Are you missing out on valuable brand partnerships?

It’s more important than ever for membership organisations to look at opportunities to provide real value for money to their paying subscribers, while limiting the cost of delivering this – allowing them to maximise value for money for each member’s subscription. One of the most efficient ways of doing this is to partner up and provide access to products or services beyond the core offering of your organisation, associating with complementary external brands to offer your members added value – often offsetting the cost of membership.

Done correctly, brand partnerships can really boost member engagement and loyalty, expand your audience and, crucially, even generate additional revenue.

What is a brand partnership?

Brand partnerships can take various forms, but they’re basically a strategic marketing activity that benefits two non-competing brands whose audiences overlap in terms of interests or values.

Examples include discounts, sponsorship of an event, loyalty schemes (such as when credit cards offer airline miles), joint product launches or content partnerships, which you can read more about in our value of brand partnerships blog. 

What are the benefits of brand partnerships?

There are multiple benefits in collaborating with the right business.

• Add value to your membership offering – exclusive discounts, content, products or access to events through brand partnerships means your members are getting more for their money.
• Aid member retention – if members feel they are getting a lot out of their membership, they are more likely to value your brand’s role in their life, feel loyal towards you, and therefore renew their membership.
• Generate revenue – membership renewals are just one way brand partnerships do this. Depending on the type of partnership, they can also encourage members to spend more with your brand (e.g. to buy the exclusive product or attend the event).  
• Boost member engagement – brand partnerships are attractive to members who are likely to engage with something new that interests them. It also gives your brand a fresh story to tell your members outside of your usual brand messages.
• Expand reach – brand partnerships enable you to unlock access to a whole new audience who will already look favourably on you as you are being introduced to them via a brand they already associate with. When brands collaborate, it tends to generate word-of-mouth buzz, too, which means both brands in the partnership may reach entirely new audiences.

How to create a brand partnership

Creating effective brand partnerships for membership organisations involves research, strategic planning, relationship-building, asset creation, promotion and management. And all of that equals time.

Drawing on the services of a specialist agency such as Dialogue can make brand partnerships more accessible and certainly more cost effective. We’ve developed a partnership product that can fit and benefit any membership organisation. We’ve researched the market, put our findings in action and achieved huge success with one of our largest clients, and we’ve taken our learnings from that to develop this product.

Our approach to brand partnerships involves:

Creating a strategy for the partnership

We know how to get under the skin of membership organisations and engage members through surveys or similar to understand what appeals to them. We gauge the interests, preferences and needs of your members to identify what types of brand partnership would be most valuable to them. We also clearly define what your membership organisation – with its targeted and engaged audience – can offer to potential partners.

Selling the brand partnership, meeting potential partners and negotiating terms

Dialogue researches and identifies potential partners whose products or services align with the interests, needs and values of your members.

As a content marketing agency with in-house advertising sales capacity, we have pre-existing relationships with a huge number of brands, making it easier for us to approach brands on behalf of your membership organisation, rather than ‘going in cold’.

We then develop a proposal that outlines the benefits of the partnership and negotiate with partner brands to agree the scope of the partnership, including activities and terms to benefit both brands. Dialogue is experienced in negotiation, contract writing and handling any additional paperwork (such as non-disclosure agreements), all of which will save you time.

Managing activation and creating assets

Regardless of what the brand partnership looks like, there will be a lot of back and forth between parties to define what is happening and when, which takes more valuable time. Dialogue is well-versed in activation and logistical support for physical events to make brand partnerships happen.

And our content creation credentials speak for themselves. Our in-house award-winning design, copywriting and digital teams can create content to support brand partnerships and advise how best to use any assets created for maximum engagement – all resulting in a streamlined and stress-free process for the brands involved.

We can help develop a multi-platform marketing strategy to promote the partnership to your members and help ensure infrastructure is in place to make their experience of the partnership straightforward and wholly positive.

Dialogue also understands the importance of performance. We will agree key performance indicators in advance and measure the success of the brand partnership in a tangible way, reporting back to both parties.

Why choose Dialogue for your brand partnerships?

Because of everything mentioned above! Dialogue’s brand partnership team takes the pressure off your team in terms of staff time; we are experienced in negotiating brand partnerships and the logistics involved in activating them; and we can create content for the brand partnership in-house with our expert copywriters, designers and digital teams.

We can go to market on your behalf, find relevant partnership opportunities for you, handle all the admin, contracts, collation of any media assets and event activation (if required) – it’s a fully inclusive offering.

“We’re here to work with you and for you to truly get the best possible outcomes for you and your members,” said Gary Millone, Dialogue’s Partnerships Director. “It’s all about brand synergies. What works for one brand won’t necessarily work for another, so we do a deep dive into the audience demographics to understand them and find brands that resonate.”

But don’t just take our word for it.

Case study: Harley-Davidson partnerships in the EMEA region

Dialogue has secured several brand partnerships for Harley-Davidson with:

• Insta360 – the camera brand has attended events to do live demos and offers members a free motorcycle mount kit on purchase, helping people fix their new cameras to their bikes at events. They also host content creation masterclasses and generate inspiring content at events for social media. They are also working with Harley-Davidson on a content series about rides around Europe.
• Weber – the premium barbecue company has attended events, offering member-specific masterclasses and cooking demos, as well as discounts on products.
• Hard Rock Café – representatives have attended and hosted cooking shows, and all members get 15% off their bill at all locations across Europe.
• Uppercut Deluxe UK – the men’s grooming brand offers free haircuts at Harley-Davidson and a 20% discount on their product range for all members, as well as posting images and blogs online.

The results speak for themselves. Member engagement has gone up through these partnerships and, if members make use of the benefits from just three of the brand partnerships over a year, the savings equate to almost five times the cost of membership, making renewal a no-brainer.

Let Dialogue help your member organisation save time and money, unlock additional benefits or even partnership revenue opportunities today. Contact us now for a free quotation.