Stacy Calson, Partner Manager

"Smile makes clever software for efficient people.TextExpander: Communicate Smarter. Your knowledge base for fast, accurate communication on Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad. PDFpen : Get PDF Done. Edit PDFs on Mac, iPad & iPhone."

"Even before we signed up for the accelerator, Alex was already looking out for connections for us. He put us in contact with Maddy with Smith.ai, which led to a co-webinar with her and GlobalMacIT, a partner of both of our companies. They have also introduced us to Tarah from timetoreply and are working with her for a co-marketing campaign."

"Earlier this year, the company I worked for, Smile, LLC., tasked me with investigating the current Smile partner program and pinpointing areas of growth and improvement. Our primary product, TextExpander, is one that was already being recommended and supported by our agencies, so it made sense to analyze how we could better support that group of partners. Alex and I are both members of the Cloud Software Association, and he mentioned to me about the upcoming partner accelerator program that Partnerprograms was launching. It was a perfect opportunity for Smile to discover more about agencies, what the agencies looked for in partners and how we could best serve the agencies."

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'The Partnerprograms accelerator started in August, and right out of the gate, Alex had us in video chats with leading experts in the agency arena. A lot of times, when you go through programs like this, those who are presenting will give a brief, high level view of their workflow, so I wasn’t expecting how in depth each agency went into on how their agency worked with tech partners, what their workflows looked like and how best to position our product to their needs. Every video chat brought clear call to actions that we could incorporate into our existing program."

"Our biggest win happened after the accelerator was over, November 1, when we re-launched our partner program. During the 3 months of the accelerator, Smile was able to gain full company buy in and the complete restructure of our partner program. We identified several co-marketing opportunities perfect for our partners, one of which was a focus on content that our partners already had. Our primary product, TextExpander, allows you to create snippets of text, apply a short code to it, and use it in any text prompt. It also allows you to share those snippets with others. Understanding that our partners already have these snippets created, we launched a way for our customers to be introduced to these snippets through a blog post showcasing not just the snippet group, but the partner.// I am finishing up the first blog post showcasing snippets. If I get that done in the next day, I can send a screen shot of that over as well."

"Another unexpected positive result came from an off conversation that I had with Alex. We were talking about PRM’s and how I needed to implement from the content we already had in Airtable. Alex mentioned a software platform called Stacker, that takes your Airtable content and puts it into a webpage type view, which was what was missing from our current tech stack. Using Airtable and Stacker, I could put together a partner portal that partner’s could log into, register leads, locate assets, view existing lead status and opportunity statuses. All without needing to code anything or bring in Smile’s web designer. This set up is allowing us to focus on the program and determine what needs our partners need from a PRM before we evaluate other PRM’s that are currently on the market."

Video of Portal: https://share.getcloudapp.com/OAuJZOmN