🐔🦅Odd couples - how uncommon brand partnerships extend your reach

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No time for small talk. I’ve got to head out to bag up straw for these good folks who help dogs in my area, then a nap to undertake. 

Let’s talk brand partnerships (uncommon ones). A pile of examples to spark your brain for brand building and expanding opportunities where you might not expect them.

After that, lean into This Week’s Marketing Wrap-Up… or simply read it, no lean required.

(Appetizer: The world's worst-designed websites curated, a real hellscape)

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Expand Your Reach with Brand Partnerships

Tired of writing tons of articles that fail to make the Googsters give you any SEO love?

Sick of making videos based on new trends that pop up weekly, and getting few views and no engagement?

Then what could it hurt to test some brand partnerships this year? 

You’ll benefit from getting in front of their audience and vice versa. Even a small audience is better than tossing your content into the bottomless world wide web hoping it gets found. 

The best way to test brand partnerships?

Via email campaigns, I’d say. At least you have more concrete metrics to see which partnerships pay off. An email click is worth more than ten random bot comments on a YouTube video.

There are other ways to partner up besides email. I’ll list those at the end of this post. 

First, though, know that you don’t have to swing for the fences with brand partnerships. 

You’ve got better odds targeting brands the same size as yours or smaller (at first, anyway). 

Just as important, don’t get locked into assumptions about what types of brands would make a good partner.

No problem with a SaaS reaching out to another SaaS brand. Or a fishing gear company reaching out to a fishing guide service. Both logical. But that limits your brand partnership opportunities. 

Illogical but workable brand partnerships might look like this…

Newsletter publishers partnering with local downtown development offices

The publisher gains access to local businesses that might want to pay for newsletter set-up or consulting. The downtown development gets free tips that help mom and pop businesses bring in more customers and revenue for the city.

Meditation brand partnering with college / high school sports departments and individual athletes

Athletic performance is more than the physical. Mental toughness is huge. 

There’s enough content here to last year-round with the meditation brand guiding athletes on handling pressure. And reversed with premier athletes giving guidance on how in-game pressure feels to them or how they use visualization to prep for games and big moments.

Dog walker partnering with senior citizen groups 

The dog walker can give pet health advice to get in front of an audience that needs or will soon need help walking their dog, grooming, etc. The senior group gets in front of the dog walker’s audience to promote volunteer opportunities and fundraising events they’re part of.

4 more brand partnership examples with large brands below:

1. Nike and Roblox: Nike created "Nikeland" on Roblox — minigames and dressing their avatars with digital Nike products.

2. Razer and GilletteLabs: Unique product combined the gaming brand's identity with shaving technology.

3. Velveeta Cheese and Nails INC.: This odd partnership between a food brand and a beauty brand created a nail polish product that mimicked and smelled like cheese.

4. Pangaia and Headspace: Sustainable clothing brand and a meditation app showed off the connection between environmental and mental wellbeing.

Now, email campaigns are the easy path to brand partnerships, like I said. But for other ideas for partnering up, see the list below.

Brand Partnership Ideas for 2025

• Bundle products at a discount

• Cross-promotional discounts 

• Joint giveaways 

• Do a 10-episode “seasonal format” podcast together

• Joint workshops

• Customer referral programs

• Joint events (pop-up shops or community gatherings)

• Social media takeovers (partner brand temporarily controls your social media accounts and vice versa)

Onward to the Wrap-Up...

I appreciate you reading. For real. Please share Inbox Hacking with your people. Talk to you Monday.

Shane McLendon - Copy Kingpin of Inbox Hacking

Bonus: If you could predict ripple effects that no one else can, how valuable would that be to your business? Example from the Hustle below…

“Where some see a looming TikTok ban, others see an opportunity to learn a new language. Duolingo has seen a ~216% YoY increase in US users learning Mandarin, with the sharpest uptick in mid-January, coinciding with Chinese social media app RedNote’s sudden popularity.”

P.S. RIP Bob Uecker, a funny guy who was happy to be the butt of the joke.