StructuredWeb Channel Connect

The most commonly asked question - and even multiplied when a customer is new to the world of enabling their partners with marketing. There is no more efficient way to grow vendor revenue than through your partners/affiliates. Partners essentially magnify the reach of your vendor’s products, enabling a large global company to affect even the smallest, most niche markets.

But, how do you enable these partners in an efficient and cost-effective way? Here are 5 considerations to implementing a best practice channel marketing program:

1. Different partners will need different things. 

A best practice channel marketing program has different content and tools for various partner types. From your small VAR to a mid-market solution partner or DMR, to the ISV and OEM partners to the distributors - they all need different support to make them effective at selling your products. Many VARs may not have the time or resources to dedicate a team to marketing. As a result, they will require more turnkey campaigns and appreciate access to an easy-to-use marketing automation system (but not your Marketo or Eloqua); the large DMRs may have a robust marketing organization, but will need easy access to vendor content that is customizable enough for a CDW or a Presidio to feel comfortable using.

2. It makes simplicity and accessibility a lot easier. 

Partners are busy. Partners want to sell. Partners represent countless brands and products. As a result, vendors needs to make it easy for their partners to market on their behalf. Simply adding tools and content won’t compel partners to do more marketing. Give them an easy way of finding and accessing marketing content, allowing them to do all of their marketing from one system.

3. If you just build it, it is unlikely they’ll come.

Through partner marketing starts with to partner marketing. Best practice is all about keeping partners updated with what’s newly available. Engage your partners through social media, webinars and live events to effectively capture their attention - marketing them as if they were your customers. After all, if effect, they are.

4. B2B marketing today is complicated. Make it easy for partners to be good marketers.

There’s no doubt that with the increase of marketing tools and explosion of marketing data, effective marketing has become a mountain many partners are challenged to climb. Email alone does not work. Social media is great, but it doesn’t generate leads. Webinars are incredibly effective, but they are time consuming and onerous to produce. Instead, package all of these multifaceted channel tools into integrated campaigns, allowing partners to execute them in one click! With the potpourri of tactics you have for your direct marketing, brainstorm what you would like to extend into the channel.

5. It’s not all about leads! 

Within the best practice channel marketing I have come across, vendors understand that success isn’t just measured by transitions (number of emails/social posts/leads). Countless vendors want to track every lead, and every marketing metric - all in search of the elusive channel marketing ROI. This is shortsighted (and very difficult). Success is a manifold, and the KPIs the successful moniker can vary from company to company. For one company, partner engagement (actually having the ear and eye of the partner) may be the first milestone. For another, the goal may be expanding the reach that the vendor has through the partners (focusing on improving partner mailing lists, increasing partner social connections, etc). By simply providing better and more effective marketing support to partners, vendors can go a long way in gaining and retaining the attention of their very busy partner ecosystem.

New year, new goals! Check out these 5 tips on how you can make the most of your channel marketing program in 2018:

1. Prioritize To-Partner Marketing While providing the right content and tools allow partners is key to program success, making resources available in a portal simply won’t cut it. Without proper to-partner marketing initiatives that dive into program awareness, adoption and continued engagement, channel programs can fall wayside to the busy minds of partners. Insufficient to-partner is a common reason why too many programs recognize low adoption and engagement rates.

Here are 5 key tactics for a successful to-partner marketing campaign:

Dedicated Program Microsite (or at least web page) Learn more about program features and benefits, request more information and sign up for the program.

Email Nurtures Create email nurture series for different stages of the “partner life cycle” through partner engagement, adoption and awareness.

Social Media Utilize your social media networks to create buzz around new program launches, updates and campaigns.

Webinars Host webinars to provide an interactive, accessible way to educate partners on program, features and content.

Online Advertising Leverage tactics like re-targeting to [re-]engage new and existing partners to interacting with your brand by driving new partner recruitment.

This year, budget your time (and money) for initiatives supporting partner-end customer and to-partner marketing. Keep the door of dialogue open is key to effectively communicate the value of your program to partners. We assure you - your ROI will thank you!

2. Simplify Partner On-boarding Processes Once you’ve hooked partners on the benefit of your channel program and are keen to join, the next step is on-boarding and training partners on how to best leverage the resources you’re providing. When it comes to partner adoption, we generally hit a bottleneck. Why’s that, you ask? Either a) brands have not yet dedicated resources to training/on-boarding or b) [and] even if they have, processes, processes are drawn-out and tedious for partners. The key to adoption and continued engagement: streamline and simplify. Here’s how:

Offer Concierge Services Provide partners with local, dedicated resources for training and onboarding assistance.  

