ePod's Tips on Closing Major Partnerships with Folks Like Macromedia and DoubleClick

CASE STUDY

CHALLENGE
We don’t have to spell this one out for you … a
zillion Internet marketing-related vendors are all seeking
partnerships with the big boys these days. ePod’s EVP of
Biz Dev & Marketing Michael Zimbalist told us how they
broke through the noise to win.

CAMPAIGN
As Zimbalist explains it, great dot-com
partnerships spring from old-fashioned marketing know-how,
“The key to doing these partnerships is understanding what
you have to offer and how it helps solve problems and
advances the business needs of your partners. For instance
Doubleclick wants to sell ad sponsorships which are
effective and increase the revenues of their network of
sites. I have a feeling that a lot of people approaching
potential partners may not understand those partners
business as well as they should. It’s really the key.”

How did ePod break through the noise? “It wasn’t just us
pounding on their doors. It’s when they start to hear a
buzz about you from newspapers, from the investment
community.” They achieved this in two ways - first of all
they built a product that actually did everything they
claimed it could do. (Sounds obvious but it’s not always
true.)

ePod also got the buzz going by throwing an unusual launch
event. “Rather than just having a party where all the
journalists drink with their pals and ignore you, we did an
educational panelist event with the CEO of BigStar, a Biz
Dev person from DoubleClick, a BN marketing manager and an
analyst from Forrester discussing the broader issues. It
helped educate the press about broader market needs.” This
worked far better than, “approaching press one by one and
trying to hammer home your marketing message.”

NOTES: Zimbalist has three more pieces of advice for people
in the partnership development game (we paraphrased them a
bit):

1. Get people on your team who already have relationships,
industry knowledge and background, so they know the players
and the issues intimately.

2. Deals of this nature take about six months, the absolute
minimum is three-four months. If you can bring in
partnerships in that time frame you’ll be a huge success.

3. The trick is then to make partnerships bear fruit for
you. Too many stop at the press release. Be very careful
to craft deals that take implementation into account. Both
partners must do due diligence internally.

Editor’s note: Yes! Zimbalist is related to one of our
fave actors, Stephanie Zimbalist of Remington Steele fame.
They met on a plane about six months ago and now swap
emails regularly. (OK, so we’re jealous.)