FY27 Co-op guide

30 Microsoft Co-op campaign ideas for FY27

Thirty claimable activities with estimated costs, the activity type to claim under, and the proof you'll need, plus five campaigns that wire them together.

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  1. 01Demand generation: filling the top
  2. 02Targeted prospecting
  3. 03Events and conferences
  4. 04Market development: converting the middle
  5. 05Customer solution adoption
  6. 06Solution co-innovation
  7. 07Supporting activities
  8. 08Partner capability
  9. 09For distributors: reseller activation
  10. 10Five campaigns end to end
  11. 11Where to start, by budget
  12. 12Before you commit anything
  13. 13A cadence that works
  14. 14Common questions

Demand generation: filling the top

Half your funds should land here, and Microsoft's own ROI analysis found partners investing in these activity types realise two to five times higher future earnings from their Microsoft business. Omdia found 75% of partners under-invest in demand generation. There's your gap.

Paid media with multi-touch campaigns

01

A research-led hero campaign

Aimed at IT and operations leaders in organisations above 300 seats who are stuck between an AI pilot and an AI strategy. You publish a short piece of original research, ideally your own customer data cut by region or sector, wrapped around Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index findings. The one that opens doors: only 26% say leadership is aligned on AI. Three quarters of your market has an unresolved argument in the boardroom, and you're the one who can settle it.

Run it as LinkedIn paid media to a matched audience, driving to a gated summary, with a three-email nurture behind it, three blog posts answering the questions the data raises, and a webinar in week six. Twelve weeks end to end.

Estimated cost
£18,000 to £30,000, of which £8,000 to £12,000 is the research itself.
Claim under
The study under Solution Co-Innovation, everything promoting it under Paid Media with Multi-Touch.
Proof
Ad screenshots, platform execution report, the published study, landing page and email creative.
02

An installed-base upsell campaign

The cheapest pipeline you'll ever build, because the audience is already yours. Target your own M365 E3 customers with an E5 or E7 conversation, or your Business Premium base with Defender and Purview. Build a matched audience from your CRM, run paid social against it, and pair it with a direct email sequence to the same list so the message lands twice from two directions.

The offer that converts here is an assessment, not a demo. "Find out what your current licences already entitle you to" gets clicks from people who'd ignore a product ad.

Estimated cost
£10,000 to £18,000 over ten weeks.
Claim under
Paid Media with Multi-Touch.
Proof
Ad screenshots, platform report, email creative and send reports.
03

A vertical-focused campaign

Pick one sector where you've got two or three reference customers and go deep rather than broad. Manufacturing, professional services, housing associations, whatever your last three wins have in common. The creative talks about their problem in their language, and the proof is a customer they'll recognise.

Paid search and paid social against sector job titles, a sector landing page, a case study, and a sector-specific webinar. The reason this outperforms a generic campaign is simple: buyers in a niche assume a specialist knows things a generalist doesn't.

Estimated cost
£12,000 to £20,000.
Claim under
Paid Media with Multi-Touch, with the case study production claimable under Solution Co-Innovation if you'd rather split it.
04

An always-on search and AI visibility programme

FY27 named SEO, large language model optimisation and generative engine optimisation as qualifying touchpoints, and almost nobody is spending here yet. Buyers increasingly ask an assistant before they ask Google, and if your expertise isn't legible to a model you're invisible when the shortlist gets drawn.

The work: publish clear answers to the twenty questions your sales team gets asked in every first meeting, with real numbers and honest caveats. Fix the technical layer so your service pages say plainly who you serve and where. "Business Central migrations for UK manufacturers with 50 to 250 staff" is legible. "Trusted technology partner" isn't. Keep a small paid budget running alongside so it qualifies as multi-touch.

Estimated cost
£2,000 to £4,000 a month.
Claim under
Paid Media with Multi-Touch.
Proof
The published content, search and referral reporting, and the paid media screenshots.
05

A quarterly webinar funnel

Three webinars a quarter on one theme, promoted by paid media, each recorded and cut into clips that promote the next one. The trick is treating them as a series rather than three separate events, because the second and third fill from the first.