Embed Appointment Schedulers Utilize meeting booking softwares like Calendly in your to-partner communication strategy, making it effortless for partners to request and schedule meetings.

Automation Based on Partner Stage Create email nurtures for the onboarding process based on partner stages and/or length of time in the program.

3. Segment Programs and Content Sharing unrelated content can make marketing a lot more intricate and time-consuming for your partners. Divide content for each partner profile so partners can only see what they need. This significantly simplifies their responsibilities, boosting partner engagement while accelerating time to market.

Segment partner content by:

Product Line

Industry

Asset Type

Partner Type

4. Incentivize Partner Engagement Incentives work - that’s no secret. With the potpourri of vendors partners manage, prioritizing your brand with a little push can go a long way. We’ve seen partner engagement increase more than quadruple when running partner incentives. Though an incentive program usually isn’t sustainable enough to run all year, the initial influx and residual gains in partner engagement, leads and revenue are usually well worth the investment.

PRO TIP: Tie the incentive to a SMART goal, like executing a particular campaign in the next 30 days. Choose an incentive value that will motivate partners, while at the same time ensuring you can provide this prize to a reasonable portion of your partner base, if you have to cap that number.

Depending on how your organization is structured, it may make sense to incentivize partners directly,internal partner account managers, or both. Get strategic here! Test out different approaches and incentives work best to meet your partner marketing goals.

5. Give Room for Feedback Keeping up with partner attitudes and experiences are critical elements in driving successful channel programs. Just like customers, partners are more likely to be committed and engaged when they know you value their opinion. In fact, partners tend to have deeper insight to customer needs and emerging market trends (so give them ample opportunity to share this valuable information!). Keeping communication with partners not only continually supports engagement, but also is the best way to determine what works and what improvements can be made to further expand your partner channel.

Add Media to LinkedIn Posts

As social media has evolved, StructuredWeb has continued to advance and improve the social media functionality within the platform. Users now have the ability to upload an image to LinkedIn social posts using the newly improved user interface available for all social media platform campaigns.

When creating LinkedIn posts, click the camera icon to upload an image to go along with your social post. Then, set the date and time and schedule your post as normal. Your partners will be able to see the thumbnail of the image when they preview their social posts.

For more information about this feature, click here.

To learn more about the partner experience, click here

Setup Market Assets without Leaving the Library or Campaign

Your partners will have the more user friendly experience to set-up required asset contained within the tactics without having to leave the preview on either Library & Campaigns tab. Currently, the marketing assets need to be set up before users have the ability to customize emails. Now, users will have the option to set up their marketing assets from the Library or Campaigns Tab without leaving the current tab you’re working on.

When a partner selects a tactic to execute in a Campaign or the Library without previously updating your market assets, they will now see a “Setup Assets” button instead of the typical "Customize & Send" option. Clicking this option allows the partner up upload the required market assets for the tactic. Clicking save will then copy the tactic to the partner's account as normal.

Add Email Nurturing to Campaigns

Users are now able to add email nurturing and email series tactics to their campaigns shared to partners through the Campaign UI without assistance from StructuredWeb. Within the tactics tab of the campaign, simply click the Browse Tactics button and search for the nurture you want to attach.

At StructuredWeb we are committed to the continuous improvement of our platform’s user experience for you and your channel partners. Our team has been hard at work creating and implementing new features which further advance vendor management capability, partner ease of use and through-channel marketing automation functionality. Check out the new system features currently live on the platform. You can also access a video review of the release here. Add Media to Twitter Posts As social media has evolved, StructuredWeb has continued to advance and improve the social media functionality within the platform. Users now have the ability to upload images and video to Twitter campaigns. Additionally, the newly improved user interface is available for all social media platform campaigns. that will affect all social platforms campaigns.

When creating Twitter posts, click the camera or camcorder icons to upload the image(s) or video that goes along with your social post. Then, set the date and time to schedule your post as normal. Your partners will be able to see the thumbnails of the images or video when they preview their social posts.

