Note:  This post originally appeared on Balihoo's old blog on 11/17/09

The Trade Promotion Marketing Association (TPMA) reports that there are approximately $50B in co-op/MDF dollars available in a given year, while only $30B are actually used. This means that 40% of the dollars that manufacturers make available to their channel to drive local demand generation go unused.

Let me rephrase that - manufacturers offer free money to resellers to drive their business and it’s only accepted 60% of the time. Does that sound right to you?  Does that sound like an effective co-op marketing solution?

As channel and trade managers, you should not accept this as the due course of business. My belief is that adoption rate - the % of your resellers eligible for your co-op program who actually engage - should be the key front-end metric you measure to understand the value of your overall co-op marketing solution. No, it certainly won’t replace the key back-end metrics of revenue and ROI, but on the front-end it is the main thing you should be looking at in your co-op marketing software. Why? Because your adoption rate can tell you so much about your program.

Getting a deep understanding of your adoption rate (over time) can help you understand:
- Are my salesforce engaged and being ambassadors for the program?
- Am I effectively communicating the program?
- Is the program easy-to-use?
- Am I providing enough flexibility within the program?
- Is the creative valuable to my partners?

So - tip of the day - track your adoption rate. If you see it anywhere below around 80%, you should be taking a deep dive to understand why your resellers are not taking advantage to move their business forward.  FYI - your co-op marketing software should be able to help here! 

Tags:  Channel Marketing Software, Co-op Advertising, Co-op Marketing Software, Co-op Marketing Solution, CRM Marketing Automation, Retail Marketing, Sales Promotion Marketing, Trade Promotion Marketing