Channel Incentive Program

How to Find the right time for a channel partner loyalty program?

Running a channel partner program can be a faster way to capture new customers and expand the brand footprint. However, there are other benefits of a channel partner program that you need to consider. The first of these is retention. According to a 2015 study by Aberdeen Group, channel partners have a 17% higher customer retention rate than non-channel partners.

You should also consider the costs of acquisition versus retention. A customer you acquire through a channel partner is likely to offer a higher LTV than a direct customer.

With the constant proliferation of new marketing channels, it’s essential to work with partners in a collaborative way. Striking that balance between business growth and rewarding the channel partners can be challenging.

What is a channel partner loyalty program?

A channel partner loyalty program is a program designed to encourage loyalty among a company’s channel partners. Channel partners are companies or individuals that help promote and sell a company’s products or services.

Loyalty programs are a way to thank channel partners for their help and to incentivize them to continue working with the company. Typically, channel partner loyalty programs offer rewards points that can be redeemed for discounts, merchandise, or other prizes.

The goal of a channel partner loyalty program is to motivate partners to sell more of a company’s products or services, and to help build long-term relationships with its channel partners. By offering rewards and benefits, the program helps partners feel valued and appreciated, and encourages them to continue doing business with the company.

Why you need a channel partner loyalty program?

There are many reasons why you need a channel partner loyalty program. For one, it helps to build trust and loyalty among your channel partners. This, in turn, leads to improved communication and collaboration between you and your partners.

Additionally, a loyalty program can help to increase sales and grow your business. Channel partners who feel appreciated and valued are more likely to sell more of your products and services.

Finally, a loyalty program can help to improve your brand image and reputation. By offering rewards and incentives to your channel partners, you are showing that you value their business and are willing to invest in their success.

How to build a successful channel partner loyalty program?

A channel partner loyalty program can be a great way to build long-term relationships with your partners and keep them driving for growth. Here are a few tips for building a successful program:

1. Define your goals

What do you hope to accomplish with your program? More sales, more repeat business, more referrals? Make your objectives clear from the start.

2. Choose the right partners

Not all partners are created equal. Look for partners that share your values and are committed to your success.

3. Offer incentives that matter

Your partners are motivated by different things, so offer a variety of incentives that will appeal to different partners.

4. Communicate regularly

Keep your partners updated on your program and let them know how they can participate and benefit.

5. Be flexible

As your program grows, be open to making changes and adjustments based on feedback from your partners.

How to execute your channel partner loyalty program?

There are a few key things to keep in mind when executing a channel partner loyalty program:

1. Keep it simple

The program should be easy to understand and easy to join.

2. Make it valuable

The program should offer partners something that they value, such as exclusive access to new products, early access to promotions, or increased margins.

3. Promote it

Make sure your partners are aware of the program and what they need to do to participate. Use email, social media, and face-to-face interactions to get the word out.

4. Be responsive

Be quick to answer any questions partners have about the program. This will make them feel appreciated and supported.

5. Celebrate successes

Be quick to answer any questions partners have about the program. This will make them feel appreciated and supported.

When partners reach certain milestones, make sure to celebrate their achievements. This will keep them motivated and engaged in the program.

Become the Pivot for Channel Partners

A channel partner loyalty program must solidify your partnerships, make them last longer, and reduce churn.

Building a channel partner loyalty program is not an easy task. There are several factors to consider before starting a program, and each channel partner and program will be different.

A loyalty program is not just a program that gives your customers rewards when they purchase your products. It’s more than that, it is a way to enhance your relationship and build trust with your customers.

Loyalty programs are a great way for companies to reward their customers for their continued patronage. Customers are usually enticed to participate in a loyalty program by the prospect of earning points, miles, or other types of rewards that can be redeemed for tangible prizes. These programs usually come with a set of rules that govern how and when rewards can be redeemed. The rules can vary from one loyalty program to the next and understanding those rules will help you determine the best time to launch a loyalty program.

How Covid 19 has changed the channel incentive strategies

The Novel Coronavirus has impacted almost everything, right from people’s lives to businesses to economies. According to the IMF, the global economy is expected to shrink by over 3 per cent in 2020 – the steepest slowdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s. These are indeed unusual times. Despite all this, there are brands who have accepted the events and taken it all in their stride. These brands are doing amazingly well with their channel strategies too.

Let’s look at what changes are recommended to be done in your channel incentive strategies due to this pandemic, and how you can benefit from them.

• Your channel partners, customers and employees are most likely distressed.
• Don’t let their morale go down.
• Create an ecosystem to uplift them.
• Try to meet their needs.
• Guide them about the safe and best practices that can be implemented to ease the operations.
• Let them know that the brand is with them in this together.
• Hold joint webinars, virtual events to motivate them.