For more information about this feature, click here. To learn more about the partner experience, click here. Enhance Campaign Asset Settings To make content and campaign setup easier than ever, we’ve updated the user interface when adding tactics to a campaign. This update will greatly improve your ability to manage and updates the tactics with your campaigns to ensure that their settings are exactly correct. This also includes a new “Publish to Accounts” button that will share the tactics and campaign to your partners all at once.

After adding the tactics to the campaign on the Tactics tab, click the "Publish to Accounts" button to select the programs that should have access to this campaign and the included tactics. You can also update the share and attribute settings of a selection of tactics simply by selecting those tactics and clicking the Settings button. For more information about this feature, click here. Reset Individual Library Filters Users now have the ability to reset each individual filters within the "Campaigns" or "Library" tab, in addition to the ability to reset all filters at once.

This week we’re excited to announce that Video has been added as a tactic within the platform. This new update gives you the ability to share video with your partners in multiple ways, either giving them the video file directly or providing them with a simple embed code to add the video directly to their website. This new video tactic is available for you right now within the StructuredWeb portal.

Video tactics can be set up in two main ways. First, you can upload a video file into the platform directly as an .mp4. This gives your partners the ability to preview and download the video file directly from the library or a campaign. How it Works Additionally, you are able to embed video that has been uploaded into a separate video platform, such as YouTube or Vimeo. Simply select the video player where the video was uploaded and then enter the unique video ID and you’re ready to share the video to your partners. They will then be able to preview the video and copy embed code to add the video directly onto their website.

Beyond the default video players you are even able to customize and add your own! Add your own custom video player options to support multiple video services, modify video player size, support captioning or download, or any other options your video player supports to provide your partners with the videos exactly the way you need. To learn more about creating video tactics, click here. For more information about the partner experience, click here. To learn more about setting up custom video players, click here.   

If you have any questions or feedback about this new functionality, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at 888.584.6480 or email our Support team at [email protected].

Thanks! 

At StructuredWeb we are committed to the continuous improvement of our platform’s user experience for our channel partners. Our team has been hard at work creating and implementing new features which further advance vendor management capability, partner ease of use and through-channel marketing automation functionality. We are excited to introduce a major update to the program reporting functionality of the platform - all of your standard and customized reports previously accessible through Analytics.structuredweb.com are now available to you right in your StructuredWeb portal! This new update streamlines reporting processes and provides clearer, quicker insight to program performance through an in-platform analytics dashboard. Now you and your team can more adeptly assess and optimize program performance. It’s the power and intelligence StructuredWeb’s Real-time Channel Analytics delivered right to your portal.  

Available Reports:

These updated reports are available now under the Reports tab in your Program Manager view. Below is a sample of some of our most popular reports: Accounts Activity Summary - This report will provide you with an overview of your partners and their activities. The data includes partner account creation and logins, file downloads, and tactic creation. This report is recommended to give you an initial understanding of your partners and their overall activity before diving deeper into the specific topics that you’re most interested in.

Asset Library - This report will provide you with a detailed breakdown of all marketing assets and tactics currently created in your program. The analytics includes all assets created and breaks them down by many different factors including asset types, asset upload date, and whether partners are using the assets. This report is useful for designers to better manage the assets that have been uploaded and for program admins to understand what assets their partners are using.

Email Marketing - This report will provide you with an aggregate breakdown of all emails that your partners have executed from the platform. The report includes emails sent, opens, and leads generated from your partner campaigns. These factors can be further broken down by factors such as the specific emails being sent or even to compare partner deliverability and success. This report is useful for you to better understand what partners are utilizing the email feature and the platform and also to compare the emails to see where partners are having the most success.

Additional reports available in the analytics view include:

»  Accounts Marketing Reach

»  Accounts & Users Logins

»  Accounts and Contacts Profile

»  Assets Download

»  Content Syndication

»  Events Marketing

»  Integrated Campaigns

»  Leads

»  Marketplace Orders

»  Marketplace Quotes

»  Marketplace Views

»  Program Users Login

»  Social Marketing

»  Web Content

In addition to the default reports listed above, reports can be edited and additional custom reports can be created and added to your list as well. If you are interested in additional custom reporting options, contact your Success Manager.

How it Works

After logging into Program Manager, select the Reports tab. Use the Select a Report dropdown to find your report. This will load the Dashboard view for that specific report to give you an overall look at the analytics for the topic you selected.

Use the tabs at the top to select from the various analytics views of your topic to see the different presentations of the analytics. You can also use the filters on the left of the page to further narrow down your reporting based on things like the date range, partner region, or their program affiliation.  

