A partner or integrations marketplace involves a lot of content. Building out and updating each listing can be time-consuming if managed entirely by your partner team. And if you’re doing everything yourself, your partners are in the dark until listings go live.
Your Partner Portal fixes that. You can onboard partners, give them self-serve access to create and update listings, assign and update roles according to their partnership stage, and give them access to api docs, request forms, and other resources to help you work together.
The partner portal makes partnering with tech & SI partners a collaborative effort. And takes the load off you to build a marketplace in a silo.
These are only a few things you can do with your Partner Fleet partner portal. Jump ahead to any learn about any of the following features:
6 portal benefits – for you and your partners
When you invite partners into the partner portal, it allows you to work together towards the same goal. You can give them resources, educate them on your company, the partner program, and the marketplace, and it allows for streamlined processes.
Ultimately, you can get high-value listings live on your marketplace faster – without a lot of extra work. Plus, give your partners key access to get and drive more value.
Here are six things your partners can do in the partner portal to benefit everyone:
- Add rich content to their marketplace listings. Instead of creating every partner listing yourself, invite partners in to add content, upload screenshots and videos, and submit for approval.
- Get onboarded through your program. Onboard new partners and give them the resources they need to learn about your program, get their listing live, submit for approval, go to market, and anything else they’ll need to work with you.
- Access the right resources at the right time. Give partners access to what they need, when they need it. For example, you can offer pending partners security agreements & NDAs plus program info while current partners get links to co-marketing and developer resources.
- See the success of their page. Partners can see analytics on how many people are looking at and interacting with their listing, and report to their team on the success driven from your partnership.
- Manage marketplace-driven leads. Allow partners to manage CTAs, integrate with their CRM or marketing automation tool, add schedulers like Calendly, or simply download a CSV list of leads generated on your marketplace.
- Invite other users without your help. Let your partners get their own team involved by inviting users – with access to manage or simply update listings.
Partner Portal features: A detailed list
Your partner portal is powerful and configurable. Take advantage of the depth of features built into every portal and make it yours.
Depending on how you work with partners on your marketplace, you can offer any of the following in your partner portal.
When your partners log in, they’re shown a resource center with links to anything relevant they may need. You can adjust the content and design on this page according to your branding and the partner’s journey stage.
For example, you could serve agreements & program info to prospective tech partners, add API docs and co-selling info to active tech partners, and offer co-marketing resources to agency partners.
Here are some examples and screenshots of resource centers for different partner levels:
Prospective technology partners
For companies that have applied to be a technology partner, you can give them access to your portal and offer security agreements, NDAs, program information, and links to book a meeting.
Active technology partners
Once approved, you can set technology partners to active status and offer them developer resources like API documentation and co-sell/co-marketing guides and forms.
Agency partners
Your agency partners won’t need the same information as your technology partners. Offer them a different set of resources including marketing content and guides.
These fields and links are 100% customizable and you have an unlimited number of roles available. Your resource guides and onboarding workflows can be as complex or simple as you need them to be for your partner program.
All resources show up on the partner’s dashboard and in the sidebar for easy access:
Enabling your partners to log in and create or update their listings is a key benefit of using Partner Fleet.
If you’ve ever managed partner listings in the past, you know the pain of back-and-forth emails and adding copy updates to developer sprints. All that is in the past.
Now, your partners can request a listing, add content to their listings, submit them to you for approval, and you can deny/approve/edit/publish the listings.
No emails. No developers. No fuss.
Here’s what your partners have access to do from their partner portal:
Manage one or more listings on your marketplace
Your partners can manage as many listings as they have from one login.
Create a new listing or draft and fill out company information
This is how your partners contribute to their listing. By creating a new draft, they can add descriptions, content, media, and anything else you’ve established in your template.
Because of the partner scorecard, they will know exactly what sections are required and get excited every time their score inches towards 100%.
Preview their listing as they make updates
Your partners can regularly review what their listing will look like as they continue to fill in fields on the back end. They’ll have full visibility and can submit to you when they’re happy with the way it looks.
Submit for your approval
After they’ve filled in all sections, your partners can click a button to submit their listing for you to approve. (Their listing won’t go live before you approve.)
But partners can’t send for approval until they’ve filled out all the sections you set as required. So you don’t have to go back to them multiple times asking for updates.
View previous versions and see side-by-side updates
Both you and your partners can look at previous versions of their listing side by side with the new one. Highlighted sections show sections that have changed. You can also revert to a previous version if needed.
In order for your partners to understand key metrics driving success of the partnership, we’ve made analytics available in their accounts.
Partners have a dashboard with page views, category views, and interactions overall + interactions by type. They can filter by timeframe or listing.
Note: Partner analytics are optional. You do not have to give partners access to their page analytics.
Lead management is a huge benefit to you and your partners. After all, a key reason they want to be listed on your marketplace is to get leads from you.
