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Manage Co-brandable PDFs

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Overview

As a supplier, you provide partner-ready content to channel partners to build and promote business engagement and conversation. Content is meant to support and facilitate the promotion of a company, product, or service. It comes in many forms: audio, text, PDF, video, images, and more. It informs and interests readers.

Library content is valuable to your partners as it is "on the shelf" and ready to be downloaded. Partners can preview or download library content. These assets usually takes the form of Sales and Marketing enablement tools such as reference materials to help the partners be successful.

Co-brandable content (multimedia) allows the supplier to increase engagement and lead generation. By allowing Partners to add their own branding alongside yours to display the partnership and increase their credibility as an approved partner of your organization. 

This article explains how to manage co-brandable PDFs in Unifyr One.

Here is an outline of the process to create PDF content that can be co-branded by your partners:

  • Work with your Unifyr One team to set up a template, including the fields you may want to provide to your partners to personalize.
  • Create the PDF, using a PDF editing tool with a Forms feature, such as Adobe Acrobat. Using the field names from the Unifyr One template, add the form fields to the PDF for your partners to personalize.
  • Upload the co-brandable PDF to Unifyr One Admin.
  • Publish the co-brandable PDF to your partner portal so your partners can pick it it up and create a personalized version of it, by adding their information alongside yours.

Intended Audience

Channel Marketing Leader, Channel Sales Leader, Partner Marketing Director, Partner Channel Sales Director, or Partner Channel Account Manager.

Before You Begin

You will need the professional version of Adobe Acrobat and the Prepare Form add-on (or equivalent PDF/form edit tool).

The fields in your template/PDF are unique to your organization and are agreed during implementation. Sample field names are: 

  • Partner Logo
  • Partner Display Name
  • Partner URL
  • Partner Email
  • Partner Phone

  • CTA URL

    This field displays as text and hyperlinks to a URL.

Note

The names of the fields in the PDF must exactly match the names in the template you created with the Unifyr One team or the personalization functionality may not work correctly.

Contents

Click on the + to expand the instructions for the desired task.

How to Create Co-Brandable Content in Adobe Acrobat

Important

  • You must have the professional version of Adobe Acrobat and the Prepare Form add-on (or equivalent tool) to create form fields in your PDFs.
  • The field names you give the PDF in Adobe must match the ones in your original Unifyr One co-branded collateral template.
  1. In Adobe Acrobat Pro, create or open the PDF that you want to make co-brandable.

  2. Use the Form tool to add form fields for customizable content - your partners can use these for co-branding.

    Note

    All the fields should be of type "Text" when you add them to the PDF, even if in the end they will hold an image or URL. The name of a field indicates the type of content it contains, and this will be populated when you upload the PDF to Unifyr One Admin. You can change the type of content then, if required.

    Use the same names as the fields in the PDF template designed with your Unifyr One team. 

    Scroll to the bottom of this page for a PDF example available for download.

  3. Edit the Field Properties of each text field (these are Acrobat areas, the properties will be found in different areas if you're using an equivalent tool):

    • General - Change the field name, if required.
    • Appearance - Select font, font size, and text color.
    • Position - Set the position of the field on the page.
    • Options - Add a default value, which will be displayed in the field when your partner views the PDF (for example, enter the default value Add your name here for a Partner Display Name field). You can also select the Multi-line option if it is expected that the field will be populated with a lengthy value. These properties don't apply if you're defining a field for Partner Logo.

    Guidelines/recommendations when adding fields to the co-brandable PDF:

    • Only include one Partner Logo field.
    • If you would like the Partner Logo field to appear on multiple pages, copy the field and
      paste it on each relevant page. When the field is duplicated, rename it (Partner Logo
      2, Partner Logo 3, etc). Ensure each instance of the Partner Logo field has the same Position values.
    • Use each field only once in the document and ensure that all field names are unique.
    • Ensure that field heights and widths are adequate to fit the content that will be entered. Ideally, fields should be on their own line to prevent text overlapping.
    • Use basic fonts or Adobe Acrobat fonts. Avoid custom fonts as they may produce unexpected results. Use a font size that is appropriate for the field size. 
    • A field should be set as multi-line content if you expect your partners will be providing more than a few words to it. 
    • Fields that will contain a URL should be formatted as {button text} | {url}, for example click here | www.google.com
  4. Save the PDF.
  5. Recommended: Create a thumbnail image of the PDF (110 x 100px, maximum file size 2MB).

