The majority of successful brands are running some sort of loyalty program to retain their loyal customers. Loyalty programs can be truly very effective when it comes to improving customer loyalty and boosting repeat business for a brand. However, these programs need to be designed differently for different purposes. Loyalty programs for channel partners can not be the same as the reward programs for B2C customers. If your goal is to improve loyalty among your channel partners, you need to understand some effective strategies to retain channel partners and drive more sales through them.The way channel partnerships used to work earlier was too different from the way these work nowadays. With the increasing competition in the market, the primary goal of businesses these days is to improve the experiences of their end customers. For this, brands need to ensure that their partners are engaged and putting their maximum effort into driving more and more sales. Running channel partner loyalty programs is the best way to achieve this. Here are some innovative channel partner schemes and best practices to consider while developing channel partner loyalty programs for your company:

1. Affiliate Partner Incentive Program

Finding the right affiliate partners requires time and effort. Once you find these partners, you need to make sure that you value them as they play a vital role in the success of your business. Under an affiliate partner incentive program, you can reward your top-performing partners. The rewards or incentives must be easy to understand and track. Rewarding your top-performing partners doesn’t only motivate them to keep driving more sales, but also encourages other partners to perform better.

Higher levels of motivation in your partners mean more sales and revenue. Some examples of affiliate partner incentive programs include rewards based on the number of leads generated by the partner, commissions based on the frequency of orders or clicks, etc. You can run innovative channel partner incentives programs targeted at your business goals, such as boosting sales for a particular range of products, increasing customer engagement, generating more leads, etc.

2. Sales Campaign Incentive Program

The ultimate goal of running channel partner loyalty programs is to keep your partners motivated and provide them with the right resources to drive sales to your business. By offering sales campaign funds, you can allow your channel partners to execute the sales campaigns created by your company. This is an amazing way to expand the reach of your sales campaign and make them more successful. As the sales campaign is created and planned by your company, you can ensure that your partners take the right actions to drive more sales and help you achieve other objectives.

3. Lifecycle Funds Program

Lifecycle funds programs are aimed at improving the experience of your end customers through the channel partners. Nowadays, customers look for integrated end-to-end solutions instead of purchasing a single product from a brand. Their buying decisions are highly influenced by the reputation of a brand and their overall experience with a company. By offering lifecycle funds, you can encourage your channel partners to improve the overall experience of your end customers and focus more on customer satisfaction.

You can incentivize your partners’ efforts to make your end customers understand your products or services thoroughly. Through lifecycle incentives, you can engage your partners across the entire lifecycle of your customers, i.e. from pre-sales activities like adoption, enablement, etc, to post-sales activities, such as consumption and renewal.

4. Discount-Based Loyalty Program

Under discount-based channel partner loyalty programs, you can have a different incentive plan for each of your partners. Based on their purchase frequency and quantity of orders, you can offer discounts or other benefits. These types of innovative channel partner schemes are easy to understand and are also highly effective. By offering higher discounts for higher quantities, you can motivate them to purchase and sell more.

For example, suppose you deal with different wholesalers with different order frequencies. If the wholesale price of one of your products is Rs. 100, you can sell it to your partners at slightly discounted prices. For less than 100 to 200 units of the product, you can charge Rs. 98 per unit. For 200 to 500 units, you can charge Rs. 95 per unit and for more than 500 units, you can charge Rs. 90 per unit. This is how you can encourage your channel partners to purchase more quantity in order to save more.

5. Outcome-Based Incentive Program

Another great idea to consider is to run an outcome-based channel partner incentive program. These are the funds that you offer your channel partners for performing some desirable actions. Just like sales campaign fund incentives, you can offer outcome-based incentives and clearly define what actions you want them to take. Offering these incentives on a regular basis is an effective way to keep your partners engaged for longer periods of time and constantly motivate them to drive more sales for your business.

6. Partner Rebate Funds

Partner rebate funds are the additional discounts or a form of refund that a company offers its channel partners to increase its profitability. These discounts are not offered to the partners before they make a purchase but are given to them as a refund when they achieve specific sales targets. You can make targets related to sales, customer base, customer engagement, or anything that your company intends to achieve through your channel partners.

7. Channel Partner Infrastructure Funds

The funds that you offer your partners to support their infrastructure costs are known as channel partner infrastructure funds. Your partners might need to make high investments in infrastructure in order to support the activities that drive more sales to your business. You can provide them with the infrastructure funds and motivate your partners to stay loyal along with delivering great services to your end customers.

How To Customize a Channel Partner Loyalty Program for Your Business?

To strengthen your relationships with your channel partners and keep them engaged for longer periods of time, it is essential to run a channel partner loyalty program. However, it seems a bad idea to copy the concept of some other company’s innovative channel partner incentives program and implement it for your business. A program that is highly successful for some other brand might not work well for your business.

A channel partner loyalty program would be successful when you keep your business requirements in consideration and customize the program accordingly. Here are some important points to consider while creating innovative channel partner schemes for your company:

• Analyze your business requirements and find out what objectives you intend to achieve with a channel partner loyalty program.
• Decide whether you want to run a continuous long-term loyalty program or multiple programs to achieve different goals.
• Along with the monetary incentives, also focus on offering non-monetary benefits, such as free access to sales tools, learning programs, certifications, etc.
• Make sure that your incentives or reward programs are easy to understand for your partners.

How RewardPort Can Help?

Being one of the top channel partner program companies, RewardPort can plan and run a customized channel partner loyalty program aligning with your business objectives. From digital rewards to instant rewards, you get a wide range of options to choose from. The rewards are not just the best in quality, but are also affordable as the rewards start from as low as Rs. 10. Taking every detail of your business into account, the team of marketing professionals at RewardPort can help you run a customizable loyalty program for your channel partners.