You can offer partners various lead management options on their partner portal, from setting up their CTA copy and action to getting leads into their systems.
Here’s what your partners can have access to do from their partner portal:
Lead CTA choices
Allow up to two CTAs on your listings – one for you and one for your partner. Set yours to be the same on all pages, but through the portal your partners can set up CTAs that work with their processes.
Here’s an example of this in-action on Partner Fleet’s own marketplace.
The person on this page can book a demo with Chili Piper or contact Partner Fleet, depending on why they’re on the marketplace in the first place.
Connect to their CRM, calendar, and marketing automation tool
Leads can be directed to book time on your partner’s scheduler tool or synced into their CRM or marketing automation platform.
Learn more about the different ways your partners can add lead forms and schedulers.
View, update value, and export leads
If your partners need a comprehensive view of all the leads brought in through your marketplace, they can simply look at the leads list. Your partners can update leads with projected revenue values manually and export the full list as a CSV.
Like analytics, lead lists and revenue can help you and your partner understand the value of being on your marketplace.
Note: Through permissions settings you can configure your partner's lead and CTA access that best suit your partner program.
Your partner portal comes with unlimited users. Your partners can invite any of their colleagues and you can set roles and permissions for them to use.
For example, you could create a Partner Administrator account with full access to manage the account, add integrations, and see leads and analytics:
Then you can create a “Listing Creator” role. This user can create and edit listings, but doesn’t have access to manage lead forms, view analytics, fill out forms, or connect integrations.
Your partner admins can invite their team to create listings, but with limited access to other features.
4 Ways to Configure Your Portal Today
Like much of technology, the partner portal has many uses that may not appear obvious when first created. So here are four use cases to inspire you to make the portal better for your partners.
Offer partnership requests
Using this workflow, you can allow prospective partners to request to be added to your marketplace and partner program. You can capture partnership requests in an automated way, build your marketplace with valuable partners, and show that you are truly a platform company – the center tool that others build onto.
Here’s the process for your partners:
- Prospective partner clicks a “Partnership Request” button on your site (or a link you send them via email).
- They fill out a form with information relevant to the potential partnership (company & contact details, customer & ICP overlap, partnership goals, integration & development requirements, etc.).
- You receive the request notification via email. Log in to review and approve or deny the request.
- If you approve, an email will be sent to the partner’s contact with an invitation to the partner portal. Here they’ll have access to details of your partner program, agreements, NDAs, and a link to book a meeting with your team.
No back and forth emails were ever exchanged, and you were able to bring on a new prospective partner while filtering out unideal candidates.
Onboard new technology partners
When new technology partners join your program, lead them through an onboarding process that gives them access to the right resources for every stage of their journey. In the same place they’ll be working on their listing, you can guide tech partners through your systems, limiting access to documents until they’re in the right stage.
Here’s the process for tech partners:
- New technology partners receive an invitation to the partner portal (directly from you or through the process above).
- When they log in, they see whatever agreements need to be signed to start the partnership plus basic information about your partner program. They’re given a form to declare they’ve finished signing all agreements.
- Once the form is approved, they’ll move into the developer resources stage, enabled with API documentation, a form to submit integration requests, and co-marketing/co-selling/GTM resources. Here they’ll also have access to create, edit, and submit their listing for approval.
Onboard new agency partners
Like technology partners, agency partners need education and resources when joining your partner program. But the journey can be slightly different.
Here’s the process for agency partners:
- New agency partners receive an invitation to the partner portal (directly from you or by applying and being approved).
- They’ll log in and see a list of agreements and program docs to read. Give them a list of everything you need them to do, then a form to fill out upon completion.
- Once the form is approved, they’ll get access to create and submit their listing. In their resources will be a full resource list of co-marketing materials, product education, and selling strategies.
Introduce new products or offers to your partners
Once you have all your partners in the partner portal, you can use it to notify them about new offers at any time.
Here’s a process for introducing a new product partners can integrate with:
- Partners receive an email or see an in-app notification that you’ve built a new product that offers integrated capabilities.
- In the dashboard of the portal, your partners see a new resource section about the product: including a product demo, API docs, a new agreement, and anything else they’d need to know.
- They build an integration with your new product.
- Partner is able to update their marketplace listing (or create a new one for the separate product integration) directly in the portal. They submit for approval.
- Once approved, their listing is not only updated with the new integration, but added to a highlight reel promoting the new product at the top of the marketplace.
In this way you can promote new products, get integrations built directly into it, and have listings updated at scale – giving your partners everything they need along the way.
Conclusion
We hope this post has made you realize that the process of working with partners and building out your marketplace is infinitely easier when you use a partner portal. And if you’re using Partner Fleet, hopefully you found new use cases and ways to optimize the portal for your processes.
For help implementing any of these processes for your account, please reach out to our support team.
Interested in seeing how our marketplace platform and portal look from the back end? Book a demo today!
