Channel marketing and communications have undergone seismic changes in the last few years. But it all began as early as the 00s, when Customer Relationship Management (CRM) really burst onto the scene. As Salesforce pioneered and took the direct business world by storm, we in the indirect channel began wondering if we could tailor something to fit the specific needs of vendors and partners, rather than customers.
I think that’s where we’ve seen the most progress in channel marketing. This process of redeveloping direct marketing platforms specifically for channel use has given us innovations such as Partner Relationship Management (PRM), an evolution of the aforementioned CRM.
In our latest e-book, I explore the evolution of channel comms technology, and how you can get ahead of the curve and increase Partner Experience (PX) by improving your to-partner comms.
In recent years we’ve seen the rise of Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA), an adaptation of Marketing Automation (MA) that almost every business the world over is using in some form or another. We know the usual suspects – Hubspot, Eloqua, Marketo are arguably leading the way here.
TCMA has been the latest mover, since PRM, and over the last 10 or so years we have seen some dedicated platforms pop up, as well as PRM providers adding TCMA capabilities to their platforms, with now over 30 options available to channel organisations. It’s really an exciting, and constantly changing time to be in channel tech!
The next frontier: Partner Communication Management (PCM)
So, what’s the next big thing? In my opinion, and in the opinion of many people I’ve spoken to about this, the biggest gap in Indirect GTM is to-partner communications. The majority of focus has been on the ‘Through’ piece via TCMA for the last decade, which has meant, sadly, the ‘To’ piece has been neglected, and as a results has not really moved since the turns of the century. Sounds silly doesn’t it as vendors and partners have to communicate to do business!
That’s exactly the issue! In many cases, we’re not seeing the quality of communication from vendors to partners to make their partnerships work. Partners are still being blasted by email newsletters, that take days to create and seconds to delete. Some partners are receiving over 100 vendor emails every week, with no personalisation or relevance.
Partner engagement is becoming more and more important as a differentiator and with inboxes overflowing with one directional email blasts that are being ignored, partners are switching off.
That’s why Partner Communication Management (PCM) is emerging as the next stage in the evolution of channel marketing technology. Not only to help with increasing partner engagement and PX, but to help vendors save the time, resource and cost associated with creating and managing the email newsletter process.
PCM will completely revolutionise the way vendors communicate and collaborate with their channel partners.
What is PCM?
PCM is a brand new approach. And much like TCMA and PRM, it has been born out of seeing a gap in the capabilities of channel tech, and then building our own solution.
It’s much more advanced than just sending email newsletters, it’s about building engagement through new and innovative ways of sharing comms with partners. Unlike traditional partner email comms or generic email marketing or even marketing automation tools, PCM is about vendors offering partners choice to genuinely personalise and automate their own comms experience. Whilst partners choose what they want, vendors can manage and distribute the right content to right partners and track engagement in real time. Which results in better engaged partners and improving PX, whilst saving time, resources and associated costs.
Think of it as personalisation on a granular scale. We’re not talking about segmenting email lists here – this is personalisation on a user-by-user basis. PCM uses advanced delivery techniques, matchmaking tech and content filtering to help make it easier for partners to find access and consume the content and updates they want and need to see. Essentially, PCM puts partner users in control of their own comms experience.
Introducing Komz
The information overload of daily emails is what pushes partners into disinterest. We wanted to build a platform that puts them in the driving seat when it comes to what they see and how they experience it.
Komz, previously Viewpoint, was developed because we saw this need for vendors and partners to connect in a more fluid, natural way. Partners were reporting hundreds of emails per week from vendors, with simply not enough time to get through them all. It seemed natural to create something that could provide respite from overloaded inboxes, and make partner comms engaging again.
Komz is here at the beginning of the PCM movement. It’s the communication-first, partner-led solution that is helping channel organisations engage with partners by putting them at the centre of the content they need.
Our latest e-book explores the evolution of partner marketing, from CRM to PRM through MA to TCMA and – finally – everything underpinned by PCM.
This article was produced in association with Purechannels and is classified as partner content. What is partner content? See more here.
Glenn Robertson
Glenn Robertson is CEO of channel marketing agency Purechannels and Founder of Komz - the recently launched 'to-partner' communications software.
