We all know partnerships tech is in a renaissance.

Because partnership teams are typically siloed, they are vulnerable to paying incredibly high costs for SaaS solutions to problems being solved for other teams with far more capable and inexpensive tech than those being pushed to the partnership team, purely because they have been built for "partnerships" use cases.

To try and find some new inexpensive solutions, I decided to take some time in July to experiment with the tech stack of non-partnerships tools, to find, enrich, reach out to, and activate partners.

The tech stack below will support growing partner programs far better than many of the tech being pushed to partnership teams.

...And, the total cost for this tech stack is under $100/mo!!

Featured in this article:

Common Room

La Growth Machine

Telescope

Instantly.ai

Clay

Smartlead

✊ GodmodeHQ.com ✊

Guru

Snitcher

Partnerhub®

Links and descriptions as to why I chose these solutions are below the video: 

Top tech for partner outreach 

https://www.clay.com/

For as little as: $0/mo

Use cases:

1. Data enrichment.
2. Research.
3. Intent-based marketing and sales.
4. CRM data enrichment.

Caveats:

• I had trouble finding service provider data using their filters and keywords so I had to find help.
• To get the true value of their platform, you may need one of their experts.

Why it's better than the alternative:
It brings it all the data sources you'd ever need to research and enrich companies and individuals for any job you have to do. And they have a lot of expert solutions partners for such a young company.

https://instantly.ai/

Close competitor to: Warmy, Apollo, Smartlead...

For as little as: $30/mo

Use cases:

1. Warming up your new partners@ email or domain to use for outreach and onboarding emails.
2. Cold and onboarding email sequences. 
3. A/B test emails.
4. Your partner leads pipeline.
5. And recently they launched a website de-anonymization feature to compete with Warmly, RB2B, and other solutions.

Caveats:

• The partnerships team needs a domain of their own (subdomain + ideally an email) to get the most out of it.
• We were not provided access to the de-anonymization feature so I cannot comment on the pros and cons of that feature.

Why it's better than the alternative: 

Instantly allows you to discover potential partners on your key web pages, enrich data, and reach out to them. Think RB2B, but international data + Warmy... And, because it has other features including a CRM pipeline, you can use it to onboard and track new prospective partners through your process (as opposed to cluttering up your CRM with prospective partner data). 

https://lagrowthmachine.com/

Close competitor to: MeetAlfred

For as little as: $60/mo

Use cases:

1. LinkedIn + email touchpoint campaigns.
2. Create new LinkedIn connections from a URL or CSV. 
3. If you do not have an email to do cold outreach from, this is the next best thing.
4. Inviting first-degree connections to a CTA (call, event...).
5. Multi-channel inbox as well so you can read/reply to LinkedIn messages and emails in one place.

Caveats:

• Obviously, this will not warm up your email, so do not add an email step if you have not warmed up your email (see Instantly for that).

Why it's better than the alternative:  

I was a long-time user of MeetAlfred for these use cases, but I found LGM to be much more user-friendly. I really like the inbox feature and the visual campaign editor. It also integrates with Clay for easy triggered campaigns.

https://www.smartlead.ai/

For as little as: $33/mo

Use cases:

1. Cold emailing.
2. Warming up new emails.
3. Automated follow-ups.

Caveats:

• I am not a power-user of this technology. 
• I chose to recommend this one because it was recommended by Clay.

Why it's better than the alternative:
This is the recommended email sending platform by Clay. They recommend it to new users who are just starting out on Clay as the outbound step. That says a lot.

https://godmodehq.com/

For as little as: $50/mo

Use cases:

1. Ai-based lead list creation.
2. Ai-message composition.
3. Ai enrichment.
4. LinkedIn campaigns.

Caveats:

• They are very new, and still working out some UX kinks.
• I would not recommend anyone use an Ai-written message. Always triple-check before sending.

Why it's better than the alternative:
This is a great option for those looking to "scale" their LinkedIn automation using some Ai enrichment and messaging in a simple Ui. 

https://trytelescope.ai/

For as little as: $99/mo

Use cases:

1. Ai-based lead list creation.
2. Ai-message composition.
3. Ai enrichment.
4. LinkedIn campaigns + email steps.

Caveats:

• They are very new, and still working out some UX kinks.
• I would not recommend anyone use an Ai-written message. Always triple-check before sending.

Why it's better than the alternative:
This tool was very easy to setup and start an initial campaign. I also loved the way they suggested outreach steps when emails were not found. Also, they seem to have a very large database at their disposal.

