By Brian Anderson, Associate Editor
Communicating with channel partners, whether it is via email or social media, becomes more daunting as channel networks grow larger.
In a recent webinar, executives from Adobe and purechannelapps discussed common challenges that many vendors and manufacturers need to be overcome in order to establish strong social media relationships across the channel.
For Adobe, a top challenge for the company was ensuring messages sent to partners were consistent and timely. “Originally we were just sending everything to everyone,” said Angela Leech, Channel Marketing Program Manager for Adobe, “but we didn’t know that it was not a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Another major obstacle was the overall size of the company; because Adobe has such a large channel, it was becoming more challenging to provide relevant content in local languages.
“We are a large organization with more 11,000 employees,” Leech said. The sheer size of the company “brings a lot of stakeholders to the table with whom we want to communicate. Our push strategy with our content had us bombarding our partners with emails which were only getting lost in all the other emails they receive daily from other vendors.”
Other factors, including overall high cost, lack of social content and dedicated resources, also added to the list of issues that Adobe needed to address. To address these challenges, Adobe partnered with purechannelapps to establish Adobe Partner News and Adobe Social onDemand.
Since their launch in March of 2013, more than 2,500 resellers and 175 distributors — 83% of all distributors in EMEA — have registered to use Adobe Partner News and Social onDemand. Additionally, 68 Adobe users have registered to use these solutions to increase communications internally.
Adobe Partner News, which is a branded solution established from newsondemand by purechannelapps, was implemented to help ease the process of communicating with partners via targeted newsletters. The solution allows Adobe partners to select the types of news they are interested in and the market they follow, while also deciding how often they would like to be notified of news content.
“One of the key strengths of the solution is that it delivers the news our partners want, when they want it and how they want it,” Leech said. “We have never been able to do that until now, and we can be very specific with which content is seen by a certain partner.”
From a content development perspective, employees and channel agencies can tap Adobe Partner News to seamlessly create news items and categorized them based on the target audience. News can be sent immediately or scheduled for publishing on a later date.
“Even I can create news myself,” said Leech, “and if anyone knew how technical I am, they would understand how easy this is.”
Streamlining Social Communication
Adobe also was able to address many of its social media problems leveraging Adobe Social onDemand, a solution that allows vendors and partners alike to disseminate content through partner social channels, while also tracking overall engagement and impact of posts.
Developed from socialondemand, a social media enablement tool from purechannelapps, the solution is being used by Adobe and its partners to amplify content through more channels than initially possible. Adobe Social onDemand does not require partners to log in to each of their social media sites, and also allows users to easily repurpose content so it is seen across multiple social channels. Automatic posting also makes the solution easier to maintain and effectively use on a regular basis.
“Adobe has a very creative background,” Leech said. “Now our content can reach people in the IT and technology industries that we never could have reached on an individual basis.”
According to Leech, 62 emails have been sent via Adobe Partner News since its launch and Adobe is averaging a 35% open rate and 7.5% click rate, surpassing the average open rate (20%) and click rate (5%) for non-registered partners. 110 newsletter articles have been sent since launch, with an average open rate and click rate of 40%.
Partners have added more than 1,700 social media accounts to Adobe Social onDemand, linking over 327,000 connections to Adobe content. As many as 501 posts from Adobe have been reposted over 6,300 times by partners, generating around 230 clicks per post.
“We are really pleased with the traction we’re seeing,” Leech said. “This has given us great visibility of where our communications are going.”