So far, we’ve talked about defining your objective, selection and segmentation of receivers, medium and message. In this the last part of this topic, we’ll talk about repetition and frequency.
Response
When you deliver call to action, then you must also have in mind a desired response both in terms of:
- Action – What do you want the receiver to do:
- Medium – How do you want them to respond?
By implication, if you are going to communicate and any communication must have a call to action then you must plan for the response and consider how you will:
- Receive it
- Monitor it
- Report upon it
- Act upon it
In practice, this means content creation within your portal. It means making sure that the information or functionality exists within your portal to easily satisfy the call to action, to act upon it and to capture the interaction resulting from it.
Repetition and Frequency
Whether you send out weekly updates, monthly newsletters or quarterly bulletins, consider carefully how often your partners want to hear from you. It is important that you consider how many vendors are contacting them daily and how many different communications they are likely to receive and want to receive. Consider conducting research amongst your partner community before deciding for yourself. The results may differ substantially! We think that communicating more that once per week is dangerous because it increases the likelihood substantially of your messages being:
- Ignored
- Read selectively
- Categorized as “Junk Mail” and never read again
Communicate sparingly and ensure that what you have to say is worth saying and interesting to your audience. However, if you issue an important message to your channel partners, it is worth repeating it selectively to those who failed to respond to your call to action the first time. This “second bite of the cherry” can often produce more results than your first provided that you change the tone of the message to incorporate a more personal, appealing or even pleading tone. Next week we’ll start a series of posts on partner service and support, specifically partner portals and mobile solutions.
