Enterprise Technology International Uses the ZINFI Partner Portal to Reach New Customers and Generate Awareness

Challenges

The main challenge ETI faces in marketing its solutions is finding effective ways to communicate with prospective customers and begin a conversation about their needs. While Walker has some hesitation in using email to reach prospects because he wants to be sensitive to their privacy concerns, he recognizes that email—particularly when it is integrated with other touchpoints—is still an important part of the marketing toolset required to generate awareness of the company’s value proposition and engage prospects.

Solutions

ETI is a partner with a well-known global enterprise technology vendor, and is a reseller of that vendor’s IT infrastructure and cloud solutions. As part of that partnership, ETI has access to the vendor’s partner marketing center. The marketing center is a web-based partner portal developed by ZINFI, a leading provider of channel marketing automation solutions. With the ZINFI partner portal, the vendor can provide partners all over the world with a wealth of marketing and sales assets and tools at their fingertips. These assets include solution-specific marketing campaigns that can easily be co-branded and customized for specific regions and markets.

Walker was pleased to discover he could quickly leverage campaigns from the portal that integrate various tools and marketing channels. Syndication in particular, says Walker, is “a very valuable tool. You can set up a site, and it really offers a great overview of the vendor’s emerging technologies.” The portal made it easy for ETI to reach prospects via multiple touchpoints, including email, landing page, microsite and social posts. “It really gives us a one-two-three punch,” he says.

As ETI began using the portal, Walker worked closely with a ZINFI partner marketing concierge, who is available to provide support as partners learn how to use the portal. The concierge can also provide partners with helpful advice about conducting campaigns. The concierge helped ETI identify and refine their key message, match their campaign to their prospect list, do more to leverage their partnership with the vendor and identify the most relevant resources in the portal. “He’s really acted as a trusted advisor and a partner,” says Walker.

Results

“The partner portal allows us to run integrated campaigns across a number of different solutions, and it allows us to reach additional prospects,” says Walker. “We’ve been able to expand into three or four other territories that we previously shied away from. With the ability to reach out with co-branded emails and other messages, we can let them know who we are and begin to have an exploratory conversation about their needs.”

Walker points to “ease of use” when asked about the primary benefit of the partner portal. “There are a lot of resources in there, and the ZINFI partner marketing concierge did a really good job of walking me through the process of setting up a campaign step-by-step. Each ETI campaign has multiple touches: There’s an email component, a web landing page component and a website content component. For me, just being able to walk through each step was important. The ability to customize our message was also important.”

“I believe in the value of the tool,” says Walker. “It makes it easy for us to launch marketing campaigns across the vendor’s entire product or technology stack.”