Founded in Athens, Greece in 2015, Welcome Pickups set out to revolutionize the way travelers experience new destinations. The company offers fully automated private transfer and leisure travel services to hotel guests, providing multiple benefits:
Enhanced customer satisfaction
Additional revenue streams for hotels
Valuable guest data collection
To accelerate growth and expand its market presence, Welcome Pickups partnered with Bond to optimize its partnership strategy. The collaboration focused on leveraging existing integration partners and establishing new connections, particularly with hotel Property Management Systems and Channel Managers. These integrations are crucial for delivering a seamless experience to end users.
The partnership with Bond outlined four key objectives:
Boost lead generation from existing target connectivity partners
Establish multiple new connectivity partnerships within a 12-month timeframe
Implement cross-marketing initiatives with partners to enhance brand visibility
Develop one or more value-driven partnership programs
This strategic approach aimed to support Welcome Pickups' product growth in new target markets while strengthening its position within the travel technology ecosystem.
The strategy involved engaging existing partners to introduce Welcome Pickups’ solution and create opportunities to present to their customer-facing teams.
Our goals were to:
Ensure partners recognise Welcome Pickups as a powerful, easy-to-implement solution within their ecosystem.
Demonstrate to partners how Welcome Pickups can maximize their clients' success while increasing product loyalty - a win-win-win situation.
We implemented this through:
Online partner demos and face-to-face meetings in local territories and languages.
Providing resources for partners' internal knowledge bases.
Enhancing visibility on partner marketplaces by regularly updating Welcome Pickups’ profile with improved content, visuals, and links.
Creating a Partner Directory on Welcome Pickups’ website to reciprocate visibility.
Measuring partnership effectiveness:
Despite not using dedicated Partner Relationship Management software, we optimized Welcome Pickup's Hubspot CRM to track partner-generated leads and form downloads. This allowed us to:
Allocate leads to the correct partners.
Train the sales team to properly tag partner-sourced leads.
Track key metrics such as new leads, conversion rates, and top-performing partners.
Report on specific KPIs, providing clear data-driven insights.
Engagement strategies:
After establishing these foundational elements, we focused on engagement and cross-marketing opportunities with existing partners. This approach:
Improved results from partnerships.
Facilitated sharing opportunities within our customer base.
Increased visibility, supporting sales teams in co-selling initiatives with partners.
Our efforts paid off when Welcome Pickups was recognized by Siteminder, a major player in Hotel Tech, as a finalist in three categories:
App Partner of the Year
Industry Champion of the Year
Innovation Partner of the Year
Ultimately, Welcome Pickups won the title of App Partner of the Year in 2023, validating our partnership strategy.
Welcome Pickups also became an official Mews Stacks Partner - a recognition that is surely helping to shed more light about the partnership and that addresses direct visibility towards their clients:
We also started to coordinate many more cross- activities and campaigns with partners such as:
Co-hosted Webinars with key partners: split of the responsibilities about the creation of assets, registration links, invitation prospects & customers, etc..
Sponsoring events, joining panels and speaking opportunities at tradeshows
Co-marketing materials such as custom landing pages for partners
Guest Blogs
Through direct communication with partners and assessing their needs, we developed a more tailored value proposition for Welcome Pickups' integration partners, both existing and potential. This approach has yielded several benefits:
Enhanced Partner Incentivization: We now have a clear understanding of how to motivate new connectivity partners effectively.
Stronger Relationship Building: Our refined strategy allows us to establish robust relationships from the outset.
Improved Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy: We can now craft and implement more effective GTM strategies in collaboration with our partners.
This proactive approach ensures that for each new partnership opportunity, Welcome Pickups is well-equipped to:
Articulate its unique value
Align with partner objectives
Foster mutually beneficial relationships
Execute joint market entry plans efficiently
By adapting our approach based on partner feedback, we've created a more dynamic and responsive partnership model that supports both Welcome Pickups' growth and our partners' success.
Progress on Partnership Goals (January - July 2024)
Sales Pipeline Growth:some text
Target: 100 new deals from integration partners by the end of 2024
Current Status: Achieved 2/3 of the target in just 6 months
Projection: Pipeline expected to significantly exceed initial goal
New Integrations:some text
Target: 10 new integrations on the roadmap by the end of 2024
Current Status: 5 new integrations developed since January
Impact: Bond's expertise in partner identification and go-to-market strategy has been crucial
Key Success Factors:
Effective partner qualification based on Welcome Pickups' criteria
Strong go-to-market launch strategies for newly integrated partners
Continuous collaboration between Bond and Welcome Pickups teams
Emphasis on learning and A/B testing to optimize performance
Turning integrations and collaborations into a consistent revenue channel and build a partnership engine that would scale a Hotel Tech SaaS company through 2025.
Audit and overhaul of the existing partnership structure and frameworks, combined with new partner acquisition, for a SaaS company expanding across multiple industries and markets.
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