Channel incentives come in a lot of forms: sell-this-get-that points programs, co-ops and marketing development funds, enablement programs, SPIFFs, short-term gamified promotions, and so much more. These incentives can help you achieve all kinds of business goals, but they have to be done right in order to properly motivate channel partner engagement. So, here are 9 strategies for maximizing partner engagement that we’re excited about for 2025. 

1. Swap from Static to Dynamic Programs

Over time, the expectations around channel incentive programs have shifted, becoming more adaptive as companies have gotten better at collecting and analyzing data. No business is a set-it-and-forget-it project—it requires adjustment and flexibility.  

Your business’s channel incentive strategy is the same. If you simply push a static channel incentive program out to your channel and never think about it again, don’t expect that a lot of them will want to engage with it. Instead, introduce a dynamic incentive strategy that can quickly adapt to meet your channel partners’ changing needs. 

Try:  

• Leverage real-time data: Use analytics tools to track partner activities and engagement in real time. Adjust targets, rewards, or promotions based on current performance trends to keep incentives relevant and motivating. 

• Implement tiered rewards: Design a system where partners can progress through reward levels based on their achievements. Regularly evaluate and adjust the criteria so they stay challenging yet attainable. 

• Set time-bound objectives: Introduce short-term goals or milestones that encourage partners to act quickly. For example, offer bonus rewards for meeting quarterly sales targets or completing training modules within a set timeframe. 

• Solicit feedback often: Regularly survey your channel partners to understand their evolving needs and expectations. Use their input to adjust program rules, rewards, or communication strategies. 

• Automate adjustments: Use an incentive management platform that allows automatic updates to program rules, eligibility criteria, or reward structures based on your chosen performance triggers. 
• Introduce seasonal promotions: Update the program with limited-time offers tied to industry trends, product launches, or seasonal opportunities to maintain interest and momentum.

2. Personalize it

Speaking of a dynamic program, one of the key elements of programs that lead to high partner engagement is personalization. At this point personalization is table stakes, if we’re being honest. Think about how much personalization you experience in your life as a consumer: most of your emails are addressed to you. The apps on your phone keep track of your activities and have your credit card information saved so you can easily make purchases.  

Sometimes we can feel like these personalization mechanisms are a little invasive—maybe they know a little too much about us.  But done right, personalization can make us feel seen and understood. 

Try... 

• Personalized goals: leverage the data you have on your participants’ buying habits to set goals that they can actually attain and will be motivated by. Maybe your mid-performing customers can focus a lot more of their wallet share on your business, but your most loyal customers might have almost maxed out their capacity to buy from you. Make sure you know who’s who when you set those goals! 

• Addressing them by name:  Even the simplest touches can give real results: one study found that emails subject lines that address the recipient by name were 26 percent more likely to be opened than generic subject lines. 
• Segmented communications: we’ll talk more about this later, but you never want your participants to get an email that has nothing to do with them. Send data-based targeted communications that will be relevant to everyone who receives it. 

3. Opt for Flexible Rewards

Different rewards are going to motivate different people. That doesn’t mean you need to perfectly tailor a specific reward for each participant—but it does require having some understanding of who your audience is. Think about what rewards might be most fulfilling to your partners, like... 

• SPIFFs and cash bonuses: SPIFFs are a pretty common form of reward for salespeople—we talk about them a lot! --and some consider them to be a part of their regular income. 

• Luxury merchandise: on the other hand, if your channel partners aren’t used to cash bonuses, a non-cash reward like a piece of luxury merchandise can actually be more effective at building loyalty and mindshare than cash. A cash prize goes into their wallet, but an item that lives in their house serves as a visual reminder of ther achievement and your brand. 

• Once-in-a-lifetime experiences: travel packages or event opportunities can be really motivating, especially if they’re the kinds of things your audience wouldn’t normally choose to spend money on. If you’re looking to build a sense of community across your channel, think about a group travel experience. 

• Business rewards: If your program is targeted at management and executives, they might prefer rewards that help them grow their business. That means really getting to know what those pain point and goals are for those partners. 

Get a sense of what your audience will most appreciate before committing to a specific reward, and you’ll see the engagement difference.

4. Consider Training and Enablement

Often, people think about channel incentive programs in terms of sales growth. Focus more of your wallet share with a certain business, get a prize. But one of the most effective channel incentive strategies doesn’t have to do with sales growth--at least not directly. 

Instead, think about how your incentive program can help your channel partners become better salespeople. We love thse programs because they’re a total win-win: everybody’s business succeeds when they’re able to sell your products better.  

Try... 

• Points for e-learning: If you’re struggling to get your channel partners to complete the e-learning materials that will help them sell your product better, we’ve got good news: it’s easy to work those modules into an existing points program. In addition to rewarding points for logging SKUs, offer a prize of bonus points for completing training. 

• Run a short-term promotion: Let’s say you’re rolling out a complex new product and you want to make sure your channel will be ready to sell it. A short-term promotion is both a great way to build hype around the product and can get your channel to complete their training modules. Consider a grand prize sweepstakes where participants earn entries for e-learning. 