For partner onboarding & Enablement

https://www.commonroom.io/

For as little as: $0/mo

Use cases:

1. Slack user onboarding message sequence. Channel-based direct messages. @ tagging bulk messaging.
2. Now, find out which companies are browsing your website with their traffic de-anonymizer.
3. Reporting on, and strategy around, what your most and least active partners are doing within your properties.

Caveats:

• The free tier is only for smaller org's / startups. Larger org's will have to pay.
• It's best used if your partnerships team has it's own managed properties - a subdomain for your partnerships pages, a partnerships Slack, and other partnerships-only channels like YouTube, and pipeline in your CRM.
• You'll want to have open Slack channels for partners (not closed / locked) to use the Slack messaging.
• The de-anonymization features will only show you the person on your site if they are also in one of your sync'd data sources.

Why it's better than the alternative:

I haven't used anything like Common Room before, so I can't speak for alternatives. But this platform is a beast, so I doubt anything comes close. IF a platform comes out with locked channel messaging... it would be easy for us to switch because we need to be able to message users in locked channels. However, I'm sure I could a lot more from this platform if I used it to it's fullest.

https://www.getguru.com/

For as little as: $15/mo

Use cases:

1. Provide all resources needed for partners.
2. Track all engagement and progress partners make on those resources.
3. Create an LMS for partners to tier-up in your program.
4. Gate or embed any assets.

Caveats:

• Guru will not automate the provisions of the actual certification like try LMS would.
• There's no gamification on the progress through the assets like an LMS.

Why it's better than the alternative:

The alternatives are Google Docs, Airtable, Notion... Or any LMS. The reason you would want Guru instead of these, or a true LMS, is the cost, flexibility, and the analytics.

For discovery; de-anonymization software

https://www.syftdata.com/

For as little as: TBD (they are in private beta)

Use cases:

1. Warm high-intent de-annonymized website or app visitors.
   
2. Run cross-selling routines with multi-site deanonymization 
3. Get enriched data on your ICPs

Caveats:

• They are in private beta with customers as we speak
• Final pricing is TBD

Why it's better than the alternative:
We tested out the top 3 deanonymization software on the market and Syft was by far the most accurate and gave the best picture of the data. 

https://www.commonroom.io/ - It also has a feature to de-anonymize website visitors. 

https://www.snitcher.com/

For as little as: $59/mo

Use cases:

1. De-annonymize website or app visitors.
   
2. CRO for your website using their chat feature.

Caveats:

• Companies-only, not people who are browsing.
• Company contact info.

Why it's better than the alternative:
Snitcher is just a great option for the cost. If you want the data on the person visiting your site, you will have to use a tool like Syft or RB2B that start around $300/month.

Now, let's operationalize these new partners!

https://www.partnerhub.app/how...

For as little as: $0/mo

Use cases:

1. Find partners who are open to new partnerships.
2. Activate those partnerships quickly with features like Konnections and Live Offers.
3. Drive leads back to partners with a built-in partner directory.

Caveats:

• We're biased ;)
• The free account requires an invite by admin and/or one of our agency-users.

Why it's better than the alternative:
Other tools in the space are built to manage affiliate relationships, and not true partnerships. When you join Partnerhub®, you are introduced to partners who sell to similar customer profiles in the app, and via our virtual speed networking events. Further, Partnerhub® is used by top digital agencies, so our users are ready to work with partners they meet inside the hub. 

In conclusion...

Obviously running this entire stack would create redundancies, and is overkill for most partnership teams. If it were my budget, and I had to choose a few of these to run my partner data, outreach and onboarding... I would (and do) purchase/use these solutions: 

Common Room - For onboarding, Slack messaging, analyzing who's in what communities, and to find companies on my website.

La Growth Machine - To power LinkedIn + email outreach. I set this up in a matter of minutes, and it also enriches leads for the CRM. 

Instantly - You can pay / use it for a month to warm up your email. Then, consider continuing on the plan IF you want to use it for de-anonymizing website visitors (which will provide more actionable data than Common Room will about who is on your site...). I used the free trial to warm up a domain and get it out of the promotions bin. I haven't put my card up for this product yet, but their de-anonymization feature is very good, and I will probably pay for an account soon.

Guru - For training and enabling your partners, as well as gating and tracking progress of your partners through your content. 

Partnerhub® - For finding and managing your partnerships.

Total cost for 1 user = $75/mo.