Estimated cost
£8,000 to £14,000 a quarter including promotion.
Claim under
Paid Media with Multi-Touch, since webinars are a named qualifying component.
Proof
Registration pages, attendee data, ad screenshots, platform report.

Targeted prospecting

06

An engaged-contact calling tail

The single easiest win in this document. Take everyone who opened your nurture twice, attended the webinar, or hit the landing page from paid media, and call them. Every call references what that person actually did, which is the difference between prospecting and cold calling, and it's also what the guidebook requires: calls must be informed by campaign context, prior engagement or data signals.

Offer a workshop place rather than a meeting. It's a lower-commitment yes and it feeds the activity you're running next.

Estimated cost
£6,000 to £12,000 for a four-week push.
Claim under
Targeted Prospecting.
Proof
Dialler report with timestamps, call summary, and a metrics summary covering calls made, date range, duration and pipeline generated.
07

A Cloud Ascent priority account campaign

The Azure and Security guidance both point at Cloud Ascent for targeted prospecting into high-propensity and Act Now accounts. Take that list, run a short paid media burst against those named accounts so the brand is familiar, then call them. Account-based, small, and measurable.

Estimated cost
£8,000 to £15,000 including the paid layer.
Claim under
The calling under Targeted Prospecting and the media under Paid Media with Multi-Touch.
08

A renewal-window outbound push

Anyone running workloads that hit end of support has a date in the diary, and dates create urgency you don't have to manufacture. Build the list from your own estate data, script the call around the deadline and the options, and put a modernisation readiness guide behind it.

Estimated cost
£5,000 to £10,000.
Claim under
Targeted Prospecting, with the guide under Paid Media with Multi-Touch if it's promoted.

Events and conferences

09

A quarterly flagship customer event

One properly built event a quarter beats a stand at three regional expos. Sixty to a hundred customers and prospects, a live demo at the centre of it, a customer telling their own story, and a defined next step everyone leaves with. Facility hire, equipment, signage, demo setup labour and catering without alcohol are all claimable, as is travel for your speaker.

Two traps. Event sponsorship isn't claimable under this activity, and neither is conference travel, so the booth is fundable but the flights to it aren't. And the venue has to be business-appropriate, meaning no stadiums, sports suites or game venues. That rule has teeth in FY27.

Estimated cost
£12,000 to £25,000.
Claim under
Events and Conferences.
Proof
Invitation with agenda and registration link, attendee details with roles and cost per head, and photos showing the Microsoft solution with participants.
10

An industry exhibition or event stand

One conference where your actual buyers gather beats four where they might. Book the stand, demo the solution live, and wire the lead capture straight into the nurture you're already running so the follow-up starts before they've got home. In a multi-vendor setting you claim the Microsoft share, worked out by dividing the space dedicated to Microsoft and meeting the core requirements by the total event cost.

Estimated cost
£8,000 to £20,000 depending on the show.
Claim under
Events and Conferences.
11

An executive breakfast briefing

Twelve to fifteen senior people, ninety minutes, one topic, in a business venue. Cheaper than a flagship event and often better pipeline, because the room is smaller and the conversation is real. Works particularly well off the back of a research study, where the invitation is to discuss the findings rather than hear a pitch.

Estimated cost
£3,000 to £6,000 per session.
Claim under
Events and Conferences if it's in person and awareness-led, or Customer Workshops if it's a smaller group being moved deeper into a solution conversation. The guidebook's test: events are for reach, workshops are for engagement and adoption.

Market development: converting the middle

Forty percent of your funds, and the activities that turn interest into deployment. Customer workshops are one of the three highest-ROI activities Microsoft identified for direct and indirect resellers, and they're the most under-used thing in most partner plans because they feel like delivery rather than marketing.