Brands should consider suspending all non critical events and sticking with only the necessary ones, through digital medium, preferably.

“According to research conducted by Qualtrics, nearly 70 per cent of people in India believe it is important for brands to take care of their employees and customers and they should not take advantage of the crisis to maximise profits.”

Keeping short term targets is a good strategy during this crisis. Brands should work in conjunction with their teams and partners to understand their priorities, both core and short term functions. These should not be imposed on them instead should be suggested by them. These functions should be easily achievable. The completion of such functions will itself enable a sense of achievement among all the involved  members.

Sticking to channel incentive strategies based on performance would not be such a good plan for now

Brands would need to be flexible, and sensitive towards their channel partners and employees. Also they should not limit the benefits to only performers, this is the time to be inclusive and empathic towards everybody.

Design tailored initiatives for small and medium sized partners

These initiatives could contain solutions such as digital assets, guidelines for safe engagements, tutorials to educate them some digital techniques and suchlike. Brands who are doing so are being praised for passing the initiatives to their channel partners and employees, and needless to say are winning minds and hearts.

Maintain regular communication with the partners and the employees

The study by Qualtrics suggests that Indians want brands to communicate with them. Around 50 per cent of the respondents said their trust in the brands they regularly engaged with has increased. The sound of the communication should not be tone-deaf but empathic.

Drive positive engagements and seek continuous feedback

The engagement practices have changed now. There are rewards which can be used at home, aka At-home Rewards. Rewards like Digital Entertainment vouchers, online learning vouchers, online shopping vouchers, and so on are getting quite hit now.

RewardPort specializes in loyalty marketing programs, corporate loyalty card, dealer incentive programs, dealer loyalty, channel incentive, distributor incentive program, B2B loyalty programs, customer loyalty cards & marketing partner programs. Get a free consultation today.

Effective Channel Incentive Ideas for 2025

Driving indirect sales or sales from external teams can be quite tedious and difficult. The difficulty lies in holding your employee’s attention and being constantly flooded with products and programs from other parties, it gets tougher, especially when it comes to making your agenda align with their requirements! To capture their engagement, vendors offer a variety of channel partner incentive programs. 

Why does it work? It’s because incentives have always been a driving force for generating results in every field. Based on research from the Incentive Research Foundation, it was found that incentives can boost performance by up to 44 percent.

Actual incentives are most commonly performance-based and aim to improve productivity or yield your partner base. Channel incentives are used to reward partners for modifying their behavior and are likely to be null once the behavior is modified or changed. 

This blog is intended to provide a new structure for considering sales incentives that can help you strengthen your partner relationships and improve the overall efficiency of your channel partnerships. To further explain effective channel incentive ideas, it is necessary to understand what a channel incentive denotes. 

What are Channel Incentives?

A channel incentive campaign is an offering made to channel partners to motivate, promote, and encourage a desired or specific type of behavior. It is most often focused on a specific product based on a specific period. The form of such an incentive is usually a bonus or reward that is offered in the form of monetary or some other kind of medium.

Here below are some of the most effective channel incentive ideas to implement in 2025 for successful channel partnerships

1. Channel loyalty through layered incentives

The advantage of tiers and thresholds is their prime focus which is always on growth. The agenda is to track not only how a reseller has performed with a single product in a single transaction, but how they have performed with it through a quarter, months, or years for a better understanding. Ultimately, once a firm reaches a particular threshold, it can become a reliable partner and can leverage that status to increase its rewards.

2. Alignment

A channel incentive program is referred to as an extension of your business’s sales and marketing strategy. It is meant to reflect and drive the venture, communication, and performance that you initially set out to achieve. There are different requirements for every channel loyalty program, and a channel referral program must project the qualification criteria which may be applicable. It is important to ensure that your channel incentives align with your overall marketing strategies and goals.

3. Automation

It is essential to make sure to approve claims and issue rewards promptly. Your channel partners are likely to have a stringent eye on how quickly you respond and initiate matters, so considering making your schemes automated can aid in the seamless and fast flow of data in both ways.

4. Marketing Development funds

MDFs (Marketing Development Funds) are the funds that brands provide their channel partners and dealers to drive sales and run marketing programs. Provide your channel partners with sufficient MDFs, so that they do not face any difficulties in selling your products or services to their customers. Provide them with all the financial assistance they need to market and sell your products locally.

5. Insight and ROI

A channel incentive scheme should be designed in such a way that it helps gather customer data, which can further help you improve your marketing strategy in the future. You can use advanced data analytics tools and techniques to drive meaningful insights from channel partner data. It will help improve channel partner experiences, which will ultimately result in increased ROI.

