Cross-Promotion Partnerships Checklist

The buyer and marketing manager build a shortlist of 5–10 brands whose category adjacency fits the store's merchandise mix — e.g., a sporting goods retailer pairing with a local nutrition brand. Filter out direct competitors and any vendor already on the markdown calendar.

Review the partner's Google and Yelp reviews, recent press, and social tone. Co-branded campaigns inherit the partner's reputation — a single PR incident on their side becomes your problem. Confirm there are no active consumer complaints with the state AG or BBB.

Pick the primary objective — new-customer acquisition, list growth, UPT lift, or clearing slow-moving inventory. One primary objective drives the mechanic; trying to hit all four with a single campaign dilutes everything.

Capture baseline traffic, conversion, UPT, ATV, and email-list size for the trailing 4 weeks per store. Without a baseline the post-promo ROI calculation is guesswork. Pull the numbers from your POS analytics (Lightspeed, Shopify, Heartland) and loyalty platform.

Common mechanics: bundled SKU at a discount, GWP (gift with purchase) with the partner's product, joint in-store event, co-branded email drop, or shared loyalty offer. Each mechanic has different POS implications — bundles need a configured SKU, GWPs need inventory allocation, events need staffing.

Document who owns creative, who owns email send, who funds in-store signage, and who handles customer-service escalations on co-branded purchases. Most partnership disputes trace back to undocumented hand-offs, not to financial terms.

Define how attributed revenue is calculated (POS promo code, dedicated SKU, UTM-tagged orders), how shared costs are split (signage, paid social, event venue), and the payment cadence. Watch for double-counting when the same customer redeems through both channels.

The agreement covers co-branding and trademark usage rules, term and termination, indemnification, customer-data handling (CCPA/GDPR where applicable), and the dispute-resolution path. Both signers must have authority — a store manager's signature on a corporate-level agreement is usually invalid.

Set up the promo code, bundle SKU, or GWP rule in Lightspeed / Shopify POS / Heartland. Run a $0 test transaction in training mode to confirm the discount stacks correctly with loyalty and that the attribution tag flows into reporting. Sync the e-commerce site so in-store and online mechanics match.

Brief associates at the next shift huddle: who qualifies, what the customer says to redeem, how to ring it, and what to do when the POS rejects the discount. Post a one-page reference at each register. Untrained associates default to manual price-overrides, which break attribution.

Pull attributed revenue from POS by promo code and SKU. Reconcile against the partner's reported numbers — discrepancies usually trace to refunded transactions, manual overrides, or duplicate attribution. Settle the revenue share per the agreement's payment cadence.

Compare promo-window UPT, ATV, conversion, and list growth to the trailing 4-week baseline captured at goal-setting. Net out the partner's contribution from organic lift — a 5% conversion bump during a brand's own paid-search campaign is not partnership ROI.

Joint call with both teams. Walk through what hit, what missed, and what each side would change. Capture the renewal decision: continue as-is, modify mechanic, or wind down. Document the agreed next step in writing so it doesn't slip.