What happens when you round up innovative brands, agencies, tech partners, and publishers in the same room? Transformational Partnerships.
“Transformational Partnerships” was the theme and motivation behind our latest VIP dinner event held last week in San Francisco. This dinner, part of a global series of events, brought together top tier marketers and technology partners in the partner marketing industry. We began hosting these events two years ago across our prominent regions to help our clients and partners explore new and different ways of working together.
This is a familiar conversation that we hear from brands and advertisers – that innovative, unique business partnerships are being sought out, formed, and often set into motion quickly. Marketers today are thinking very intentionally about their partner channels, and are acting swiftly on opportunities with other brands.
“Traditional barriers to developing partnerships at scale, the heavy lifting that had to be done by finance, business development, and legal teams, have fallen. Suddenly you can put two brands with different products but similar goals in a room, and have a real conversation about how to leverage their shared audience. And that’s what these events are all about, we’ve removed the barriers, now let’s sit down and talk” said Michael McNerney, Senior Director, Strategic Alliances at Performance Horizon.
Present at the event were a senior level group representing foundational verticals such as retail, travel, finance, and technology. The result was not only a discussion about the current evolution taking place in the affiliate industry, but also the creative approaches to partner programs that brands and tech partners are building.
Although specific discussions are always kept confidential, a few general themes that came up in conversation were;
- How the partner marketing industry is expanding to encompass more forms of collaboration and mutual interest
- How partnerships can be leveraged to accelerate brand growth
- How data and in particular, real-time data, are unlocking new business opportunities
- How direct relationships with a partner can drive new forms of optimization
- How mobile is changing the partner space and why mobile tracking is increasingly critical
Transformational Partnerships are inherently more integrated, strategic, and unique than traditional programs. They need to be managed by a platform that with strong capabilities and scale in order to support large enterprises. Brands are increasingly seeking one-to-one relationships with their partners, direct integrations such as an API, better tracking and extensive reporting functions.
At Performance Horizon, this is our entire focus. To help brands and advertisers develop bigger, dynamic and more impactful partner programs.
Are you interested in expanding the partner channel for your company in partnership with other top brands? We are hosting a series of these events with marketers and advertisers around the world and we would love to hear from you.
