The Ultimate B2B SaaS Guide to Enhance your SaaS Partnership Program

As a SaaS business company, it is necessary to do more than serve the customers your products and services. SaaS marketing is essential to achieving success. A reasonable SaaS marketing plan is vital to improve brand reach. Therefore, building a SaaS partner program is required to garner better success. Building partnerships is one of the crucial aspects of successful SaaS businesses. These coalitions can fetch more profitable revenue streams for a business. 

This article will enhance your B2B SaaS partnership program's success. Knowing what they are, why they are important, types of SaaS partner programs, engaging with partners, and building a plan.

What are B2B SaaS Partnership Programs

Depending on your business goals, your partner program needs could vary. Your partner ecosystem is a place where working professionals build relationships. The associations will align sales, product, strategy, marketing, and more to construct successful roadmaps. The people you connect with are the future of SaaS. A partner program's primary goal is to deliver value and business opportunities to the company.

Why are B2B SaaS Partner Programs Important?

The main benefits a B2B SaaS partner program offers are:

• Leverage the social ladder of some well-known brands
• Upscale your marketing efforts
• Improve sales narrative

A SaaS partner program empowers both parties involved. It is a relationship in which both parties need real rewards. The success of these partnerships lies in understanding goals and metrics and forging connections to achieve them.

Related Reading; Best SaaS Affiliate Platforms

Types of SaaS B2B Partner Programs

There are numerous kinds of SaaS partner programs in B2B. The main posts on which these connections comprise:

• Resource availability
• Your goals
• Time availability
• Size of the SaaS company
• Investment power

However, these are the expected kinds of SaaS B2B partnership agendas.

Referral Program

Referral programs are essential SaaS partnerships. In this, your service users refer others to check out your services in exchange for a commission payment by referral or affiliate fee. The fees can appear in multiple formats:

• Percentage of sales
• Credits
• Coupons

You can deliver more profitable results from loyal customers to promote your service. Referral programs may result in better customer acquisition, reduced costs of investment, and more trust.

Affiliate Programs

• Receive sales percentage via affiliate links
• Unnecessary to be an active user of the service
• Requires time and resources to succeed

Related Reading; how B2B SaaS and Agencies utilize Affiliate Programs.

Referral Programs

• Obtains discounts, credits, or coupon codes concerning service
• You must be an active service user 
• Less resource-dependent

Incentive Programs

Knowing the right incentives to benefit customers is essential. Would they prefer a discount on their subscription expenses? An upgrade to a better package? A free month? Ultimately you also must consider how these programs benefit your business. Broadcast your referral program to get more exposure.

Integration Partner Programs

B2B SaaS integration collaborations effectively allow two services to work collectively to create convenient and user-friendly services. The key benefits of integration partnerships include-

• Enhancing service value
• Improving the reach for a fresh audience
• Opportunities for co-marketing efforts

Whom should you partner with?

• Knowledge partners
• Service providers
• Product platforms
• Complementary agencies
• Strategic companies

Why Build a Partner Program for your SaaS Businesses?

A B2B SaaS partner program is more than a company's money-making stream. You can increase your brand's identity as a thought leader through a good rapport with partners. The creation of better content improves event participation and brand awareness. Here is why you should build a partner program

• Indirect sales channels
• Amplified growth
• Mutual values
• Better measure attributes
• Better brand association
• Increased revenue
• Extended network
• Enhanced product portfolio

How to Create a B2B SaaS Partnership Model?

Many top B2B SaaS businesses such as HubSpot generate 40% of their B2B SaaS partnership program revenue? Below we will discuss the primary elements of a SaaS B2B model for partnerships.

Strategy

The critical aspect is to note down the objectives of the company. Finalize the partner journey, the ideal partner profile, the goals you want to achieve, keep track of your dreams, and complete your benefit grids. Gauge the analytics such as clicks and signups. It would help document integrations and additional requirements, create program rules for partners, etc.

Alignment

Aligning the sales and marketing strategies for members will assist in your business's objectives. Listening to and updating information for partner teams is necessary to align these teams' goals. It would be best to map your measures by enclosing informative resources and sales material in your messaging. Putting your clients at the base of this is the key to a great SaaS partnership.

Enablement

Your work starts bearing fruit when you have begun empowering the partnership. When referring and onboarding your product by affiliates occurs, the process has started. You must cross-check the references and create an environment that partners will love. Using metric-based KPIs will help track how you are doing. Sending weekly reports will also help. 

Another thing to do is create a customized newsletter. Your bulletin must inform your audience of all changes and incentives that may happen. Also, consider integrating a system where all communications offer the best support.

SaaS Partner Program Essentials

Before connecting your business with a partnership program, you must make sure these deals are profitable for both companies. When you have found a program that will enable both companies to benefit, you should also look at these to provide the best SaaS partnership experience.

SaaS Brand Awareness

This aspect is crucial, especially for an affiliate marketing newbie who wants a smooth start.

Brand recognition facilitates the reliability of the business. The better-recognized brands have an easier time selling a given product. Naturally, becoming a successful affiliate is much more effortless if you promote well-established and highly trusted brands and products.

So how do we measure brand recognition when you are unknown to a specific niche?

It relies on the business model as metrics deviate wildly between B2C and B2B businesses.

Anyway, before you enter any affiliate program, thoroughly investigate who your affiliate is and if their reputation can make or break your eventual outcomes.

