and impactful solution for launching timely, on-brand local marketing campaigns. From this unique perspective, we have seen trends and best practices emerge from both the point of view of the brand and the partners.
Partner Empowerment
Partners are people, and we know that people are busy, they have differing ways of working, and they have differing levels of sophistication when it comes to marketing their business. There are also competing priorities in running a business, like payroll, employee relations, and adhering to ever-changing guidelines that often must come before marketing. We provide our technology that radically simplifies local campaign activation to empower partners by delivering access from any device and offering levels of program support from dedicated consultants including do it yourself, do it with me, or do it for me. To take it a step further, behavior-based content centered on customer actions and profile attributes provide another layer of seamless customer interaction, allowing partners to have more one-to-one messaging and personalization.
This simplified, supported and transparent way of working with partners will result in its rewards. At Ansira, in 2020 we saw a national quick lube chain client add 75 new franchisees to our platform with 100% retention. Another example is a program we launched for a national mattress manufacturer at the height of the pandemic which saw a 400% increase in participation from March 2020 to November 2020.
It is technology wrapped in services (example model in the image below) that truly drives local success, as well as campaign adoption from those that may not have engaged previously. By empowering the partner to work where they want, and how they want, they find support and ease of doing business, ultimately driving more consistent messaging at the local level and more sales.
Co-op Spend
Historically many brands have seen co-op funds left unused, or used incorrectly, which causes a disconnect and missed opportunity at the local level experience. As a result of the partner empowerment we see funds used more efficiently and effectively, automating buying and execution for traditional and digital outlets. Campaigns can also be partner-funded or tied to fund programs as a qualifying activity, providing another layer of benefit for the partners.
Given the fully transparent turnkey nature in which Ansira Edge fully manages co-op spend, asset management and local partner activation, a national retail client decided to make the program we managed 100% co-opable. This led to the client accomplish their goal in 2020 of increasing participation and utilization of spend.
ROI Measurement
The “set it and forget it” mentality when it comes to local marketing campaigns is not an option. As partners engage you need to help them track and analyze their reporting, including down-to-the-penny metrics, to ensure they evolve and optimize their marketing spend. A recommendation engine is another level of support for guiding clients to create the best marketing program for their location and their customers.
Adhering to this philosophy and the correct technology solution produces results. It helped us win a national real estate firm and beat the previous cost per lead benchmark by 42%. This is a testament to not only proper upfront research and analysis, but the constant optimizations to each local broker’s individual campaign.
For end-to-end hyperlocal activation at scale brands must provide support for partners from planning to testing to evolving, and everything in-between. There should not be a “one size fits all” approach, but rather a human-centered look at partner programs that provides flexible levels of support and dynamic opportunities for partners to feel empowered to make decisions, while ensuring the consistency and success from the enterprise level to the local doors.
