What if Gandalf the Grey, Samwise “Sam” Gamgee, and Frodo were your partners in your campaign’s quest to keep the powerful One Ring out of the wrong hands? Gandalf would be your ultimate “introducer,” (first touch) sending everyone on their pursuit, Sam (and Merry, Pippin, etc.) would be “influencers” (any point in the conversion) in the campaign’s outcome, and Frodo, at the cost of his finger to Gollum, your epic, self-sacrificing closer (last touch). But who gets credit for the victory—could any one of them have done it alone? What is the proper attribution for the Ring’s destruction?
Partner Insights Contribution Report: From Introducers to Influencers to Closers and Beyond
Impact’s Partner Insights provides you with a collection of insightful reports designed to give you a deeper look into the kinds of value your partners are really driving—and show you how those partners interact with each other and with your other marketing channels. Partner Insights’ Contribution Report offers you a unique opportunity to definitively know how often each of your partners acts as an introducer, closer, or influencer, and you don’t have to go on an epic journey to find out. What’s more, you can also discover how often each partner provides the only touchpoint in a conversion path (if they are a solo actor) and how often each partner was credited with the conversion (out of all the times it was involved in the conversion path).
By breaking out each of your partner’s participated conversions into “Introducer,” “Influencer,” and “Closer,” this report shows how often your partner contributes value at each point in the conversion funnel. The Contribution Report compiles the results into a single column so you can easily see who should be credited with their role in your marketing campaign. When you look at the credited column, you can see how often that partner is paid for a conversion toward which they contributed.
Why is the credited column important? In combination, the data points in the “% CREDITED” column let you see whether partners are being compensated in proportion to the actual value they drive. Let’s look at an example to see how this works.
Example: If Partner A is on a last-click contract, but acts as an Introducer 70% of the time (the Gandalf of the team), they are likely being paid very little relative to the actual value they are producing. Conversely, if Partner B (also on a last-click contract) generally acts as a Closer (your Frodo), they are likely being paid for almost all of the value they produce.
How would you change this setup to optimize your relationship? You might choose to set up a participation bonus for Partner A, which will reward them for any conversion they contribute to, even if they don’t get the last click. If you want to avoid increasing your overall payout, you can then add a payout adjustment in your contract to reduce the payout by the amount of the participation bonus whenever that bonus is paid.
Option: You could also switch Partner A to a first-click contract to better reward their contributions and incentivize them to continue their valuable top-of-funnel work.
Partner Insights makes it easy for you to tell and attribute the contributions of each of your partners, without the Gollums of the world taking credit for it. All the members of the Fellowship of the Ring share credit in delivering the ultimate goal. Ultimately, the Contribution Report is a way of validating which of the various members of the team deserve the kudos.
Get started today making your partnerships stronger by contacting your CSM or one of our marketing specialists here.