6. Design and Launch

It is hence, important to realize that design and launch are very essential for the success of your channel sales incentive scheme as it is responsible for defining your ability to run it productively and enabling you to learn and understand what may work for you and what might not!

Strengthen Your Channel Incentive Programs with RewardPort

We at RewardPort have been serving businesses for years and have helped these brands improve their channel partnerships, customer relationships, and overall performance of their business. The marketing experts at RewardPort thoroughly analyze your business needs, channel partner preferences, and other factors to come up with the perfect channel incentive program for your brand. For more information, get in touch with us now!

ICICI Securities Limited – Success Story

How Brick-And-Mortar Retailers Can Beat Ecommerce Price Advantage

The online ecommerce juggernaut may seem invincible, but players like Flipkart, Snapdeal, or Amazon have a major Achilles heel. Research shows that exceptional customer service is the number one factor influencing how much a consumer trusts a company, and 75% of consumerssay they have done business with a company because of positive customer service experienced in the past and the experience with buying process

Retailers hoping to fight online giants will have plenty of ammunition at their disposal if they use this insight to up their in-store game. Brick-and-mortar retailers can counter razor-thin margins offered by ecommerce sites through superior customer service. But first, they have to listen to what shoppers need and want, and use this data to propel their customers beyond the lone factor of low prices.

Here are 6 Strategies  to Beat Ecommerce Price that  May help Conventional Brick and Mortar Store Owners:

Know your customer:

It is now more important than ever for retailers to take a genuine effort in understanding their customers. I’d suggest that you initiate programs that help you know your buyer and his preferences. Some effective ideas include capturing customer data through CRM practices, a loyalty program, social media strategies, etc. Online companies score over conventional store owners, because they know so much about their customers. But with a little imagination and ingenuity, this information can be collected and used effectively. In fact, large retail companies have already started to implement strategies around this idea.

Engage customers:

Large retail companies have data but they have to use this information to communicate and personalize their relationship with their customers. Personal information about buyers is probably the biggest weapon in their arsenal that could help them handle competition from online companies. Retailers, large and small, can use this data to send information about offers, receive feedback and engage customers. With tools like email, SMS, missed call, apps, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, implement such ideas would be a cakewalk.

Blend the good aspects of online and in-store shopping:

Imagine you are the owner of a retail store and a customer checks in asking for a particular material of cloth. Being an earnest businessman, you inform the person that although the material isn’t in stock, you can get it for him in two days time. Problem solved, you’d say? But wait! There’s more that you can do. You can direct this customer to your Facebook page and tell him that he can choose a color of his choice and inbox the preference to your page. You, in turn would see to it that the chosen color is set aside for the customer. This can then continue as a tradition wherein your customer can order from home and yet assure the quality of the product before buying. Another instance where online and offline shopping can be integrated is when retailers blend in-store shopping and online payment. Apple has already marched towards this end. iPhone customers can scan bar codes of products and purchase them through their Apple Pay app.

Enhance the Shopping Experience:

Installing mobile charging pods, keeping children entertained with a separate kids’ play area, matching the customers pace, etc. can go a long way in enhancing customer experience. The last aspect is particularly important. It is more than likely that your in-store customer has already researched about the product before entering your place. He is already aware of the different models available online and has probably chosen your store because yours was the lowest price of all and also because he’d like to be sure about the quality of the product. Understanding such customers and creating a positive experience for them is important.

Service first then sales:

I recently had the misfortune of purchasing a product through a teleshopping network. Whilst everyone in the company was happy to sell me their product, none of them shared the same enthusiasm when I had to complain about the product quality. If I had taken the pain of shopping through a conventional brick and mortar shop, I could at least visit the place and get the problem sorted. But it’s been a month now, and I am yet to speak to a ‘customer relations person’ who could own up to the problem and offer a solution. This is where brick and mortar shops can easily outshine their online counterparts. By demonstrating to your customers that their complaints matter, you’ve not only earned their trust, but also given them the satisfaction that there lies a solution to their problem.

Webrooming:

Webrooming refers to the process of researching products online and then visiting the store to purchase them. A report by Merchant Warehouse estimates that around 69% of customers with a smart phone, webroom. And to put this trend into numbers, Forrester Research estimates that this trend is likely to result in $1.8 trillion in sales by 2017. There are several reasons why customers prefer webrooming as against showrooming. Merchant Warehouse says, 47% of them don’t prefer paying for shipping, 46% wanted to touch and feel the product before buying, 36% of them wanted the store to match the online price and around 37% wanted it to be easy to return the product back to the store if they didn’t like it. So have a great presence online and on social media and run good offers there incentivizing the customer with coupons to use it offline.

Even in the age of online shopping, consumers want to be able to trust retailers before they buy a product. Retailers can take advantage of this factor by keeping customer engagement at the heart of their strategizing.