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Many Channel Marketing Automation\xa0vendors today provide tools such as email marketing, event marketing, and web and social content syndication. However, it\u2019s questionable whether these tools are enough in themselves to stimulate demand and channel engagement. So what else is needed to complete the demand generation tool set, and how can a technology vendor make sure they buy the right system, and pay the right amount to achieve the desired ROI? These are important questions; moreover, for larger vendors they need to be considered in a global context.\nFirst-generation Channel Marketing Automation tools typically offered web syndication, event marketing and email marketing. In the ensuing phase, most Channel Marketing Automation vendors \u2013 like\xa0ZINFI\xa0\u2013 introduced tools like\xa0social syndication and on-demand webinars. While these tools were somewhat effective in building\xa0sales pipeline, their impact was only moderate. In an effort to understand more, ZINFI last year undertook an extensive, in-depth channel partner survey, which has provided useful insights on the elements needed and changes necessary to drive higher utilization and better return from channel marketing automation platforms.\nTime is a prime concern. Channel partners are tightly focused on sales and technical support and only in comparatively rare instances have dedicated marketing staff. So while vendors offer easy mechanisms to issue simple email blasts or implement pre-prepared web content syndication, they can\u2019t overcome the fact that the partners are busy \u2013 VERY busy \u2013 elsewhere. Most vendor tools are potentially useful, but not sufficiently so \u2013 they don\u2019t go far enough. Technology vendors therefore need to look at other ways to energize their partners to undertake marketing. One effective way is to provide a set of integrated tools that is not only easy to use but also preconfigured for various types of campaign.\nAny effective demand generation platform must incorporate the following tools and functionality:\n\n\n \tLead Management\u2013 While most Channel Marketing Automation platforms offer basic capabilities to upload leads (or records of potential prospects or existing customers) a true\xa0lead management platform needs to include a traditional customer relationship management (CRM)-like interface, for two main reasons:\n\n \tFor ease of use, the lead management system needs to connect both to the technology vendor\u2019s and the partners\u2019 own CRM system in order to enable data to flow seamlessly back and forth\n \tMost partners today use a CRM system such as Salesforce.com, so providing them with a CRM-like interface for lead management will drive adoption faster.\n\n\n\n\n \tLead distribution\u2013 Most vendors provide leads to their top tier partners, but to build pipeline and promote best practices beyond this rarified level, it\u2019s critical to create a competitive environment for lead distribution.\xa0The Channel Marketing Automation\xa0tool must be able to distribute leads to pre-defined partner sets, whether to a small segment or to all partners, e.g. in a shark tank mode.\n \tCampaign-specific tools\u2013 Not all tools are relevant for everything, so it\u2019s important to determine the purpose of each campaign.\xa0Social\xa0and\xa0search marketing are effective for awareness generation.\xa0Email,\xa0Events\xa0and\xa0Content Syndication\xa0showcases are primarily used to generate engagement with prospects. Deep dive training or product usage videos work well for gauging trial interest and qualifying leads. Also, depending on the target segments \u2013 SMB, Mid-Market or Enterprise \u2013 one or more tools may be needed to make a campaign productive.\n \tMulti-touch campaigns\u2013 Most mid-market and enterprise buying has a long evaluation cycle. In order to stay in the game \u2013 not just be included at the last stage for price comparison purposes \u2013 a Channel Marketing Automation platform should have multi-touch capabilities. This is essential to automate DRIP campaigns and provide successive content-driven engagement stages ...