You can now upload the co-brandable PDF to Unifyr One and manage it from there. For information, see How to Upload and Publish a Co-Brandable PDF below.

How to Upload and Publish a Co-brandable PDF

The template you worked on with the Unifyr One team should be created ahead of this step.  

  1. Navigate to Partner Marketing > Multimedia.
  2. Click Create > Print Media Asset.
  3. Select the template on which the PDF is based.

  4. Add information to these fields:

    Parameter Type Description
    Name Text The name that will display in Unifyr One Admin (internal only).
    Display Name Text The name that will display for your partners in your Unifyr One Partner Portal.
    Description Text

    A one- or two-sentence summary about the asset and any top-level information the partner would need to know to select it.  

    The description displays in the partner portal.
    PDF File Upload Upload the PDF. The file must not exceed 250 MB.
    Internal Notes Text

    [Optional] Capture information about the activity that is only visible to you, as a supplier.

    The note will not be visible in the partner portal.

    The window shows all fields available in the original PDF template. You will specify which are actually available in the PDF in the next step - see How to Add/Edit Details and Personalization Options for a Co-brandable PDF below.

    admin_cobrandable_pdf_create.png

  5. Click Create.
  6. You will return to the Multimedia list view, where the new Print Media asset (admin_multimedia_pdf_icon.png) has been added. From the list, click on the asset you just created.
  7. To publish the asset, click Publish.
  8. To edit the asset, including adding personalization options and validity dates, click Edit Details and follow the instructions in How to Add/Edit Details and Personalization Options for a Co-Brandable PDF below.

How to Add/Edit Details and Personalization Options for a Co-brandable PDF

Once a co-brandable Print Media (PDF) asset has been added to Unifyr One, you can customize it with filters, fields, and images. Editing allows you to add and map the fields in the PDF to data items in Unifyr One. To review or customize the details of a co-brandable PDF, follow these steps.

  1. Navigate to Partner Marketing > Multimedia.
  2. Click the name of the co-brandable PDF you want to customize, to open it for edit.
  3. Click Edit Details. In this view, you can review or edit the following:
 Description

Information about the asset for your partners.

 Effective Dates

Specify the Effective Date Begin and Effective Date End. This specifies the date range for which the activity will be available to partners for activation in the Unifyr One partner portal.

 Is Promoted?

Suppliers can promote activities to increase partner adoption. If the Is Promoted? option is enabled, the activity will appear at the top of the Browse Collateral page, in a Promoted window, in the Unifyr One Partner Portal.

Use the start and end date pickers to define the period for which the activity will be promoted.

 Internal Notes

Information about the activity that is only visible to you in Unifyr One Admin, as a supplier.

 Partner Filters

Click Edit to apply Partner Filters and define who has access to this content. It can be used for regions, products, partners, etc.. Click the links and choose the Partner Groups and/or fields to select how you want to limit the content. 

For information on using partner filters, see Add Partner Filters.

Fields

This is the list of fields that will be presented in the PDF for your partners to complete. The list details the fields, and the type of information each one contains (Embedded Image, Simple Text, or Url). Depending on your setup, the list may be complete or you may need to set up the list yourself. 

  • Click New if you need to add a field.
  • Click edit next to a field that's already listed, to update it.
  • Click remove next to a field that's already listed, if it's not to be included in the PDF.
  • Use a field's Control property to specify the type of content it contains.
  • The field names listed for the PDF must match the field names in the original template.
  • Order fields chronologically in the order they appear in the document.
  • Mark the fields Available for personalization so that partners can personalize the content in Unifyr One Partner Portal.
  • Mark a field with Other personalization if you want to be able to test what it will look like with a test value during preview, before publishing the PDF to the portal.
Thumbnail

Upload the PDF thumbnail that you created previously. We recommend 100x110px. The file size limit is 2MB.

  1. You can also select tags to categorize the PDF, to make it easier for your partners to find.

    This example shows that the PDF contains 3 fields - Partner Logo (Embedded Image type), Partner Name (Simple Text type), and URL (Url type). It will be available for partners between January and November, and is available to ZA partners.

    admin_cobrandable_pdf_edit_details.png

  2. Click Save.

To preview the document, click Preview. You can also preview the document using Edit Content. In this case, if fields have Other Personalization set, they are presented in an Other Personalization section on the preview, where you can add test values.

