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Over the past decade or so, many large organizations have deployed channel marketing automation tools involving partner relationship management (PRM) and partner marketing management (PMM). If you are currently considering whether to make such an investment, there are a few things you need to think about before you make that jump. You may have the budget, but is making an investment in channel marketing automation the right next step for your channel management team? Let’s take a few minutes and discuss what channel marketing automation is, and then we will lay out a framework for you to use to figure out whether this makes sense for you or not. Most organizations selling through the channel need to recruit, engage, enable and manage their partners. A channel marketing automation solution focuses primarily on the marketing aspects of this equation. Whether you are marketing to your partners to recruit and engage them or marketing through those partners to engage prospective buyers of your products or services, you need a set of channel marketing automation tools not only to make your marketing processes more efficient execution-wise, but also to provide the business intelligence that will help you understand what is working and what is not. That’s the basic premise for considering a channel marketing automation platform. A typical channel marketing automation platform will have several integrated modules designed for you to run campaigns to and through your partner base. These modules are: Lead management: You should be able to upload a set of records—whether partner records or end-user records—to distribute via your partner network to drive campaign execution and closure using lead management tools. Search and social marketing: While these are two independent sets of modules, you will need core capabilities in these areas to truly drive awareness of your target audience. Your channel marketing automation platform should start with these search tools as the core inbound marketing tactics. Email marketing: Email marketing tools should allow you to run multi-touch email marketing campaigns to and through your partner base to engage your target audience with compelling content. Microsite marketing: Chances are you sell a whole bunch of products and have multiple channel programs. It is challenging to promote all of these programs at the same time with the same level of intensity. If your channel marketing automation platform comes with microsite or landing page marketing capabilities, then you should be able to set these up on the fly and drive engagement using the email marketing engine that I talked about earlier. Event marketing: Partner recruitment efforts rely heavily on road shows and webinars. If you are trying to recruit existing partners to new programs or new partners to the company, you need a robust event marketing platform. A proper channel marketing automation platform should be able to provide that to your channel team. Web syndication: If you are trying to make sure your product and solution showcases are extended beyond your own website, then you need to think about distributing that content via a partner network. This is where web syndication becomes a very important element of your channel marketing automation platform. Intelligence & reporting: Knowing which specific parts of your marketing programs and activities are actually driving results is critical for optimizing those programs and activities to get a better return on your channel marketing investment. Your channel marketing automation platform must be able to provide a robust analytical engine to provide business intelligence and reporting. Now that we have outlined the core features that a state-of-the-art channel marketing automation platform must have, the next step is to understand the benefits of such a platform. (Once we have discussed the benefits, we will explore whether investment in a platform fits in with your own channel...