Increasing partnerships with user research which impacted marketing and sales

Tools

Userinterviews.com, Lookback, Plectica

Role

Lead UX Researcher

Timeline

05/1/23 - 5/30/23

Team

Myself, Head of Marketing

As Frameable started to search for a new partnership, the Growth Team needed help conducting user research to better understand channel partners' needs and behaviors to successfully secure a partnership.

My role was Lead UX Researcher. I worked with the Head of Marketing to understand the challenges the Growth Team was facing. This project was a high-priority study based on two future business objectives: successfully land a partnership with a partner to boost product sales and prepare for an upcoming conference targeting the channel partner industry.

Research Goals

The research goals were determined by the Head of Marketing and myself. The research goals were simple:

Identify what is needed to target Channel Partners
Understand the behaviors and needs of Channel Partners seeking new partnerships

Methods

The suggested research method for this study (by the Head of Marketing) was to deploy a survey targeting Channel Partners. I decided against a survey because we were seeking to understand more complex behaviors that could not be uncovered in a survey, we needed a qualitative method.

Another suggestion was to target Channel Partners on a professional networking site and incentivize them to have a 30-minute conversation. This method was tried and was unsuccessful. We gave this method an attempt due to the niche industry of Channel Partners.

The last and ultimately successful method was recruiting from a participant recruiting platform (userinterviews.com) where we were able to target professionals with keywords related to their job titles. This was the most successful method and worth the extra wait (to find the right candidates) and recruiting fees.

*These three methods were planned, executed, and ultimately successful all in one weeks time.

Recruitment Criteria and Process

Before launching the study, I worked with the Head of Marketing and the Sales Team to understand their ideal partnership. I gathered email evidence from the CEO, who actively participates in outbound sales activities, to understand his approach to communicating with potential partners. I studied those contacts' LinkedIn profiles to help craft the research persona.

In addition to working with the internal team and reviewing professional profiles, I conducted my own preliminary research on the channel partner industry. My personal research included articles and YouTube videos on channel partnerships. I was able to learn the language, processes, and additional job titles associated with the industry. From this research, I was able to broaden my targeting for the recruitment phase and craft professional and relevant screener and interview questions.

Targeted job titles

Channel Marketing Manager
Partnership Manager
Systems Integrator
Strategic Partnerships Manager
Channel Partner
Chief Executive Officer/Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operations Officer
Managed Services Manager
Microsoft Licensing Specialist
Licensing Solutions Partner (LSP)
Value Added Resellers (VAR)
Microsoft Solutions Partners

Example screener questions

1/3

Interview Process

I conducted four 30-minute interviews with a variety of partnership professionals.

Sample questions:

Please tell us a little bit about your role and what you do.
On average, how big is your portfolio of clients? How many clients do you service or support?
How often are you searching for new partnership opportunities with new ISVs?
- When you're searching for new ISVs or solutions, where do you go?
- What keywords do you use?
- What conferences do you go to?
You mentioned on your screener survey you have experience selling products that integrate with Microsoft.
- What is the most popular Microsoft product you sell?
- How many E3 or E5 licenses do you have in your company’s or your own book of business? Just a range is fine, whatever you can share that gives us a sense of scale
- How many of your customers buy from you but implement themselves, vs those buy from you and need your implementation support?
What kind of things have deterred you from pursuing a partnership with an ISV that had an interesting solution to a relevant problem you were trying to help your clients solve? Why did the partnership with that ISV not go through?
What are some things you would expect from an ISV’s marketing team or collateral?
What kind of advice would you give independent software vendors in today's market?
- Last few minutes move to the partner website for quick feedback.
  - Partner Website
  - Partner Guide
  - Partner / Lead sign up forms
  - https://frameable.com/test-partner

In addition to the questions above, most conversations led into new directions which produced unexpected insights.

ex. One participant went as far as to share what they thought was above and beyond behavior from an ISV. This gave the company an advantage when it came time to scale the partner program internally.

Debrief Process

After each session, I would debrief with my interview partner to review our takeaways and compare feedback.

I was the only staff in charge of analyzing the data. My process included watching the recorded sessions, taking notes for each session separately, and then clustering common themes to form insights.

Outputs and Deliverables

Once all the data had been synthesized, I created a presentation with top insights and secondary information, including more details if needed.

Top insights were:

Every partnership journey is different. The Frameable team needed to be able to customize the partnership materials, roadmaps, and relationships.
When seeking out a new partnership, it's expected to have a 1-pager, which Frameable did not yet have.
The marketing site language needed to feel more inclusive towards the audience reading the partner page. Partners wanted to see language around "we" and "building together".

Additionally, I was able to create the user journey from the data collected to provide a visual asset for the team. This journey map identifies key moments in the partner’s journey that the company could improve.

Impact

The overall impact of this research was very positive and has since influenced the marketing collateral and partner-facing website content to attract additional partnerships.

The Growth Team created the company’s first-ever one-sheeter and sell sheet. The creation of this asset led to a lead list of one-thousand emails from its debut at a tech conference.
The partner webpage was iterated on 4 separate times. User feedback was used to modify copy, overall messaging, graphics, and partner application forms.
The sales and marketing team used these insights to pivot their approach to partnership marketing and communications.
- Insights informed partner-focused email copy resulting in outperforming industry email averages. Industry average open rate is 22%, we performed at 35%. Industry average click through rate is 3%, we performed at 11%.