“Partnerships are key to business success–but only when they’re focused on helping mutual customers be successful.”

Databox’s CEO Pete Caputa wrote those words as he introduced our first 52 partners exactly one year ago.

That mindset drives not only our product, marketing, sales, and support strategy–it drives our business growth, too.

Thousands of agencies have contributed to our roundup posts.

Partners write guest posts on our blog.

They create KPI report templates for our users.

They take the product farther than we could have imagined, allowing us to learn new and different ways to provide more value to our users.

Today we’re rolling out new ways to provide more value to you, our partners, through new and exciting co-marketing opportunities.

We aim to drive more business for our partners, not just leads.

Before I get into the details, let me share a story on how we settled on this new approach.

We recently ran a pilot campaign with Chris Handy, founder at ClosedWon, to see if we could drive more than just leads through a targeted campaign.

Phase 1: Identify the package

ClosedWon offers several different packages for companies looking to implement Drift and increase their leads and sales.

These smaller (or free) packages would act as our content’s anchor point.

(Previously we’d send traffic or leads through our co-marketing initiatives, but the high-barrier of a ‘retainer engagement’ was usually the only way forward. Therefore, very little engagement would happen. These offers make it simple for clients to engage ClosedWon.)

By publishing educational content about Drift, we can create interest in ClosedWon’s Drift implementation package.

Phase 2: Identify the content

I invited Chris Handy of ClosedWon to record a Data Snack, or short video tutorial, sharing one bite-sized tip for implementing and/or improving a Drift strategy.

“Staring at a blank page is tough for me,” Handy said.

To make the whole process of co-marketing easier, we asked him to contribute a bite-sized Data Snack a couple times a month.He recorded this one on improving response time in Drift. I transcribed the post for him using Temi, and from there we had a dynamic post featuring text + video ready to share.

Phase 3. Identify the channels

When the content performs well, we cue up slots in one of three niche monthly newsletters–one for Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Top Content–depending on the subject area of the post.

We also promote through other appropriate channels, too.

In this case, we knew that because Handy had recorded a video, that LinkedIn (in addition to the Databox Blog) would be a great place to launch and promote the content.

After I mixed the video and added the Data Snacks branding to it, I sent the raw video file back to Handy to post to his own LinkedIn account so any engagement and conversation would center around him, not us.

It performed well…

According to Handy, this post alone generated ~25 private messages (separate from the post’s comments) and closed 2 new clients.

“Showing our work publicly serves as the best kind of marketing,” said Handy. “Eight weeks after publishing our first Data Snack, we can track many thousands of dollars in revenue back to clients who first became aware of ClosedWon via this content.”

Would you like to achieve similar results? Here’s the process we’ll follow together:

How to get started

One of the driving forces behind a revamped co-marketing process was to make it easier for you to contribute content.

For some people, like Handy and ClosedWon, that means video. Others hate recording video or find it hard to produce, so a blog post makes much more sense for them.

Regardless of the format, here’s how it will look in two phases:

Phase 1: Creation

1. Get on the content calendar
   1. We’ve created 2 calendar invites for the second and last Thursday of every month. You can be added to one or both of these invites.
   2. These act as reminders, but the second Thursday is the deadline for potential inclusion in that month’s round of newsletters.
   3. Want me to add you to one or both of these calendar invites? Email me at john at databox dot com.
2. Choose the subject matter of your content piece.
   1. A good starting point is any content positioned around our most popular integrations: Google Analytics, HubSpot, Facebook Ads, Google AdWords.
   2. Since we have many companies that use Databox to monitor KPIs from these tools, the content has a higher probability to spread and drive business.
3. Get specific in your area of focus.
   1. Focus on one or two metrics from your chosen subject area and tell a unique story about your approach to setting goals, monitoring, and/or improving that area/metric.
   2. Example: Response time in Drift, bounce rate in Google Analytics, lifecycle stages–like MQLs–in HubSpot, CPC in Facebook Ads, etc.
4. Create the content.
   1. Write a guest blog post, or…
   2. …record a short episode of Data Snacks. (See guidelines here.) or…
5. Direct people to a gateway offer, i.e. a Google Analytics website audit, Facebook Ads optimization workshop, a HubSpot full funnel analysis, etc.
   1. Like Handy of ClosedWon, these could act as a gateway into your more comprehensive service packages later on.
   2. If you need help on this step, feel free to mention that in your email to me (address above.) Happy to help you think this through.

Phase 2: Promotion

Once the content is live, Databox will promote via:

1. The Databox Blog, roughly 23k subscribers.
2. One of our 3 monthly niche newsletters (>15k subscribers each.)
   1. Google Analytics newsletter
   2. HubSpot Newsletter
   3. Top Content Newsletter
3. Social media
4. Product lead nurturing
   1. For content that aligns well with a specific use case (data source, metric, jobs-to-be-done) of our users, we’ll also promote this content via lead nurturing vehicles like email and in-app messaging.
   2. This provides unprecedented access to a large user base that’s interested in the exact content and/or services you’re offering.

How to get on the co-marketing content calendar

As of publication, we have several partners slotted in for the bi-monthly reminders.

We’re looking to add 5 partners per month.

It’ll be first come, first serve with preference going to Databox Premier Partners.

Interested in contributing or chatting more about these possibilities?

Send me an email.

Excited to work more closely with you.

Talk soon.