Customer workshops

14

A monthly one-to-many briefing series

Same 90-minute format every month on one conversation, so the content investment amortises across the year instead of being rebuilt each time. Twenty to thirty attendees, a demo, a customer story, and a clear next step. The guidebook suggests completing the CSR form monthly for customer events, which turns a scattered set of sessions into an evidenced programme rather than a filing job in month five.

Estimated cost
£1,500 to £3,000 per session once the format exists, plus £4,000 to £8,000 to build it the first time.
Claim under
Customer Workshops.
15

A Copilot governance immersion briefing

The question every IT lead is quietly worried about is what Copilot does to their data governance, and almost nobody is answering it properly. A 90-minute session walking through what actually happens to permissions, oversharing and retention, with Purview shown live, converts better than any demo of Copilot itself. It also sets up the Security attach conversation without you having to pivot.

Estimated cost
£3,000 to £6,000 per session.
Claim under
Customer Workshops.
16

A hands-on technical lab or hackathon

One named account, four to six of their people, and something real built in a sandbox by the end of the day. This is the activity partners assume they can't fund, and it's one of the most generously covered in the guidebook. Claimable: technical labour for lab or demo setup, technical facilitation fees, cloud consumption costs for the lab environment including set-up, content development of the lab assets and guided exercises, third-party platforms to run it, and limited time-bound prototyping tied to the event.

Read that list again. Microsoft will fund you standing up the environment, building the exercises and running the day. Very few partners are claiming it.

Estimated cost
£6,000 to £12,000 per lab.
Claim under
Customer Workshops, technical variant.
Proof
Invitation with agenda, attendee list, photos of the lab with the Microsoft solution and the audience visible.
17

An AI leadership envisioning workshop

Aimed straight at the 26% problem. A half day with a customer's leadership team, not their IT team, working out what they'd actually redesign if agents did the work. Microsoft's own data says organisational redesign drives roughly twice the AI impact of individual effort, which is the argument for selling the redesign rather than the licences.

Estimated cost
£4,000 to £8,000.
Claim under
Customer Workshops.

Customer solution adoption

18

An adoption campaign for customers who've already bought

Capped at 5% for CSP and Hosting, but worth using. This funds fixed-scope, fixed-price deployment offerings that get customers actually using what they've licensed, which is what protects renewal and opens the cross-sell. Third-party services driving Copilot adoption are explicitly named, as are migration tools, assessments and test environments, and proposal development.

The marketing job here is packaging: turn deployment into a named, priced offer with a landing page rather than a bespoke quote every time.

Estimated cost
£5,000 to £15,000 per packaged offer.
Claim under
Customer Solution Adoption. Anything already claimed under Microsoft Commerce Incentives can't be claimed again here.
Proof
An email from the customer confirming deployment or migration, plus tenant screenshots or service activation records naming the customer and the products.

Solution co-innovation

19

Your own research study

Most partners skim past Solution Co-Innovation because the name sounds technical. The first line of its eligible expenses is research: white paper, case study development, market research. That's your hero content funded.

Survey your installed base or interview fifteen customers, then publish a regional or sector cut with your own name on it. Original data is the one thing a language model can't synthesise from everyone else's blog posts, so it earns citations for a year and feeds three campaigns.

Estimated cost
£10,000 to £20,000.
Claim under
Solution Co-Innovation.
Proof
The published study, a role-based hours breakdown, and the creative materials produced.
20

A batch of three customer case studies

Produce them together rather than one at a time and the unit cost drops by about a third. Customer case studies are a named qualifying component of a multi-touch campaign, so they earn their keep twice: as sales collateral, and as the second or third touchpoint that makes a paid media claim valid.

Estimated cost
£4,000 to £8,000 for three.
Claim under
Solution Co-Innovation, or inside the campaign under Paid Media with Multi-Touch.
21

A solution white paper with a working test case

The heavier version. You build something on Microsoft technology, Copilot, Azure OpenAI, Fabric or Power Platform, and publish the thinking alongside it. Development and execution costs associated with a solution test case are claimable, as is the labour behind it and the agency work that markets it.

