Channel Marketer Report

Case Study

With ZINFI Support, NEC and Partner Teleco Collaborate To Successfully Seize Sudden Opportunity

When a partner recognizes a major opportunity for a vendor to benefit from an unexpected market opportunity, success can hinge on the ability of the brand to help the partner react quickly, efficiently, and effectively.

Challenges

When Toshiba announced that it was exiting the telecommunications business – suddenly leaving a number of dealers without a product to sell – Teleco, a reseller of voice systems, video surveillance, data solutions and similar products saw a good opportunity to grow its business.

At the time, Teleco was already an NEC partner, distributing the company’s products through a nationwide network of dealers for 16 years. If NEC could support a marketing campaign targeting the dealers that had been selling Toshiba’s telecom products, Teleco was confident it could capture a share of that business.

Solution

Working with the NEC channel marketing team, Teleco assembled a list of dealerships, including email addresses and additional contact info. NEC also helped Teleco plan an email campaign, crafting message designed to get the attention of the targeted dealers.

The campaign was executed using the ZINFI Technologies channel marketing automation platform, leveraging assets from the NEC partner portal. The ZINFI platform automated delivery of the emails and tracked campaign metrics in its reporting module.

Results

With the help of the ZINFI marketing automation platform, Teleco distributed 243 emails across four different release dates. The dealers responded to the emails positively — 93% of the emails were delivered successfully, half of them were opened, and 16% of the recipients clicked through to the Teleco site.

To date, Teleco reports that is has signed up 47 new dealers to sell NEC solutions. Gary Sarmento, Teleco’s executive VP of sales, said he expects to net more dealers in the weeks and months ahead, noting that “we’re continuing with our recruiting process.”

Sarmento gave credit for much of the success of the campaign to the ZINFI support team. “One of the things that absolutely impressed us was, when we had a little bit of difficulty or weren’t sure how to do something, the response from the support team at ZINFI was just phenomenal.”

Turnaround time on support calls was short. Answers or solutions were communicated “not in days, but hours,” Said Sarmento. “It was very, very impressive.”

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