Drive Your Channel Productivity Globally

At ZINFI, we do a bi-annual worldwide channel survey across a broad range of channel partners and resellers to understand various opportunities related to marketing and sales activities. One of the core areas we ask questions are tied to Market Development Funds (MDF). The typical questions we ask are tied to how easy it is to apply, what partners want to do, etc. In one of our recent surveys we asked the partners who had access to Market Development Funds (MDF) about how frequently they use such funds. The answer was not at all surprising. As a part of this survey we reached out to about 4,000 partner contacts on a world-wide basis and asked whether they have Market Development Funds (MDF) or not. Those who said that they have MDF (which was about 30% of the total respondents) were then asked how frequently they use MDF. The attached graph shows, most partners do not use MDF. There are a few things a vendor can do to drive better utilization and return on marketing investment. Keeping it simple – Very o

While high-end Web Content Syndication tools have existed for more than a couple of decades, the introduction of simple product showcase syndication for partners’ websites is relatively a new weapon in the Channel Marketing Automation arsenal. Web Content Syndication is a very important technology and can quickly distribute a large amount of branded content via multiple partners’ websites. It is very easy to set up and can be highly effective for branding and lead generation purposes. Web Content Syndication isn’t guaranteed to succeed, though; in fact the majority of the pure play tool providers fail to build brand and generate leads simply because channel partners do not get enough traffic to their sites. On the other hand, integrating Web Content Syndication as a part of comprehensive Channel Marketing Automation process has been shown to drive significant results and scale quickly as demand grows. Web Content Syndication usually fails to work because of one or more of the following failure modes: Webs

Many Channel Marketing Automation vendors today provide tools such as email marketing, event marketing, and web and social content syndication. However, it’s questionable whether these tools are enough in themselves to stimulate demand and channel engagement. So what else is needed to complete the demand generation tool set, and how can a technology vendor make sure they buy the right system, and pay the right amount to achieve the desired ROI? These are important questions; moreover, for larger vendors they need to be considered in a global context. First-generation Channel Marketing Automation tools typically offered web syndication, event marketing and email marketing. In the ensuing phase, most Channel Marketing Automation vendors – like ZINFI – introduced tools like social syndication and on-demand webinars. While these tools were somewhat effective in building sales pipeline, their impact was only moderate. In an effort to understand more, ZINFI last year undertook an extensive, in-depth channel partner

It is getting harder every day to cut through the clutter that exists in our email inboxes. Most business users get hundreds of emails every day. Many email programs allow auto filtering of newsletter into different folders – let alone the spam filters cutting out many legitimate emails due to improper set up. However, there are a few effective ways to reach potential prospects via email marketing. It’s still the most efficient ways to get in touch with new prospects and existing customers. Build opt-in subscriber list - Yes, this is hard to do, but can be done. The easiest way to do is to build a social presence via various groups, start participating in group conversations, redirect (where allowed) traffic to a blog post, and request users to sign up for email newsletter on relevant topics. This is the only way to engage with new prospects. Test for spam scores and rewrite - Did you know that more than two thirds of the emails that are sent via various email marketing software are never tested for thei

Most channel partners do not have marketing resources and, as a result, rarely use content marketing as part of their lead generation efforts. At most, they may have technical blogs or a social media program. But effective content marketing requires a holistic approach, and the best way to achieve this is with a Channel Marketing Automation platform that incorporates all the relevant content and integrated marketing tools for a complete campaign. In situations of high demand and low competition, content marketing is not essential. The market will come to you as long as you are able to provide simple information distribution to prospects and customers. But for most areas of IT, this is how the world was fifty years ago. How things have changed! Most markets today are ardently contested by multiple providers. Unless you are a Google with 70% market share and a business model built around your monopoly as an information enabler, as a technology vendor you will need an active content marketing campaign if it is t

It doesn’t matter how big or small your channel is:  chances are that once in a while you need to run partner recruitment campaigns – especially when you launch a new product or acquire a new company that your current channel is not equipped to sell. However, partner recruitment is not an easy task. We at ZINFI can help you with this or do it on your behalf either on a national level or globally by using our Channel Marketing Automation and concierge services. Most vendors want to recruit channel partners who have marketing, sales and product capabilities in place to sell the vendors’ specific set of products. Research statistics show that channel partners bringing in average revenues of between $2-10 million carry products from anywhere between six and 40 vendors. So, for a partner to add another product to his portfolio, it is a major strategic decision that is never taken lightly. Vendors therefore need to be highly selective about the partners they select and what to do to make the engagement meaningful.

Most technology vendors struggle to keep their partners informed about product and program changes via their Channel Marketing Automation platform. This happens mostly when the vendor relies too heavily on Email Marketing based communication. While all Channel Marketing Automation tools provide Email Marketing as a core tool of communication, very few provide a set of alternative or supplementary communication tools, and this is a problem, because email is easy to ignore and ineffective as a single communications medium. ZINFI’s Channel Marketing Automation platform provides realistic, alternative tools to bridge this gap. An average channel partner with $2 million to $10 million in annual revenues will probably carry products from between six and forty technology vendors. Each vendor provides multiple products that go through product refresh, updates, and end of life announcements on a quarterly basis. On top of that each channel program has multiple updates related to market development funds (MDF), rewards