Estimated cost
£6,000 to £12,000.
Claim under
Solution Co-Innovation.

Supporting activities

22

Campaign merchandise for an event

Capped at 1% for CSP and Hosting, so this is a garnish rather than a course, and it has to be part of a campaign rather than a standalone order. The branding rule is oddly specific and easy to get wrong: items must carry your name or logo, and must include the word Microsoft or a product name such as Copilot or Surface in text only. No Microsoft or product logos on the item itself. Creative and printing fees on things like bags, T-shirts and golf balls aren't claimable, so the unit cost funds but the design work doesn't.

Estimated cost
£500 to £2,000.
Proof
The invoice, photos of the items, and photos of them in use at the event with date evidence. Take that photo on the day, because nobody remembers afterwards.
23

Print and outdoor for a Surface push (Surface partners only)

Trade press advertising, outdoor, catalogues and printed reference guides. Every piece needs a strong call to action and prominent contact details. For catalogues the claim is proportional: divide the pages meeting the Microsoft content requirement by total pages and claim that share of the per-page cost.

Estimated cost
£8,000 to £20,000 for a media burst, £2,000 to £5,000 for a set of guides.
Claim under
Physical Media.
Proof
The communication piece plus placement confirmation showing publication, issue date, page and geography.
24

Demo units and product seeding (Surface partners only)

One of the two highest-ROI activities Microsoft identified for Surface partners. Demo units for your team to use in customer presentations, showcases and kiosks, and seeded devices placed with customers to evaluate before they buy. Equipment purchase and shipping are claimable; licences and testing environments aren't.

Claim in the period the units were actually delivered.

Proof
Packing slip or delivery confirmation, plus a loaner tracking log or photos of the device deployed in a demo centre, showroom or customer environment.

Partner capability: making it deliverable

Ten percent, and the easiest category to under-spend by accident because nobody chases you for it. Two of these are marketing jobs even though they sit under capability.

Certifications, skilling and your own AI adoption

25

Certifications, designations and audit fees

The quiet one partners forget is fundable. Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program annual benefits enrolment, certification exam fees, and the third-party audit or assessment fees behind specialisations and designations. Audits can only be completed between 1 July 2026 and 30 June 2027, so there's a window.

Worth planning against the designations your campaigns actually need. If you're running a Security attach campaign, fund the Security, Compliance and Identity certifications behind it in the same period.

Estimated cost
£2,000 to £10,000 depending on how many people and which specialisations.
Claim under
MAICPP Audit, Fees and Certifications.
26

Skilling your team on the thing you're about to sell

Third-party training, external trainers, digital training platforms, technical lab environments, venue hire and catering are all claimable, provided content is 100% Microsoft-focused. Trainer travel is covered at up to USD 5,000 per person per event within a USD 45,000 half-year cap, for one trainer.

The bit most people miss: agency fees to market the skilling programme internally are also eligible. If you build enablement and nobody turns up, the campaign to fix that is fundable too.

Estimated cost
£4,000 to £15,000 for a role-based programme.
Claim under
Internal Partner Skilling. The same venue rule applies: educational settings only, no stadiums or sports suites.
27

Becoming Customer Zero for AI

Capped at 5%, and genuinely useful. This funds you deploying agentic AI inside your own business, using Copilot, Azure OpenAI, Fabric or Power Platform, so you can say you've done it before you ask a customer to. Build an agent that automates something real in your own operation, then turn that into the story you sell with.

What gets rejected: conceptual or research work with no deployment, and generic reusable IP that isn't tied to your own adoption. Training your people on AI belongs under skilling, not here.

Estimated cost
£5,000 to £15,000.
Claim under
Partner AI Adoption.
Proof
Solution description, role-based hours breakdown, and a screenshot of the deployed environment.

