Channel Leaders, Partner Program Experts To Zero In On Segment-Specific Marketing At B2BMX Conference

Prominent partner marketing practitioners and leading channel program experts will explore the benefits of implementing segment-specific or account-based marketing initiatives with partners at the B2B Marketing Exchange: Next-Level ABM, June 7-10.

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The Next-Level ABM theme was selected after a review of feedback from attendees of the B2B Marketing Exchange On-Line Experience held in February. Post-event data and resounding comments from attendees and sponsors stressed just how many B2B revenue teams are prioritizing improved account targeting and segmentation strategies.

The Precision Partnering track at B2BMX Next-Level ABM will focus on how vendors collaborate with their partner ecosystems to boost opportunities with targeted or segmented prospects, market, or regions.

The sessions will provide actionable information on how channel marketers can build and maintain segment-ready ecosystems. They will also review the tools and tactics that enable vendors to define granular partner personas to identify the most appropriate partners for specific programs.

Enabling Account-Centric Strategies

Maria Chien VP, Practice Leader, Channel Marketing Strategies at Forrester will kick off the Precision Partnering track with a review of how organizations are leveraging account-centric strategies, tactics, and technologies to improve the performance of every aspect of their businesses including partner marketing programs. In particular, Chien will discuss how account-centric strategies enable brands and their partners to engage empowered B2B customers demanding an ever-increasing level of specialization and sophistication from the third-party firms that assist them.

She will also review how the emergence of nontraditional partnerships and alliances that serve business buyers/customers has made it much more critical for channel leaders to find, recruit, engage and retain the right partners. 

Theresa Caragol, CEO of AchieveUnite, a channel focused consulting agency, will examine why defining a channel strategy and building the right channel program will be crucial in staying ahead of the rapidly changing markets, especially in IT. During her session, Caragol will lead attendees through nine different stages and steps to ensure companies have the right strategy, channel and program to get on the road to sustainable revenue with partners.

Identifying the right partners to build an effective channel ecosystem will be reviewed by Janet Schijns, CEO at JS Group. Assembling a channel ecosystem that can be effectively aligned with the increasingly personalized demands of B2B buyers is critical to successful through- and with-partner marketing. In her session, Schijns will review how effective application of detailed partner personas helps partner marketers build a channel ecosystem than can be deployed to address legacy customers, new accounts and opportunities in emerging categories.

Personalizing Partner Experience

Identifying partner interest in prioritized markets or segments and ensuring that business-boosting content is shared with them is being facilitated by channel leaders with personalized partner portals. Portals that enable partners to have easier access to content and support activities aligned with the markets of interest to them can ensure that channel ecosystems are primed to engage prospects.

During a fireside chat with CMR, Jennifer Judy, Senior Director, Global Partner Experience at Poly, will share how the implementation and maintenance of her company’s personalized partner portal enables better alignment of channel program components with the most appropriate partners and sharper segmentation of with or through-channel initiatives.

Implementing channel marketing initiatives that target specific audiences can push many vendors’ in-house staff to the limit. Rather than add more to the plate of busy in-house staff, many companies are turning to channel-marketing-as-a-service providers to help. In their session, Josh Downing, Channel Marketing Manager at Lenovo, and Nancy Piepho, Director, Strategic Accounts & Alliances, OneAffiniti, will discuss how channel-proficient service providers can help to identify and recruit the most appropriate partners; develop and distribute the segment-specific campaigns; optimize contact with partners to drive engagement; and enable campaign metric monitoring to measure performance.

Implementing ABM With Channel Partners

Account-based marketing with partners gets the spotlight with two sessions. In their session, James Kessinger, Chief Marketing Officer at Hushly and Henry Bruckstein, founder at Campaign Stars, will discuss how martech advancements combined with ABM strategies and tactics are giving partner and alliance marketers a huge leapfrog forward in their ability to scale up and scale out new turnkey ABM programs for their reseller, distribution, and alliance partners. In particular, the session will examine how these programs are generating higher ROI from MDF/COOP dollars through increased visibility into target account activities as well as deal reg & opportunity pipeline.

In the second session, Forest Yule Donovan, Senior Director of Partner Development at the customer engagement platform Airship, will examine how identifying partners who have relationships with targeted accounts can accelerate the success of ABM campaigns. During this session Yule will take attendees through a 9-step process to narrow down the most strategic accounts for co-selling with a given partner.

With B2B decision makers being more than two-thirds of the way through their buying journey before engaging a seller, influencer marketing is getting more attention from channel marketers worried that they may lose a deal before they even knew there was a deal. In her session, Diane Krakora, principal of PartnerPath, a channel consulting firm, will discuss how channel marketers can implement an influencer program. During her presentation, Krakora will review, identifying and engaging potential influencers, assembling a library of materials, key talking points; and determining key metrics to measure influencer impact.

In addition to the Precision Partners sessions, B2BMX: Next-Level ABM will feature top-notch content on demand gen strategies presented by leading industry experts; access to world-class solution providers; and 1:1 networking.