Co-Marketing Campaign Brief Template for SaaS Partners

Open with the information a stakeholder needs to understand the campaign in one minute. Include the working name, campaign ID, participating companies, executive or budget sponsors, campaign leads, brief version, status, target launch window, and one-sentence concept. Add a short decision summary that states what each company is committing to approve.

Write one shared objective and the partner-specific objectives beneath it. The shared objective might be qualified registrations from a combined audience, while one partner wants product adoption and the other wants pipeline in a segment. Visible differences are manageable. Hidden differences lead teams to optimize assets and follow-up for incompatible outcomes.

Define the primary audience using role, company type, maturity, relevant behavior, problem, and buying or adoption context. Avoid combining both companies' entire databases into a broad persona. Identify which audience overlap makes the partnership useful and which segments should be excluded because the offer, geography, product, or follow-up does not fit.

State the audience problem in the reader's language, the insight behind the campaign, and the practical value the partners can deliver together. Then define the credibility each company contributes. One may bring workflow expertise and the other distribution data. The campaign should need both contributions. If either logo could be removed without changing the value, the partnership concept is probably too shallow.

Describe the complete audience experience from first promotion through the promised resource and next step. Then create one row for every deliverable. Useful columns are deliverable ID, asset, format, partner owner, contributor, approver, due date, dependency, acceptance criteria, final location, localization, and status. Include promotion, registration, confirmation, reminders, event or content delivery, follow-up, sales enablement, and reporting assets.

Acceptance criteria should be observable. Instead of saying that Partner A will write the landing page, specify the required sections, approved message, form fields, branding, tracking, accessibility, review rounds, and production-ready date. Distinguish required deliverables from optional enhancements. Optional ideas should not silently become launch blockers.

Assign one directly responsible owner for each outcome, even when both partners contribute. Clarify who writes, designs, builds, approves, publishes, distributes, moderates, handles data, follows leads, and reports results. Name a backup for time-sensitive launch responsibilities. A shared task with no final owner usually becomes a late task.

Document the review sequence, number of included rounds, expected response time, final decision makers, and escalation path. Use one feedback location and require consolidated comments from each company. Define what happens when a partner misses a deadline, changes the audience, adds a deliverable, or requests a message that the other cannot approve. Record changes in the brief instead of relying on chat history.

Turn broad promotion promises into measurable commitments. For each partner and channel, record audience or segment, number of placements, message owner, asset deadline, planned time, expected reach when available, and final proof. Email support should specify dedicated or included placement, eligible audience, send window, and suppression rules. Social support should specify account, format, count, and timing.

Build a reverse calendar from the launch or event date. Include content freeze, final approvals, landing-page QA, tracking tests, speaker or spokesperson readiness, asset delivery, email cutoffs, publication, live monitoring, and result checkpoints. Mark dependencies and the last responsible date for a go or no-go decision. A visible launch calendar helps both partners protect commitments when their internal schedules shift.

Define what participant or lead data is collected, why it is needed, which company controls each form, what notice and consent apply, which fields may be shared, how transfer occurs, who can access it, how long it is retained, and how deletion or preference requests are handled. Do not assume a logo on a landing page permits both companies to use every record.

Document follow-up rules before launch. Specify routing, ownership, eligibility, deduplication, account conflicts, contact limits, suppression, service-level expectations, and whether a person can hear from one or both partners. Also record budget ownership, direct costs, in-kind contributions, vendor commitments, invoice process, and cancellation terms. Refer privacy, contract, tax, or regulatory questions to qualified owners.

Choose one primary success measure tied to the shared objective and a small set of diagnostic measures. Define every metric, source, window, owner, and target. Use a shared campaign ID across links, forms, CRM records, assets, and reports. Preserve each partner's source fields separately when reporting combined results so duplicated people and influenced outcomes do not become inflated net-new demand.

Schedule an operational closeout and a later outcome review. The first should confirm delivery, audience response, costs, data transfer, follow-up status, and defects. The later review can examine qualified pipeline, activation, product usage, revenue, or retained engagement at an appropriate lag. Record the repeat decision, changes required, reusable assets, ongoing permissions, and any obligations to remove or update co-branded material.