How to Promote a Co-brandable PDF

You can promote a PDF asset to increase partner adoption. Promoting the asset will pin it to the top of the Browse Collateral page so that it is one of the first assets a partner sees when browsing that area in the partner portal.

portal_browse_collateral_promoted.png

Follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Partner Marketing > Multimedia.
  2. Click the name of the PDF you want to promote, to open it for edit.
  3. Click Edit Details.
  4. Check the Is Promoted? option.
  5. Add the Promotion Start and Promotion End dates.
  6. [Optional] Add a Promotion Description to add internal-facing information regarding the decision to promote this asset.
  7. Click Save.

How to Archive a Co-brandable PDF

  1. Navigate to Partner Marketing > Multimedia.
  2. Click the name of the PDF you want to archive, to open it for edit.
  3. If the asset is currently Published, click the Unpublish button on the top right corner.
  4. Click the Archive button in the top right corner. A message advises that the asset will be removed from all campaigns it is currently associated with. Click Archive to confirm.
  5. Once archived, you can delete the asset. Click the Delete button.

Bulk Update Co-brandable PDFs

Unifyr One's Bulk Update feature allows you to add/remove tags, configure partner filters, and set effective dates and status for multiple PDFs in a single action.

For more information, see Updating Marketing Content in Bulk.

To access the Bulk Update option for co-brandable PDFs:

  1. Navigate to Partner Marketing > Multimedia.
  2. Check the checkbox to the left of each PDF you want to update.
  3. Click Bulk Update.

How to Distribute and Customize in Unifyr One Partner Portal

You make co-brandable PDFs available in the partner portal by including one of these:

For both ways, set Show Content From to Customizable Multimedia in Page Details to show co-brandable content in the page.

portal_browse_collateral_cobrandable.png

Entitled partners can view, customize, download, and distribute content from the page:

  1. Log into the partner portal.
  2. Navigate to Browse Collateral (the name of the page may be different in your portal).
  3. Find and select the customizable PDF.
  4. Click Preview to view the content.
  5. Click Customize to add personalization to the content.
  6. In the content detail page, actions provide links to help users review and update the personalization applied to the media, and get a trackable link to it. Click Review to proceed with the customize action.

  7. In Personalization, add values to the available fields then click Save or Save & Next.

    Enable the Save as default option for any of the properties to make future personalizations of the same content easier.

  8. In Distribute, use Copy to Clipboard to pick up a link to the content. There are two options:

    • Link for distribution - A URL that can be used to distribute the content in any medium, such as emails, web plugins, etc.

      All engagements with this URL are captured and can be tracked using Unifyr One Analytics.

    • Preview link - Use to preview the asset in a browser.

      Engagements with this URL are not tracked.

  9. Click Close to complete the update.
  10. Once the user has completed the actions for the content, they can distribute it (get links) or share it (create a social post) from the content detail page.
  11. To download or email multiple assets in a single action, the user can highlight the ones they want in Browse Collateral and click Download Selected or Email Selected in the top right corner of the screen, as appropriate.

Best Practices for Co-branded PDF Design

Here are some guidelines to consider when creating a co-brandable PDF in Adobe Acrobat (or equivalent).

Thumbnail Size
  • Create a thumbnail image of the cover using screen capture software. We recommend that the thumbnail image is 127 pixels in height.
 Partner Logo
  • Place the logo either in an upper corner or in the footer.
  • Make the field large enough to fit any potential logo entered, but take care that it won't overlap any text or copy.
  • Allow for ample white space around the logo so that it stands out. Partner logos should not be placed on colored backgrounds unless you are using a transparent background image.
Contact Fields
  • Contact fields can be placed on any page with proper room and spacing.
  • Stack contact fields vertically as a horizontal layout can be impacted by field size limitations.
Font Formatting
  • Use basic fonts such as Arial or Helvetica or the fonts provided by Acrobat for proper PDF display.
  • For visual consistency, all the font sizes and text colors should match the body copy.
Designated Back Pages
  • You may want to provide a blank page at the end of the PDF for your partners' logo and contact fields. Providing a designated back page encourages use with ease of design, layout, and consistent placement of customized fields.

 Training

Learn more with our training course:

You will be prompted to log into your CustomerONE account to access the link.

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