Thank you!

Industry Executive Brings Expertise in IT Professional Services to Leading Channel Marketing Company

StructuredWeb, a leading provider of Channel Marketing Software and Services, today announced that Zeev Lotan has joined the company as Vice President of Services and Customer Success. A respected executive in the IT space, Lotan brings over 20 years experience in product deployment, client management, project management and software development to StructuredWeb and its customers.

“We are excited to welcome Zeev to the company and have him lead our Services and Customer Success initiatives. The deep industry knowledge and vast experience he has accumulated from working with such major players in the IT space over his career is truly impressive and will be of great benefit to StructuredWeb and our customers,” said Daniel Nissan, President and CEO of StructuredWeb.

In this new role, Lotan will work directly with StructuredWeb’s current customers and internal teams to guide professional services and customer success initiatives, leveraging his strong technical skills and industry expertise to ensure a supportive experience that enables customers to transform their global channel networks through the technology of Structuredweb’s platform.

“I'm very excited to join StructuredWeb as the VP of Services and Customer Success where I can leverage my technology and services background to increase usage and enhance customers' experience and success with the platform,” said Lotan. “I look forward to working with the dynamic and talented team at StructuredWeb to grow our business, expand on our comprehensive offerings and further establish the company as a Channel Marketing industry leader.”

In his previous role as Director of Professional Services at Qognify (previously NICE Systems) Lotan was responsible for the delivery of the company’s Situator™ and NiceVision™ product suites in the Americas, leading the company to great success with these innovative technologies and his customer-leading strategies. Prior to his work with Qognify, Lotan headed SKY I.T Group’s Professional & Consulting Services teams as VP of  Professional Services, establishing and executing the company’s vision for customer success.

An Ivy League graduate, Lotan earned his Master Degree in Computer Science from Columbia University, with an undergraduate degree from Rutgers University. His prestigious education, wealth of industry knowledge and long-standing success in the field of IT Professional Services keenly position Lotan to continue the growing success of StructuredWeb’s portfolio of Fortune 500 customers in the channel space.

About StructuredWeb

StructuredWeb helps leading channel organizations generate demand and drive growth faster, smarter and easier. Our automated platform makes it easy for Vendors to manage programs and for Partners to locate, co-brand, customize, localize and execute fully-integrated campaigns in any global market. Advanced channel analytics and closed loop reporting provide the most comprehensive channel data available. For the last 17 years, our solutions have proven to boost partner marketing engagement, accelerate channel revenue and optimize ROI for the world’s leading channel organizations.  

StructuredWeb, a leading provider of SaaS channel marketing automation solutions, today announced that it has secured $2 million in financing led by Argentum, a New York based private equity firm and long term investor of the company.

 The newly raised capital will help support StructuredWeb’s rapidly growing customer base and deepen investments in product innovation, customer success and sales and marketing. In connection with its growing customer base on the West Coast and sustained YOY growth, the company, headquartered in New York City, will be expanding business operations to Silicon Valley.

 “We are pleased to see the organization performing strongly and particularly excited by the growing list of fortune 100 companies who trust in StructuredWeb to support their indirect sales models and grow their channel revenue,” said Daniel Nissan, founder and CEO of StructuredWeb. “The decision to expand to Silicon Valley, the heart of technology innovation, is an exciting one which aligns with our commitment to provide best-in-class technology solutions to the channel. With this round of funding, we will increase our sales and marketing teams and keep driving innovation forward for our customers and the channel market. As always, we appreciate Argentum’s ongoing support and look forward to a continued relationship. ”  

 “StructuredWeb has demonstrated its ability to provide significant value to its marquee customer base through its market-leading technology and solutions. We look forward to continuing the momentum and supporting them in this next chapter of growth,” said Walter Barandiaran, Managing Partner at Argentum.

 The new investment stands as a testament to StructuredWeb’s continued success and strengthens their market position as the leading provider of the most comprehensive and innovative channel marketing solutions for global brands.

Partnership Offers Superior Lead Capture Capability, Driving New Growth for Channel Organizations

StructuredWeb, a leading provider of SaaS channel marketing solutions, and Phone.com, a prominent cloud-based phone service for small businesses and entrepreneurs, are pleased to announce an API integration between the two technology platforms. This partnership leverages smart telephony solutions in tandem with innovative channel marketing technology to provide an advanced lead generation strategy for global channel ecosystems.

