Tech Data Piloting New Reseller Marketing Portal

Tech Data’s new marketing portal offers resellers no-cost access to customizable, automated marketing campaigns—at least for the next six months. The portal is available through TDAgency, Tech Data’s in-house marketing services agency.

Offered as part of resellerCONNECT, TDAgency’s reseller marketing program, the portal is designed to help, in particular, small and midsize business (SMB) solution providers with their marketing needs. The new program provides tools that help them easily implement marketing campaign initiatives.

At this time, Tech Data has not determined the cost of the automated marketing campaigns after the first six-month or pilot period. Tech Data is evaluating the adoption and demand of the portal before making a decision on cost, said Pablo Zurzolo, vice president, TDAgency at Tech Data. “We are leaving the option open, but we haven’t decided what we’ll do. That is why we’re piloting it for the first six months.”

The portal provides access to pre-made content that solution providers can customize and distribute to their customers. Key features include data analysis and lead scoring, including identification of key partners and the most profitable markets. Other capabilities include CRM integration, campaign results analysis and customized social media feeds.

“The customization of the campaign is absolutely critical so solution providers don’t need to have people on staff the way Tech Data does, for example, to figure out marketing automation and some of the other things required to have a robust marketing automation system. We’ve taken the guess work out of that and offered a tool that, for the most part, they wouldn’t be able to afford on their own,” said Zurzolo.

The goal of the portal is to make marketing much easier for the channel partners. “There are a lot of great marketing tools that serve a lot of different functions, but when we talk to our partners like we do every single day, it can become very challenging and very time-consuming for them so we try to centralize a lot of the content and the tools within one location,” said Chris McGovern, manager, marketing services, Tech Data.

“It’s similar to the way we centralized a lot of our vendor relationships from a product standpoint. We are trying to do the same thing on the marketing side,” McGovern added.

Resellers get access to state-of-the-art tools for marketing automation, social media, contacts and Website analytics in one location. The tool allows reseller partners to run multiple campaigns and aggregate all leads in one location.

“It makes the entire process much easier for them,” McGovern continued. “The fact that you can do all these things for all different products in one place is pretty unique without having to go to different vendor portals and figure out how to use them.”

Reseller partners can basically have a campaign launched in three steps, explained McGovern. If partners run into trouble, they have access to the resellerCONNECT team and a toll-free number to call for someone to walk them through the entire process to launch the first campaign. Tutorials are also available.

The tools also benefit Tech Data’s vendor partners, said Zurzolo. “They can host content within the portal to generate leads and reach more solution providers looking for specific product offerings and technologies.”

Gina Roos, a Channel Insider contributor, focuses on technology and the channel.