Choosing a PRM or Tracking Setup (Sunir Shah, CEO of AppBind)

** If you are not interested in cookie-based 'affiliate' tracking links in your program (there are good reasons why not to bother with these as Sunir mentions), and you are on a tight budget for this program, check out our Airtable PRM - it's very simple, but has what you need to get the job done: 

https://airtable.com/embed/shrW96BNcmE87rBBx?backgroundColor=purple

Password: partnerprograms

Intro: 

Instructor: Sunir Shah, CEO of AppBind and President of the Cloud Software Association

Takeaways

  1. What justifies using a PRM vs an Affiliate Tracking-Only vs CRM (UTM-based) solution
  2. Issues and expenses around channel conflict and payouts
  3. Who we suggest looking into for various budgets/needs
  4. Pros and cons of each tool we reviewed

Greatest hits

  • Working with sales: Channel conflict with sales, CRM integration
  • Referral links, landing pages, lead registration portals, mobile referral link tracking
  • Multiple commission structures for multiple partner programs
  • Payouts
  • Globalization: language localization, payouts, taxes
  • Partner enablement
  • Email them
  • Integrate with your ESP
  • Collateral storage
  • Reselling
  • Billing
  • Provisioning
  • Account management
  • Account transfer
  • Access to partner network. Who are they? How big? What marketing opportunities?

Potential issues if you do not use a third party to track partners: 

IF YOU DO NOT INVEST ENOUGH CAUTION: 

E.g. payouts = overpaying partners because of the lack of tracking 

  • Highly-complex systems over multiple partner types
  • No central attribution system 
  • Double commission
  • Excel user errors
  • Being pressured into compensating two partners for the same client
  • Pull a report > send to finance >> payouts. No checks/balances and huge disconnect between 

IF YOU OVER-INVEST 

Anxiety of your bosses over finances...

Anxiety from your agencies over your team trying to force them into your expensive system...


Crawl, Walk Run Partner Management Stack

  1. Use your CRM + Sheets + UTMs 
  2. Affiliate tracking - leaddyno, tapfiliate, ambassador
  3. PRM with referral links, commissions, payouts - PartnerStack, PartnerPortal.io, Allbound, Impact.
  4. Scaling to enterprise (adding brand/integration and co-selling partners) - Workspan, AppDirect, Crossbeam, Allbound…


Complete and Continue