By integrating a Phone.com solution on its channel marketing platform, StructuredWeb enables customers to easily implement trackable phone numbers on their digital marketing assets. Phone.com’s technology generates unique telephone numbers that can be placed on marketing assets and, when activated, act as tracking codes for each resulting lead. For StructuredWeb’s customers, this tool enhances lead-generation capability, increases conversion rates, and provides deeper insight to leads generated across partners and marketing assets.

“The path to purchase for buyers is increasingly digital and mobile, so lead generation solutions which match this evolving buyer's journey are key—especially in channel where partners can struggle to generate leads,” says Daniel Nissan, founder and CEO at StructuredWeb. “By partnering with Phone.com to enable trackable phone numbers on digital marketing assets, our customers are able to provide natural conversion paths for prospects that interact with their content and leverage each asset as an active lead generation tool. This solution gives buyers direct, instant access to salespeople in their local markets, and inbound calls are notoriously great leads, so it’s a really impactful solution for channel organizations and their partners.”

“StructuredWeb has always been at the forefront of providing innovative online channel-marketing solutions,” says Alon Cohen, CTO and Executive Vice President at Phone.com. “Our partnership with them is built on an integration that uses both the Phone.com business phone service and our flexible API platform. We’re proud of Structured Web’s success and look forward to strengthening our integration with additional innovations in the months to come.”

Improve Lead Conversions Phone.com’s solution delivers high-quality leads to channel partners and drives conversion rates by providing prospective buyers with direct contact to partners’ sales teams in their local market. StructuredWeb customers are able to further leverage their content to support an integrated, high-impact and multi-tactical approach to lead generation in their channel.

Measurable Insight Optimizes Channel Strategy Through integration with Phone.com, StructuredWeb customers gain an enhanced lead-generation capability and additional visibility to leads generated across their channel network, partner by partner and asset by asset. Such measurable insight enables more strategic decision making for both lead generation and content marketing strategies at the local market level, translating to globally optimized channel performance.

About StructuredWeb StructuredWeb is the leading provider of Channel Marketing Automation Software to global enterprises and leading channel organizations around the world. With 15+ integrated and automated channel marketing solutions, StructuredWeb’s comprehensive technology platform makes it easy for brands to scale their channel programs across diverse partners and local markets to engage more end customers, drive new leads and maximize channel sales. For more information about StructuredWeb, please visit http://www.structuredweb.com. Follow us on Twitter.

In an era of marketing where “Content is King”, businesses who sell through indirect channels need to have the right tools and technological capabilities to enable execution of an effective content strategy through channel partners. TPMA platforms are like toolboxes containing channel marketing tools, so its imperative for businesses to invest in a platform equipped with the right technology tools to support their channels- both efficiently and effectively. Below are some “Tools of the Trade” that every business needs in their TPMA platform to leverage an effective content strategy in channel marketing:

1. CMS Functionality: A great content strategy in the context of channel marketing starts with the ability to manage content deployed to partners. Overtime brands acquire a wealth of assets in their content library, but not all content is meant for all partners. The more a channel grows, the more important content management functionality becomes. TPMA platforms should have solid CMS functionality, including the ability to tag assets with custom attributes as they are uploaded to a platform (think languages, campaign names, industry verticals, product lines, persona types, etc.) which enables advanced search and filter functions, the ability to set start and end dates for assets (keeping content fresh and relevant), and asset quick-share capability. With a built in CMS, channel partners can quickly locate relevant content, improving user experience and streamlining marketing execution processes for quicker time to market. The increased ability to manage content also makes it easier to provide the right content to different partner types, enabling an ability to create personalized partner portals.

2. Personalized Partner Portals: Partners are diverse, so it's critical for businesses to have a technology platform which enables them to manage and support different partner types, simultaneously. The capacity to create personalized portal experiences for different partners by providing the content, tools and resources relevant to their marketing needs is crucial to partner engagement and executing effective marketing through partners. If businesses employ a one size fits all approach to partner portals, or only cater to top-tier partners, negative effects are two-fold: not only can this kill partner engagement among other partner types (where there is major revenue potential), but in addition, making the same content available to all partners diminishes content effectiveness and potentially brand value when content is used in unintended ways. Both outcomes negatively impact ROI, hence the need for a technology platform which supports all partner types through manageable partner portals.

