Channel Marketing Automation: A New Model for Sales and Productivity
©2005 Starmark International
The ability to consistently access and customize intangible “soft” core assets – including sales collateral, creative
materials, customer and prospect databases, channel information, sales forecasts, and digital assets such as Web sites –
enhances productivity and empowers revenue generation. But, accessing, customizing and utilizing these resources is
difficult because safeguarding the brand and averting security breaches can limit participation.
Extending Resources to the Channel. Protecting Corporate Assets.
Channel partners, or resellers, cannot afford to
advertise their businesses on the same level as their
larger OEM partners. But how can they leverage
multi-million dollar corporate advertising campaigns
to impact their sales? And how can the advertiser/
OEM extend the resources of costly ad campaigns to
their hundreds or thousands of resellers without
“reinventing the wheel” in each case?
Channel partners need more than data. And they need
more than artwork or creative materials in digital
format. They need these materials, or assets, to be
customized for their organizations, complete with their
contact information including unique microsite URLs, telephone numbers, email addresses, etc. Even if advertisers/OEMs
wanted to distribute original, digital advertising files to each member of the reseller channel for customization, how would
they monitor participation, eliminate rogue usage and maintain corporate brand compliance?
The answer lies in CMA – Channel Marketing Automation, the critical space between CRM (Customer Relationship
Management) and SFA (Sales Force Automation).To dig deeper, let’s examine the following case study.
Company: A leading, internationally recognized travel company
Audience:
4,000 travel agent/resellers compensated on vacation/group bookings
Challenge: Create, customize, print and mail over 1 million direct mail pieces
Solution: Hosted Channel Marketing Automation software with au