• Bite-sized enablement: instead of a lengthy onboarding session for new customers, think about smaller, more easily digestible ways you can encourage preferred behaviors in your audience. 

5. Turn it into a Game

Gamification—it's one of the best ways to get your channel partners engaged with your brand. Running a gamified short-term promotion, like a sweepstakes or contest, can lead to all kinds of positive results. Try using gamification to:  

• Drive motivation for a training and enablement program  

• Reward loyalty with a luxury grand prize 

• Drive attention for a new product line 

• Keep your audience excited about your company even when you don’t have any new products or training programs 

• Stoke a sense of friendly competition that contributes to a fun office culture and increases brand loyalty 

6. Surprise and Delight Your Participants

This is one of our favorites. Sometimes a reward doesn’t need to be given for spending more money with you, or for any other reason. A “surprise and delight” campaign offers your customers a spontaneous reward, simply as a kind thank-you for their continued business. These could be... 

• Bonus points: if you’re running a long-term points program, simply offer a gift of bonus points to reward or reignite engagement the program.  

• Goodie bags and gifts: For an incentive travel or event program, small gifts or goodie bags can get your participants excited to participate and serve as a reminder of the experience afterwards. 

• Luxury merchandise delivered to their home: for the especially loyal, VIP participants and high spenders, show your thanks with something extra special, like a gourmet food basket or a unique, personalized prize. 

Whatever the reward itself, a surprise and delight campaign keeps you top of mind with your audience and reminds them of your gratitude for their business.

7. Up Your Communication Game

You know what bad email communication is like. If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a load of it accumulating in your inbox, forever waiting to be deleted. With so many different voices trying to grab customers’ attention, it’s vital to make sure your communications are actually reaching your audience.  

Make your communications:  

• Targeted: we’ve all had the experience of signing up for an email list and being inundated with messages that have nothing to do with the reason we signed up. Don’t crowd up your participants’ inboxes with announcements and promotions that aren’t relevant to them—instead, segment your audience based on the data you’ve collected on them and reach out based on those insights. 

• Regular: On the flip side, don’t let your channel partners forget about you. One of the great things about a channel incentive program is that it gives you a reason to keep in consistent contact with your audience, helping you stay top of mind in a way that benefits them as well.  

• Omni: one of the most important marketing concepts that’s emerged over the last few years is the idea of omnichannel marketing. While a multichannel marketing strategy engages the different communication channels at your disposal—phone, email, social media, print—an omnichannel strategy understands these channels as integrated and working together to deliver a consistent, quality brand message. 

Oh, and speaking of omnichannel...

8. Streamline Your Incentive Program Experience

If your incentive program is unwieldy or confusing at any point—from onboarding to submitting claims to choosing rewards—you risk your participants getting frustrated and falling off. If you want to keep your channel partners engaged with your business and program, the experience should be as fast and easy as possible.  

Try... 

• Keeping your rules structure clear and easy to understand. You might have done a ton of sophisticated work behind the scenes to set tdhe program rules, but ideally your customers will find it intuitive and simple.  

• Keep your sales team in the loop: As the primary points of contact for channel partners, your sales team should be able to promote the program and walk their accounts through the program basics. If your sales team isn’t in the know or doesn’t seem invested, it’s going to seem like the program isn’t a priority. 

• Make the claims process easy: we see a lot of businesses that try to run incentive programs on their own and struggle because the process for claiming SKUs to earn points is so unwieldy. For example, manually entering data from an invoice takes long enough that a lot of participants just might get impatient and decide it’s not worth it.  

In the omnichannel era, doing business isn’t just a transaction—think of it more like a user experience. You’ve probably had the experience of trying to navigae a slow, arduous website or application, and you know that it’s no fun. 

Which brings us to...

9. Use a Platform

Incentive programs don’t have to be complex to be effective, but even running a simple one in-house can be a headache. A lot of people end up wearing a lot of hats they aren’t used to, which can both prevent the program from running at peak performance and disrupt your day-to-day business. 

A third-party, all-on-one platform like the one 360insights offers gives your participants a streamlined, one-stop shop for everything related to the incentive program. Depending on what kind of program you’re running, your participants can use the platform to... 

• Log SKUs to earn points for a points program 

• Track their progress towards their goal 

• Complete learning modules 

• Brows a rewards catalog and redeem points 

• Communicate with sales and operations personnel and troubleshoot problems 

• Hear updates on their program and receive communications from your company 

Best of all, when the platform is maintained by a third party, you don’t have to deal with the headache of managing the program! 

Conclusion 

The move from static, offline incentive programs to dynamic platform-based programs has allowed incentives to become more versatile, flexible, and ambitious. Partner engagement can seem like a tough nut to crack sometimes, but there are so many awesome incentive strategies out there that can help you meet your 2025 goals.  

To find out more about using channel incentives to up your partner engagement, book a meeting with a 360insights expert!