3. Co-branding and Content Customization: Co-branding is critical in channel since it often serves as the foundation for collaborative partnerships. If content can’t be co-branded, partners see no value in it. But content customization should go beyond basic co-branding; it should be easy for partners to customize content with their contact information, value propositions and custom images to resonate with local markets. It’s essential that a the tools available in a channel marketing platform not only support content co-branding and customization, but that these tasks are easy for partners to accomplish across many assets. If they can’t be done easily, partners are much less likely to engage and execution fails. Editable point and click templates for assets are a great tool to accomplish these tasks easily, and something to look for in a channel marketing platform.

4. Content Translation Tools: For global channel organizations, this should be a non-negotiable. Content must adapt to the native language of a partners’ local buyer markets or it will render ineffective. Translation capability ensures that vendor provided content can be leveraged to effectively communicate with end customers around the world, keeping channel partners engaged and increasing marketing execution rates. In the past, brands had to outsource content translation services, wait sometimes weeks for content to be translated and then reload all of the translated assets to their system, or separately provide each partner with the correct translated content to match their local market. New translation technology provided in advanced TPMA platforms, like StructuredWeb, streamlines this process, making content translation available to channel partners right in their portal. This capability streamlines content management processes and significantly reduces translation costs for brands. Partners can easily select assets they want translated, choose the desired language and translated assets are made quickly available for execution.

So there you have the first 4 “Tools of the Trade” for effective content marketing in channel. These tools and technology focused heavily on content management capabilities and creating content that partners see value in which is easily executable. 

In Tools of the Trade: Part 2, we’ll discuss what tools are needed to effectively leverage content throughout a channel network and help partners move buyers through the sales funnel. 

StructuredWeb supports all of these capabilities on our automated channel marketing and management platform. Have a question about any of these capabilities or want to learn more about the comprehensive channel marketing solutions StructuredWeb provides?

We are excited to announce a new array of features recently added to our channel marketing and management platform. These features greatly enhance user experience, increase content management control and further elevate the effectiveness of channel marketing capabilities for vendors and their channel partners.

“These new features represent StructuredWeb’s commitment to continually improve user experience and our dedication to providing the most comprehensive channel marketing platform on the market, enabled through innovative technology,” said Daniel Nissan, CEO and founder of StructuredWeb.

“Capturing the mindshare of solution providers continues to plague many channel programs, especially those enlisting them into marketing campaigns. With partner adoption at record lows in b-to-b channels, with the release of these new features, StructuredWeb expands its capabilities, making it easier for suppliers to engage with their partners. By expanding the marketing tactics and offering partners quick-access to pre-built campaigns, StructuredWeb is raising the bar in the area of through-partner marketing,” said Laz Gonzalez, Group Service Director for channel strategies at SiriusDecisions.

A list of the newest StructuredWeb features and user benefits are provided below:

1. Integration with SDL WorldServer, An Enterprise Translation Platform: StructuredWeb now supports direct integration with SDL WorldServer, a leading provider of content translation services. Content uploaded on the StructuredWeb platform can be translated to 80+ languages using automated machine learning systems that are synced with professional translation services. This new integration streamlines content management processes, reducing translation time and costs by more than 50%, and helps to ensure that more partners effectively market vendor solutions by making content easily accessible in the native language of partners’ local buyer markets.

2. Asset Quick-Share Capability: A new asset sharing feature allows vendors to quickly share assets and campaigns by generating a unique link which directs the user to a specified asset. The quick-share feature eliminates the need to search for assets and provides partners with direct, instant access to the most relevant content.

3. Set Start/End Dates of Assets by Tactic Type: Users now have the ability to set Start Dates and End Dates for assets by marketing tactic type. This feature ensures that content available to partners is always current and relevant and that content is provided in the right tactic (email, banner, social, whitepapers, etc.) at the right time, so that execution is optimized and vendor content is leveraged effectively by partners to communicate with buyers. This content control feature eliminates the manual, repetitive process otherwise necessary to keep content fresh and relevant to partners and best manage campaigns.

4. Quick Customize, Download and Execute Asset Functionality: StructuredWeb users now benefit from a quicker, easier process to customize and send or download vendor provided assets with the click of a button. When viewing assets in their Partner Demand Center (PDC), users can customize, co-brand and execute assets directly from the platform with the click of a button, or instantly download for execution. This functionality simplifies user experience and boosts partner marketing execution rates.