Reseller activation

Forty-five percent of the recommended distributor mix, the biggest single category, and three of its five activities are marketing. Internal partner skilling and to-partner marketing are the two highest-ROI activities Microsoft identified for distributors.

To-partner marketing and events

28

A quarterly to-partner activation campaign

One Microsoft solution play and one piece of enablement per quarter, promoted to your reseller base as a single campaign. Paid media and content syndication against a target partner list, a landing page with the assets resellers need, and an email sequence. Measured on reach, frequency and yield rather than leads.

Estimated cost
£15,000 to £30,000 a quarter.
Claim under
To-Partner Marketing Digital. Printed material and postage aren't eligible here, same as the customer-facing version.
29

A partner day

Distributor-led, partner-branded, in person or virtual, aligning resellers to Microsoft priorities and solution plays. The primary focus has to be promoting the sale of Microsoft products through presentations and demonstrations. Signage, display and printed materials, registration platform fees, speaker travel, facility and equipment rental and catering are all claimable. Note that printed materials are eligible here even though they aren't for digital campaigns.

Estimated cost
£10,000 to £25,000.
Claim under
To-Partner Events.
30

Campaign-in-a-Box at scale

Capped at 3%. An AI-powered marketing platform that pushes ready-to-execute Microsoft campaigns out to your resellers, with reporting on what they actually ran. It has to enable activation at scale rather than single-partner execution, align to Microsoft solution areas, and be built using Microsoft solutions. Microsoft won't pay the claim if the platform runs on a competitive one, which rules out a fair few options, so check before you sign.

Estimated cost
Platform cost plus monthly usage, capped at 3% of earned funds.
Claim under
Marketing Automation Platform.
Proof
Screenshots of the platform listing the ready-to-go Microsoft campaigns, plus monthly usage reporting from the vendor.

Five campaigns, end to end

Individual activities are fine. Campaigns are better, and they claim more cleanly, because a multi-touch claim needs at least three itemised lines anyway. Here are five combinations that work, each built from the examples above.

Campaign one: the research-led hero

Examples 1, 6, 14 and 19 combined. Twelve weeks, one story, four claims. This is the one to build first because it produces its own evidence and it gives your sales team something to open with that isn't a product.

WeeksWhat runsWhat it producesClaimed under
1 to 3Survey or interviews, analysis, creative sent for preapprovalResearch report, executive summary, data visualsSolution Co-Innovation
4Launch: gated landing page live, research published, search and LLMO work shippedLanding page, three blog posts answering the questions the data raisesPaid Media with Multi-Touch
4 to 10Paid media always-on to a matched audience, with organic amplificationAd screenshots, platform report showing impressions, clicks and leadsPaid Media with Multi-Touch
5 to 9Three-email nurture to downloaders and the installed baseEmail creative and send reportsPaid Media with Multi-Touch
6 and 10Webinar on the findings, then a one-to-many workshop for those who attendedInvitation with agenda, attendee list, session photos or screenshotsPaid Media, then Customer Workshops
8 to 12Calling tail against engaged contacts, offering a workshop placeDialler report, call summary, pipeline metricsTargeted Prospecting

Notice the structure. The paid media claim alone needs three itemised lines, and this gives you five supporting elements, so there's slack if an asset slips. The workshop claims are separate and repeatable. The research is claimed once and fuels the next two campaigns as well.

Estimated total: £40,000 to £65,000 across the period.

Campaign two: security attach

The play Microsoft is pushing hardest: attach Defender and Purview to Business Premium accounts, and upsell M365 E5 to E7. Examples 2, 15 and 6, in that order.

Start with the installed-base campaign against your own Business Premium customers. Use the Campaign-in-a-Box assets for SMB Security and Compliance or Secure and Govern M365 Copilot as the creative starting point, then rewrite them so they sound like you rather than like Microsoft. Convert with the Copilot governance briefing, which is the session that gets security budget released, then call the attendees.

Estimated total: £25,000 to £40,000. Add example 25 in the same period so the certifications land alongside the campaign.