Customers and Revenue Scale

First, study how many patrons the company of interest has and how many countries they work. Then, confront these numbers and see how much a particular vendor is above or below your standards. The research will help you separate the wheat from the chaff.

Testimonials

Please pay attention to testimonials and reviews to learn about their culture. Do this product, and its brand generate any strong sentiment or engagement? The more testimonials, favorable mentions, and views appear in the community, the better.

Positive reviews and testimonials are expressive of the product's quality and reputation. Positive thoughts are precisely what you, as an affiliate marketer, should be looking for when evaluating every affiliate program on the table.

Social Presence

Also, please take a look at the merchant's social media profiles. Review their social presence in niche-relevant communities. Discover how substantial a social following the vendor has assembled and how involved these supporters are in these social media sites.

SaaS Partnership Cookie Length

Another crucial detail you must be aware of is the affiliate cookie life. While reviewing affiliate marketing programs, be mindful of how they create their cookies.

Let us first explain what an affiliate cookie is precise. A cookie is a small file kept on the user's computer. The use of cookies identifies the site's visitors. In affiliate marketing, cookie use tracks affiliate referrals.

Most significantly, such cookies have an end date.

Basically, a cookie's lifespan images how long the future shopper who clicks through your affiliate link might make you a profit through a shared campaign.

For illustration, let us say a merchant places a 30-day cookie period. The structure suggests affiliates have precisely 30 days to lock in a deal. When this time has expired, you will not see any profit.

However, if a purchase occurs within this period, you are qualified for a commission. The tracking could also apply to all recurring commissions. Remember: the cookie expiration date determines if it's a "deal or no deal."

Thus, the longer the expiration date is more suitable for the affiliate marketer. As a result, sellers and affiliates often ask about the optimal cookie lifetime.

Sellers determine the optimal cookie expiration date according to their requirements.

For instance, the average duration base could be between the first visit and purchase. Also, sellers occasionally fear a more extended cookie period may result in considerably higher payouts for affiliates. Often this is why they limit the cookies' lifespan.

On the other hand, research conducted by AM Navigator suggests that it does not matter whether the service provider uses 30, 45, or 120 days as the cookie expiration date. However, affiliate marketers find it essential. Therefore, to attract the right affiliate marketers with a more extended cookie expiration date to encourage cooperation and secure mutual appeal.

The affiliate program is more partner-friendly with a more prolonged affiliate cookie's life.

Since the briefest permitted cookie period is 30 days for affiliates, we recommend you examine affiliate programs that offer a prolonged cookie life.

SaaS Partnership Commission % and Length

Needless to say, increased commission rates are necessary for your perfect affiliate program. It is even more profitable if such a lucrative commission is routine and fixed.

Therefore, it makes sense to unite and market SaaS affiliate programs. Especially since SaaS products are in high demand. Growing numbers of entrepreneurs are transitioning their corporations to on-demand cloud software.

Being an affiliate marketer who performs in the SaaS industry can be a prosperous way to add a stable revenue stream.

So, depending on the product or service sold through the affiliate link, your income can vary and potentially get significantly higher.

As for Reditus, your commissions depend on the frequency of customers a prospect adds to the seller's payment plan. 

SaaS Partnership Insights in Tracking

We are all visual beings. Namely, we purchase items with our eyes.

This uncomplicated reality makes it crucial to employ only high-quality marketing aids in your affiliate campaigns. As a result, sophisticated marketing materials form another essential component of an ideal affiliate program.

The duty to create a storage of marketing materials rests on the seller. They should supply you with all the mechanisms and visual resources to assist you in hitting the ground running.

A promising affiliate program provider should simplify the procedure and make the affiliate's process more manageable.

What support does the affiliate require to be triumphant?

While the affiliate marketer's input is essential, and there is usually much work involved in creating and promoting powerful affiliate marketing campaigns, vendors should meet their partner's halfway by providing an excellent marketing framework.

And affiliate marketing resources include:

• Content - product depictions and call to action (CTA)
• Creatives - approved visual materials such as well-optimized banners, email templates, screenshots, widgets, and more resources.
• Affiliate Program Updates - Affiliates should always be up-to-date about any changes made to the partner panel, the affiliate program itself, and current promotions or contests.
• Guidelines display how the affiliate can operate, promote a particular product, and advertise the brand 
• Automation Tools - such as API or data feed to ensure affiliates they're advertising the latest products and offers on their website.

Whether you leverage banners, widgets, screenshots, logos, or copy in your affiliate marketing activity, they should all be of superior quality and the broad assortment in each affiliate program.

Bottom Line

SaaS partnership programs can become complex. You ought to be attentive and automate as much as possible. Since SaaS channels are usually extensive, they can be challenging to navigate. Partnering with the proper groups can limit or eliminate many of the challenges. You will see increased earnings, information exchange, improved networking, better brand presence, and technology improvement.

Meet the author

Joran Hofman

Back in 2020 I was an affiliate for 80+ SaaS tools and I was generating an average of 30k in organic visits each month with my site. Due to the issues I experienced with the current affiliate management software tools, it never resulted in the passive income I was hoping for. Many clunky affiliate management tools lost me probably more than $20,000+ in affiliate revenue. So I decided to build my own software with a high focus on the affiliates, as in the end, they generate more money for SaaS companies.