Terms & Conditions for Your Channel Marketers – Why Use Them?
The rules and regulations on how to lawfully market to prospects and customers seems to be a moving target these days. For brand marketers, it has become increasingly important to make sure your channel partners are obeying these guidelines when utilizing channel marketing software.
Since this software is usually a third party service, it should offer a number of protections to indemnify you from fraudulent actions of a rogue marketer — minimizing your Brand’s exposure.
Here are some features to look for in your marketing software to help protect your Brand.
- Terms & Conditions at the Brand Level
Channel Marketing Software will have their own terms and conditions. But what about the Brand? Make sure the software you engage has a way for you to implement your own terms and conditions for user acceptance. If they are going to participate in your branded local marketing efforts, they must play by your rules too.
- Custom Footers in your Email Communications
Most third party marketing software companies will provide a generic email footer to use with branded communications with an unsubscribe link. But for a small fee, you should be able to have the software implement your own footer with additional points of customization for channel marketers to fill out prior to sending the communication. This will help make it clear to the recipient from whom the communication was sent and from where.
- Legal Copy on Marketing Material
Include as much or little legal copy in your marketing communications. This copy can be hard coded into the design of the communication so the user is forced to use it if they care to access the creative and use it for their local marketing initiatives.
- Approvals
Is the channel marketer participating in automated marketing programs or one-off touchpoint deployments? Make sure your software has an approval mechanism so all communications are being overseen by the brand and marked as approved, before they are sent out. That way you can catch and decline any communications that would otherwise be sent into the market non-compliant.
With these tactics in place, you will have a process and the protection needed to hold your channel marketers accountable as they access and use branded collateral to market their local business.