Campaign three: Azure modernisation

Examples 8, 4 and 16. The hook is the deadline rather than the technology, because anyone on end-of-support workloads already has a date in the diary.

Outbound against your own estate data, a modernisation readiness guide behind it, always-on search visibility so you're findable when they start looking, and a technical lab where the customer's team migrates something real. The lab is the conversion event, and the cloud consumption for it is claimable.

Estimated total: £25,000 to £45,000.

Campaign four: Business Central ERP displacement

Examples 3, 20 and 14, aimed at SMB. The guidance is unusually specific here: cross-sell Business Central into existing M365 customers, migrate legacy ERP users, and displace competitors.

Pick one vertical where you've got real references, because finance leaders in SMB buy from people who understand their sector. Run the vertical campaign with a comparison guide for the legacy system you're displacing, a case study of a migration you've already delivered, and one-to-many events using the Immersion Event Kit to boost reach.

Estimated total: £20,000 to £35,000.

Campaign five: reseller activation (distributors)

Examples 28, 29 and 26 combined, with 30 if you're running a platform. Same mechanics as a customer campaign, different audience. One solution play per quarter, promoted digitally, launched at a partner day, with a skilling programme behind it and a campaign to fill that programme.

Estimated total: £40,000 to £75,000 a quarter, which sounds a lot until you remember reseller activation is 45% of the recommended distributor mix.

Where to start, by budget

If you're staring at a number and don't know where to point it, start here. These are starting combinations, not prescriptions.

Top of funnel

A position in the market, not just leads

£40,000 to £75,000
  • Example 1: the research-led hero campaign
  • Example 3: the vertical land campaign
  • Example 4: always-on search and AI visibility
  • Example 5: the quarterly webinar funnel
  • Examples 9 and 10: flagship event or vertical booth

Middle of funnel

Pipeline from people who already know you

Under £15,000 to £40,000
  • Example 2: the installed-base upsell campaign
  • Example 6: the engaged-contact calling tail
  • Example 11: the executive breakfast briefing
  • Example 14: the monthly one-to-many briefing series
  • Example 15: the Copilot governance immersion briefing

Bottom of funnel

Turning interest into deployment

£15,000 to £40,000
  • Example 7: the Cloud Ascent priority account campaign
  • Example 8: the renewal-window outbound push
  • Example 16: the hands-on technical lab or hackathon
  • Example 17: the AI leadership envisioning workshop
  • Example 18: the adoption campaign for existing customers

Other

Proof, capability and reseller reach

Whatever's left, plus distributor funds
  • Examples 19 to 21: research, case studies, white papers
  • Examples 22 to 24: merchandise and Surface physical media
  • Examples 25 to 27: certifications, skilling, Customer Zero
  • Examples 28 to 30: to-partner activation, partner day, Campaign-in-a-Box
  • Over £75,000? Run two campaigns in parallel plus first party events
One rule regardless of size: never spread a small budget across five activities. Three touchpoints that reference each other beat six that don't, and the guidebook only needs paid media plus two supporting elements to make a valid multi-touch claim.
Nathan SelbyNathan Selby, Founder, Resultful

Before you commit anything

Six things that catch people out. None are hard, but any one of them can cost you a claim.

01

Brand your assets properly

Every asset needs your brand name and contact details, meaning at least a street address or email, or a website URL or phone number. If a campaign drives to a landing page your agency hosts, it still has to show the Microsoft offer and you as the partner behind it. This is the most common reason creative gets rejected.

02

Nothing can look like it came from Microsoft

Activities must not appear to be conducted by, on behalf of, or sponsored by Microsoft, and everything follows the Microsoft Brand Guidelines. You're the voice; Microsoft is the technology in the story.

03

Venues have to be business-appropriate

Educational rather than entertainment-led. No stadiums, sports suites, game venues or charity events for Co-op-funded seminars, and Surface events are the only exception. Celebrity and motivational speakers are out everywhere, and so is alcohol on catering.

