Rebranding and Simplifying the Partner Program
NetMotion Wireless, a leading provider of mobility management solutions, supports some of the world’s most recognized brands in field service, government, utilities, public safety, insurance and other industries with critical mobile workforces that depend on continuous, reliable connectivity. The company’s clients—including AT&T, US Foods, Cox Communications and Hertz, to name just a few—are very selective about the technologies they deploy. At least 85% of NetMotion’s business comes through channel partners, and the company’s sales and marketing leadership has long recognized the importance of channel marketing best practices.
Channel Marketing Challenges
NetMotion recently decided to relaunch its entire partner program with an emphasis on simplifying and rebranding the program. The company rededicated itself to channel marketing best practices with the ultimate goal of increasing visibility and engagement with partners globally. Focusing on partner enablement, NetMotion wanted to be able to provide partners with easy access to robust channel sales and marketing tools and programs, including a better solution for deal registration that would integrate smoothly with their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
At the center of this new partner enablement initiative would be a high-functioning portal. In fact, says Erik Helms, NetMotion’s VP of Strategic Partners & International Sales, “We were not initially looking for partner relationship management (PRM) technology at all, but were coming at the problem primarily from a portal perspective. We needed a ‘front door’ for partners that we could control within the scope of our marketing/sales operations, as opposed to our general web environment.”
Solution
In short: NetMotion needed a full-featured, easy-to-use partner portal to be operational within four to six weeks. Once the portal was up, it was essential that its large, globally dispersed network of partners be able to get on board and become active very quickly. ZINFI’s Unified Channel Management (UCM) platform, along with its global partner marketing concierge services, proved to be the answer. The portal became the centerpiece of NetMotion’s renewed focus on channel marketing best practices, providing the company with new insight into partner activities, performance and practices. Now they have answers to questions like: How do our partners find new information? How do they find collateral? How might they execute their own campaigns? “We accomplished a lot more along these lines than we anticipated in the past twelve months,” said Helms.
Results
Using the ZINFI’s Unified Channel Management platform, the NetMotion team went from zero to a fully functioning partner portal in six weeks. In fact, the platform and portal infrastructure were set up so quickly, NetMotion’s team had to catch up from a marketing and collateral perspective. They began with an initial selection of key partners in the first-stage rollout, then sent out emails to all partners to educate them about the new ZINFI platform. With channel marketing best practices firmly in mind, NetMotion leveraged ZINFI’s partner marketing concierge service for fast, effective onboarding. In less than twelve months, nearly 200 partner reps worldwide have signed up and 80 have participated in onboarding meetings via webinars. “The concierge service was super helpful,” notes Helms, “and it gave us the appearance of being a bigger team. It has become a new way for partners to work with NetMotion.”
Once partners were signed up and had completed onboarding, they immediately began to leverage the portal for training and to download collateral. Turnkey campaigns and ZINFI’s email marketing engine soon became used as well. “That was a big bonus for us,” says Helms. “That was definitely not part of our requirement when we were looking for a way to launch a portal.” Over the next 12 months, getting even more partners engaged with turnkey campaigns will be a priority. They will be relying heavily on the platform’s metrics to monitor initial results and drive adoption.
“It was easy to get everything up and running quickly. ZINFI has been responsive and helpful with our customization and our requirements, and certainly in the campaigns we’ve done so far.”, says Helms.
The NetMotion team is excited about the year ahead. Channel marketing best practices will remain a key focus as the company seeks to further refine partner relationships and tighten execution within North American channels. The company has also set its sights on high-growth markets in Europe and Asia, with aggressive sales goals that will need to be backed up by marketing. Through its distributors, NetMotion will be pushing new resellers worldwide to register their deals to provide visibility in the portal—both for NetMotion and its distributors. NetMotion will also use the ZINFI platform to differentiate bigger and more strategic partners, steering them to features that enable customization of functions like branding in the portal and partner-specific security protocols and documentation.