Last month, our team had the opportunity to attend the first ever Digital Experience Intelligence (DXI) conference hosted by our partner, FullStory. The event brought together digital experience leaders and trailblazers to connect and share their passion for all things DXI.
After three action packed days, we came home filled with ideas and tons of excitement for the new platform features that will make it even easier for our customers to drive strategic growth. At Roboboogie, we help our customers leverage the full power of FullStory through training and enablement, implementation support and more.
Hear all about our team’s experience at the conference and what got them jazzed about the future of DXI.
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Last month, our team flew 2,700 miles to the “City of Magic” to attend the inaugural Catalyst conference . While Miami is typically known for its breathtaking beaches and vibrant nightlife, it’s also a budding hub for tech and innovation. Now back in Portland, our team is ready to unpack our trip and spread some Miami magic to our work! Hint: we had yachts of fun!
What is Catalyst?
Catalyst is a two-day conference for partnership professionals at technology companies. The event is packed with workshops and training sessions, networking opportunities, and thought leadership from some of the brightest minds in the partnership space. The event is organized by Partnerships Leaders, an industry association focused on building a community where the best in partnerships, channel and ecosystems come together to share knowledge, connect and grow their programs. They also throw amazing yacht parties!
Friends, new and old.
We had the opportunity to hang with our partner pals over at FullStory and gush about our love of their powerful digital experience analytics tool. As their Elite partner, we’re experts at helping FullStory customers onboard and utilize the platform to its full potential. Our team uses it daily to help turn user pain points into conversion opportunities through our systematic approach to AB testing.
We also had the pleasure of meeting new friends from Crossbeam, Reveal, and Allbound, tools that enable partnership teams to efficiently build and optimize their partner programs.
We also connected with Qualtrics, an experience management platform focused on uncovering insights that lead to a better user experience.
Three Key Takeaways
Partner up!
Partnerships are more important and impactful than ever. Technology partnerships exist to help organizations implement and optimize the tools they use. We heard from the biggest and best technology players that good partners are invaluable and can be counted on for enablement services, driving adoption, and creating sales opportunities. Throughout Catalyst we talked with technology companies working to optimize their partnership programs.
Champion partners internally.
The importance of aligning internal teams around the value of partnerships was a common theme throughout the conference. Partnerships should be viewed as an extension of an organization’s internal team; they go together like peanut butter and jelly. Below are our quick tips for a successful partner relationship:
Provide internal education around the vision and goals for working with partners.
Build a dedicated partnership team and clarify its mission.
Attribute partner-influenced revenue to demonstrate the impact of partnerships.
Make sure everyone on the team understands how partners can help them reach their goals.
Let’s do this together.
Building a partnership based on mutual gain is a recipe for long term success. It’s important to nurture the relationship and acknowledge that giving is just as valuable as receiving.
Do your homework. Research your partner’s business, KPIs, goals, and customers. Keep those insights top of mind as you navigate through the relationship.
Set clear expectations upfront and practice open communication throughout the partnership.
Deliver clear and comprehensive examples of how you can add value to your partner and their customers.
Remember that a partnership is a team effort. You share a common goal of creating a better experience for the customer, and when this happens, everyone wins.
The Future of Partnerships at Roboboogie
We’re excited to be a part of the Partnership community and look forward to attending Catalyst again next year. As for what we’ll be doing at home – Armed with the knowledge and insights we gained at Catalyst, we look towards building strong relationships with our future partners and supercharging our existing ones. Want to learn more about our partner program? Let’s chat!
Partnership programs focused entirely on annual recurring revenue (ARR) and lead sharing are missing out on a significant opportunity to increase customer lifetime value (CLV). It’s true, marketing agencies and consultancies are great lead sources as trusted advisors–particularly for clients targeted by data, analytics and marketing SaaS companies. However, there’s a much bigger partnership opportunity for technology companies willing to build collaborative agency partnerships, which reach beyond reseller and referral programs.
Roboboogie has evolved and refined its partner offering for over ten years. We’re fiercely committed to nurturing deep and meaningful partnerships founded in the basic principles of synergistic relationships and lead sharing. We take this further with our preferred partners into co-selling, onboarding, managed services, customer success and expansion.
The following list highlights engagement opportunities Roboboogie brings to SaaS technologies as an agency partner.
Lead-gen and Reselling – Lead-gen and reselling is number one on our list. Sharing leads and connections requires both teams to have a deep understanding of each other’s products and services, including an accurate awareness of scope and reach, proportionate to respective target markets. Don’t overlook smaller technologies or boutique firms, which can be more strategic and willing to collaborate on more creative engagements.
Co-Selling – At Roboboogie, we made a decision to only partner with technologies that make our client engagements more effective and efficient, thus becoming authentic third party advocates for your tech. Tools like A/B Tasty and FullStory make excellent partners and have helped simplify projects for our clients and our internal team. Put us in a room and we’ll sing your praises!
Implementation and Integration – Our work requires us to take a broad look across the technology stack and various business use cases and applications for technologies. We often have visibility into which technologies play well together and an awareness of key integration points. We also staff skilled engineers, so it’s a great place to involve us to identify and advocate for integrations and make those connections for clients quickly and cost-effectively.
Training – Before any partnership, we become experts in your platform with deep hands-on, real world application experience. By enabling Roboboogie staff to have on-the-job training–often in roles that mirror those in an organization–we can relate to the specific workflow, challenges and objectives particular business units face. For example, if a FullStory client wants to understand how the tool can optimize their A/B testing strategy, we can show them. It’s what we do every day. Roboboogie’s technology consultants leverage our experience and knowledge to help your clients understand how to get the most out of your tool, unlock strategic insights and drive adoption.
Adoption – Adoption takes time and intention (and a village). Throughout onboardings we always ask “What is your adoption strategy?”. This can reveal whether the client understands the difference between training and real adoption. Adoption is critical to CLV, but we often see folks who expect their team will simply love the tool and start using it, without any plan, leadership or direction. We are able to drive adoption by training, supporting, and working in the platform with our clients. This ensures the client’s ROI and lays the groundwork for retention and expansion.
Managed Services – Offering to manage technology or digital transformation programs using your technology is our “bread and butter”. There is a strong ROI case for your clients looking to get the most of their investment by working with dedicated experts. We work hard to actively up-sell and cross sell your technology and its capabilities, providing an insider voice for your technology at every opportunity. Because we’re spending more time with the client and touching more areas of the business, it’s no wonder we’re a frontline asset for growing accounts.
Customer Success – As a digital transformation agency, we only succeed when we make performance improvements. That’s why we’re so selective about partnering with the best technologies, which continually drive results for our clients. We have a vested interest in making sure our clients purchase those technologies and use them as effectively as possible. Focusing on our clients’ success allows us to have conversations that impact activation, retention and growth. It also empowers our team to provide real-time support for your tech, solve current challenges and educate users on the benefits of new features.
Looking beyond ARR to form meaningful and lucrative relationships with agencies takes time and a commitment to building trust and understanding. However, we believe it pays off both in the short term by setting up successful relationships and in the long term by growing and retaining accounts.
Start building these deep and meaningful relationships so you can focus on making your technology the most valuable asset to your clients.