04

Get creative preapproved (optional)

Email it to commpre@microsoft.com before the activity starts, include your Co-op Program ID from the Partner Center homepage and name the activity type, and allow seven business days. You'll get a code valid for a year. The catch is the activity then has to run exactly as approved, with only dates and pricing free to change.

05

Ask suppliers for detailed invoices

FY27 put third-party invoicing at the front of the evidence chain, and an invoice that shows what was performed, when and where may be all you need. A line reading "marketing services, Q2" will cost you a fortnight of chasing screenshots.

06

Claim as you go

Claims open 45 days after the usage period starts and should go in within 45 days of each activity finishing. Claim amounts are limited by the funds available when you submit, and anything unclaimed at the deadline is forfeited with no rollover. Omdia found 43% of partners use less than half of their allocated vendor marketing investments, which is a lot of money going back.

The trap most partners fall into
Sponsorship is claimable at Microsoft first party events and not at your own. Get that the wrong way round and you'll have budgeted for something Microsoft won't fund.

A cadence that works

  1. 01

    Before the period opens, pull the earned balance and agree the plan against the category split, with your Partner Marketing Manager's sign-off where one's aligned to your account.

  2. 02

    Week one, creative goes for preapproval.

  3. 03

    Weeks two to four, build the hero asset and the landing page, and set reporting up so evidence exports itself rather than being reconstructed later.

  4. 04

    Weeks four to twelve, run it, and claim each activity within 45 days of completion.

  5. 05

    Month three, check the remaining balance and add a workshop series or a calling tail if money's sitting still.

  6. 06

    Month five, final claims in and next period's plan already drafted.

Claim windows

Claims open 45 days after the usage period starts, and each activity should be claimed within 45 days of finishing.

Sign-off

Where a Partner Marketing Manager is aligned to your account, the plan needs their review before you commit the budget, not after.

Sources and caveats
Activity definitions, eligible expenses, caps and proof requirements are drawn from the Co-op Guidebook section of the Microsoft Commercial Partner Incentives Guide, FY27 edition, 3 August 2026. Costs shown are indicative UK market estimates to help with sizing, not Microsoft figures. Caps and core requirements differ between Surface and CSP or Hosting incentives, and solution area guidance is a recommendation rather than a rule. Check the current guidebook and your earned balance before committing spend.

Common questions about spending FY27 Co-op

How much of my Co-op should go into demand generation?
Around half. Microsoft's own ROI analysis found partners investing in demand generation activity types realise two to five times higher future earnings from their Microsoft business, and Omdia found 75% of partners under-invest here.
What makes a valid multi-touch campaign claim in FY27?
Paid media plus at least two supporting elements, running as one joined-up campaign with at least three itemised lines on the claim. Supporting elements include email nurture, webinars, blogs, case studies, landing pages and search work.
Is event sponsorship claimable?
Not under Events and Conferences, and neither is conference travel. It is claimable under Microsoft First Party Events for corporate-led events such as Ignite, AI Tour, Build and MCAPS Tech Connect, where booth space, signage, meeting space, lead capture, passes and content are covered.
Can I fund a hands-on technical lab?
Yes, and it is one of the most generously covered activities in the guidebook. Technical labour for lab or demo setup, facilitation fees, cloud consumption for the lab environment, content development, third-party platforms and limited time-bound prototyping are all claimable under Customer Workshops.
Do I need creative preapproved before I run anything?
Yes. Email creative to commpre@microsoft.com before the activity starts, include your Co-op Program ID from the Partner Center homepage, name the activity type and allow seven business days. The code is valid for a year, but the activity has to run exactly as approved, with only dates and pricing free to change.
When do I have to claim by?
Claims open 45 days after the usage period starts and should go in within 45 days of each activity finishing. Claim amounts are limited by the funds available when you submit, and anything unclaimed at the deadline is forfeited with no rollover.

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