5. Featured Campaigns: Vendors now have the ability to “feature” campaigns to partners in their Partner Demand Centers. The Featured Campaign function helps to ensure that new or important campaigns a vendor wants to promote are highlighted and made readily available to partners for execution. Campaigns can be set with automatic “featured dates” so that the campaign is no longer featured after the specified date.

6. Customizable Platform: The StructuredWeb platform is more customizable than ever! Vendors can now fully customize their StructuredWeb portal with brand color schemes and custom images. This feature adds a level personalization to the StructuredWeb user experience and allows vendors to create a look and feel which best represents their brand to users and channel partners.

7. Improved Layout of the StructuredWeb Partner Demand Center: StructuredWeb users have an improved experience when when viewing content within the PDC content library on the StrcuturedWeb platform. The new layout provides users with a cleaner and more intuitive experience for quicker, easier navigation

“At the core of our technology solution is a resolve to better enable channel marketing capabilities while simplifying channel marketing processes so that brands can engage more partners, reach more customers, drive top line revenue and continue to grow their channel networks. We look forward to driving more innovation, growing partnerships and continuing to elevate the marketing capabilities of channel networks on a global scale in 2016,” said Nissan of the year ahead for StructuredWeb.

Have a question about any of these new features, or want to learn more about the comprehensive solutions StructuredWeb provides? 

The relationships that exist within a channel ecosystem are complex and diverse with vendors and channel partners largely dependent on one another for success. In channel marketing, global brands often rely on thousands of channel partners to market and sell their solutions to local markets around the world; these same channel partners often manage many different brands and relying on brands to provide them with relevant content to influence buyers in their local markets.

With such a diverse and complex landscape, it's essential that brands have a clear channel marketing strategy and the right supporting technology in place to manage their channel network and market successfully through their channel partners.

This is where The 5 C’s of Channel Marketing comes into play. The 5 C's is a strategic Channel Marketing framework which clearly outlines the five critical stages of partner engagement and marketing across partners. This framework (depicted below) has been used in tandem with StructuredWeb's innovative technology to drive some of the largest, global channel programs to new heights of success.

Defining the 5 C’s: 

StructuredWeb is pleased to announce a new API integration and partnership  with Relayware, a SaaS-based provider of Partner Relationship Management (PRM) software. The first implementation of this integration recently went live with Kaspersky Lab, a customer of both StructuredWeb and Relayware.

 This new partnership acts to complement the comprehensive solutions offered by both StructuredWeb and Relayware, supporting end-to-end visibility and management of channel ecosystems and creating additional benefits for each company’s customers.

Relayware customers     and their partners gain access to StructuredWeb’s best-in-class through     partner marketing automation platform

StructuredWeb customers can easily access critical information surrounding partner activity and leverage that information in the strategic planning, execution and optimization of channel marketing activities

Current and future customers to both StructuredWeb and Relayware will be able to leverage this out-of-the-box integration to enable more effective management of partner relationships and create more intelligent marketing campaigns, supporting higher levels of partner engagement and driving ROI

For any questions or additional information regarding this new partnership with Relayware, please contact Michael Coscetta (VP of Sales and Marketing at StructuredWeb) at [email protected] or +1 646-738-8044.

Lead distribution- the infamous black hole of channel sales and marketing. Unfortunately for many vendors who generate leads and pass them to partners using emails and spreadsheets, it’s a daunting reality. 

 After investing significant time and resources creating campaigns to generate valuable leads, the last thing a vendor wants to say is, “That was a really successful campaign, hopefully my partners follow up with these leads, but I can’t be sure.” That’s not an effective channel marketing strategy to rely on- and the great news is, it doesn’t have to be.

If you’re still using spreadsheets and emails to pass leads to partners, it’s time to update your lead distribution process. Not only is the spreadsheet-email tactic a time consuming process, it also lacks visibility, stifling effective lead management and creating inefficiencies in your channel.

New, more advanced lead distribution processes do three things major things for your channel:

They automate the distribution of leads (streamlining processes and creating tractability)

They intelligently match the right leads, to the right partner at the right time (increasing lead acceptance rates and partner engagement)

They create visibility on the status of leads after they have been passed to partners (enabling optimization of lead distribution and channel strategy, increasing ROI)

 Let’s take a look at how this happens.