Why do many IT manufacturers know so little about their end-users? Because, in many instances, the companies selling their products aren’t even their customers. Channel selling, while obviously valuable in moving products, makes it very difficult for vendors to get close to their resellers’ customers. Operating largely in the dark, vendors who market through resellers often find it difficult to learn much about these end-users—including what business issues interest and motivate them, what products and services they want, and what technological hurdles they face.
There is also the problem of message control. With multiple resellers representing them, it’s hard for vendors to ensure that their ultimate customers have full, accurate and timely product information, especially when those customers are considering a major purchase.
In addition, vendors must confront this difficult and business-critical challenge: How do you engender loyalty in a customer you don’t even “own,” especially without undermining the relationship your channel partner has worked so hard to establish?
Multi-tier sales efforts pose challenges for resellers, as well. Despite the term “value-added reseller” (or VAR) and the strong relationships most of them build with end-users, resellers may be viewed by some as simply facilitating a transaction. In reality, most also provide valuable consulting and support services.
If only IT vendors could gain direct end-customer feedback and insights, while not impinging on their resellers’ personal customer relationships. If only there were a way for these vendors to clearly, accurately, and efficiently convey their messages through the channel to their end- users. And if only vendors could help busy resellers to stay “top of mind” with their end clients, reinforce their added value, and increase per-customer revenues.
Multi-tier e-communications: the new glue
There is indeed a way to solve these many challenges—through e-communications. Emerging multi-tier e-communications programs are pushing relevant content to and through the channel as never before. With such tools as e-newsletters, vendors are able to deliver important messages through the sales pipeline and receive an unprecedented level of feedback on end-users’ interests and product needs—all while strengthening resellers’ ties with their customers. Resellers never have to divulge their customers’ names or contact information, but both VARs and vendors benefit from a new level of available data on end-users.
Here’s how these multi-tier e-communications solutions work: Using an Internet-based service (i.e., no software required), IT vendors build professional e-newsletters and then make them available to their reseller partners. The e-newsletters generally include a mix of product-oriented and “how to” content (i.e., best practices for virus prevention, converting to Internet telephony, etc.) to support resellers’ sales and professional service roles, and to keep end customers engaged. Vendors upload the content, logos and graphics into a Web-based template, edit and “publish” with a few mouse clicks, and then send their e-newsletters to their full reseller network. Resellers, in turn, have the chance to add in their own articles, insert additional graphics, and then e-mail their final publications to their end clients.
E-communications service providers, including IMN with its Total Channel Communications™ program, provide easy-to-use Web-based services that are ideal for vendors and resellers with limited creative or publishing resources. These comprehensive services include all necessary hosting, subscription list segmentation and management, and e-mail distribution.
Perhaps the most significant benefit of selected e-communications systems, however, is their ability to automatically capture and report on readers’ “consumption” of information—typically measured in the form of click-throughs, most-read content, time spent reading, survey responses, pass-along/forwarding behavior, and other readership actions. This benefit is available from e-communications service providers who employ powerful analytics as part of their product. The analytics allow for a “new transparency,” whereby vendors benefit from detailed information about end-users even as their channel partners retain “ownership” of their end-user accounts. Vendors and resellers can then use this information to make informed decisions about future product development initiatives, as well as marketing and sales outreach. And by looking at readership behaviors individual by individual, resellers can even identify “warm leads” who should receive calls.
Consider this example. A manufacturer of IT infrastructure products discovers that articles on networked storage enjoy the most readership from e-newsletter issue to issue. With this information, the company increases its storage content to keep end customers reading every e-newsletter. Resellers tailor their follow-up sales calls, print and Web advertising and other marketing initiatives to drive and accelerate storage product sales. At the same time, the manufacturer considers enhancements or upgrades to its storage product line in response to a customer need that the analytics have identified.
Benefits across the channel
A well-executed multi-tier e-communications program should build on such benefits and also deliver:
*Increased loyalty: Multi-tier e-communications foster stronger and more highly valued relationships at both ends of the channel—between vendor and VAR, and between VAR and end-user. Vendors win channel partners’ support by providing them with not only great content, but also an easy way to then add to that content and deliver a quality e-newsletter to their end users, while keeping the vendor’s original messaging intact. VARs win customers’ hearts and minds through quality content, too. A key to keeping the content valuable and relevant is to offer a mix of informational articles in addition to soft-sell material. This content can range from calendars of industry events to white paper abstracts to survey results. Particularly when resellers are marketing expensive, enterprise-level systems with a long sales cycle, they rely on engaging e-newsletter content to keep prospects and customers interested and loyal.
*Reduced time to market and improved launch results: Multi-tier e-communications can reduce time to market because of their immediacy (especially compared to print communications). Not only do they make it faster and more efficient to provide sales or product news “as it breaks,” but their embedded analytics can also bolster the success of upcoming rollouts. For several months before a rollout, for instance, vendors can track responses to articles to help determine which product messages are most likely to resonate with end customers, and hone in on these messages during a launch.
*Increased sales at lower cost: Better communication, aided by improved end-customer knowledge, adds up to increased sales and higher revenues—for vendor and VAR alike. Compound these sales with the savings that electronic communications (versus print) provide, and the benefit is even more compelling.
Content is king—use it!
According to Gerry McGovern, a content management consultant and author (“Content Critical” and “The Web Content Style Guide,” among other titles), “Content is the hidden asset in many organizations. To grow and continue to be profitable, organizations will need to tap this asset in a way they have not done before.”
There may be no better way for technology vendors to leverage McGovern’s “hidden asset” than by driving it to and through the channel, directly reaching end-customers. The myriad benefits of multi-tier e-communications—from cost-efficiency to reseller validation, from decision-enabling analytics to business-generating opportunities, and from accurate messaging to stronger vendor/reseller relationships—make it the smartest outreach strategy available today for vendors and their channel partners.
David A. Fish is Chief Executive Officer of IMN (iMakeNews, Inc.), an e-communications service provider based in Waltham, Mass.
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