ForresterWave TCMA

The Forrester Wave™: Through-Channel Marketing Automation Platforms, Q3 2015Amplify Your Marketing Voice With One Of These 14 Vendors

by Tim Harmon and Lori Wizdo August 4, 2015

For B2B MArkeTing ProFessionALs

FOrresTer.COM

key TakeawaysVendors Bring A Broad range Of Capabilities To Bear On Through-Channel MarketingTCMA solutions cover a broad array of functionality with which to equip your channel partners -- including distributed/syndicated email marketing and web content syndication; online advertising and social marketing; and traditional print, radio, and TV. Moreover, they include a range of DiY and DiFM capabilities to accommodate your partners’ marketing maturity.

Collectively, TCMA Vendors Are Outdoing enterprise Marketing Automation VendorsTCMA vendors as a group are bringing more innovation, flexibility, and architectural rigor to their products than their enterprise marketing automation counterparts.

Access The Forrester Wave Model For Deeper InsightUse the detailed Forrester Wave model to view every piece of data used to score participating vendors and create a custom vendor shortlist. Access the report online and download the excel tool using the link in the right-hand column under “Tool & Templates.” Alter Forrester’s weightings to tailor the Forrester Wave model to your specifications.

Why read This reportin Forrester’s evaluation of through-channel marketing automation (TCMA) platforms, we identified 14 significant vendors — Averetek, Balihoo, BrandMaker, Brandmuscle, Bridgeline Digital, Distribion, earthintegrate, Partnermarketing.com, revenew, sproutLoud, standard register, structuredWeb, Tie kinetix, and Zift solutions — and researched, analyzed, and scored their products according to 20 criteria garnered from our interactions with B2B marketing professionals. This report details our findings about how well each vendor’s product meets those criteria — and where they stand in relation to each other — to help B2B marketing professionals identify the top vendor candidates for their through-channel marketing programs.

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© 2015 Forrester research, inc. opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, roleView, Techradar, and Total economic impact are trademarks of Forrester research, inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378

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Table of Contents

The Power Of Through-Channel Marketing

How TCMA Is Evolving

The TCMA Platform Evaluation Process Explained

Evaluated Vendors Offer A Powerful Mix Of Tools And Services

Vendor Profiles

Supplemental Material

notes & resources

Forrester interviewed 24 vendor and user companies: Aflac, Align Technology, Avaya, Bowers & Wilkins, Ciena, Cisco systems, Control4, Cruiseone, Curves, emerson reid, infor, intel, key Bank, LiMrA, Lincoln Financial, McAfee, The Motorists insurance group, nuance, red Hat, safe-guard, shaw Floors, Tidesmart, Unify, and The UPs store

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For B2B MArkeTing ProFessionALs

The Forrester Wave™: Through-Channel Marketing Automation Platforms, Q3 2015Amplify Your Marketing Voice With One Of These 14 Vendors

by Tim Harmon and Lori Wizdowith Peter o’neill, Jacob Milender, and Matthew izzi

August 4, 2015

http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES100583




http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO1937



For B2B Marketing ProFessionals

The Forrester Wave™: Through-Channel Marketing Automation Platforms, Q3 2015amplify Your Marketing Voice With one of these 14 Vendors

august 4, 2015

© 2015 Forrester research, inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378

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The Power of Through-Channel Marketing

B2B companies have historically viewed their channels — whether in the form of agents (insurance, telecommunications), brokers (financial services, insurance), distributors (healthcare, industrial equipment, tech), franchisees (business services, healthcare), manufacturer’s reps (industrial equipment), or resellers (tech, telecommunications) — as sales channels. But savvy B2B marketing professionals are waking up to the potential of through-channel marketing, i.e., leveraging channel partners as a marketing channel, to:1

› Amplify their marketing voice to customers. B2B companies typically have hundreds or thousands of channel partners engaging with customers in the sales process. Leveraging those voices in a broader marketing scope to reach and be heard by more customers is a no-brainer.

› Deliver a more consistent brand experience to customers. Those channel voices may be singing a different tune than the B2B firm’s marketing message orchestra. Left unmarshaled, they can confuse customers, slow deals, or even damage the firm’s brand.

› Drive new partners to profitable revenue faster. Partner enablement may not be the primary objective of a through-channel marketing program, but it sure is a welcome consequence. With proactive marketing support, you can onboard new partners, scale partner revenue generation efforts, and build partner loyalty more quickly.

How TCMA is evolving

TCMA technology is the engine for B2B companies’ through-channel marketing programs. To properly value today’s TCMA solutions, B2B marketing pros must understand how and why they have evolved.

Modern TCMA Has Vertical And Functional Lineage

Modern TCMA solutions budded:

› From marketing asset management and content syndication roots. The first instantiation of what might be thought of as TCMA supported little more than the provisioning of an eCommerce means for channel partners to order marketing materials (e.g., printed brochures and direct mail) and goods (e.g., signs and placards), later expanding to encompass digital assets.2 TCMA’s roots can also be traced to e-collateral syndication technology.

› First in franchise/dealer networks. TCMA first came on the scene for consumer franchise-oriented verticals, because marketing support of franchisees is dictated in franchise agreements. early pre-TCMA vendors arose to address franchisors’ need for what was in essence a contractual obligation for through-channel marketing.



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› More recently in B2B industries. early B2B vertical adoption of TCMA solutions six or seven years ago was catalyzed by B2B marketers’ pivot from print/product marketing to digital/value marketing. Digital marketing lent itself not just as an engagement medium. The technology underpinnings of digital marketing enabled marketing programs to be broken down into component assets, and those assets were reassembled into a myriad of packaged campaigns customized for channel partners — enabling through-channel marketing as an assembly line type of process.

Governance sets TCMA Apart From Marketing Automation

generally, the TCMA vendor collective’s products are quite advanced as marketing automation platforms. some customers of both TCMA and enterprise marketing automation solutions report that they are using their TCMA solution more and more, and their corporate marketing automation solution less and less.3 indeed, marketers can also use TCMA products in a field marketing context — for those cases where the regions have a good deal of autonomy — in addition to or in lieu of supporting/enabling channel partners. The TCMA vendors’ encroaching footprint will be a significant challenge to the leading corporate marketing automation vendors in the future.

But beyond their generally superior functional capabilities, TCMA products are uniquely characterized by governance capabilities — by the B2B firm, i.e., the “brand” — involving:

› syndication. syndication — the ability to “create once, feed many” (or “create once, distribute through many”) with respect to marketing content, such as website content, email content, and social media content — supports the amplification value of through-channel marketing.

› Federalism. Federalism is a precept of TCMA architecture. in federalism, power is divided between a national body and various regional bodies. With TCMA products, the marketing process is divided between the brand and its channel partners. Abstractly, the brand creates and manages the digital assets and marketing campaigns, and channel partners extend and execute the tactics in those campaigns.

› Latitudinal discretion. TCMA technology offers B2B marketers the ability to customize their channel partners’ participation type according to those partners’ abilities and preferences. For example, one partner, adept in digital marketing, may want a great deal of latitude in adding its own content (logo, value proposition, pictures, and so on) to content syndicated from the brand; or it may want to design its own campaigns consisting of digital asset raw materials provided by the brand. on the other hand, a partner may want the brand to send out tweets on the partner’s behalf.

indeed, we define TCMA as:

A distributed marketing system used by enterprise marketers to enable and scale local marketing program execution through channel partners (stores, agents, dealers, franchisees, distributors, and resellers) with governance to protect brand integrity.



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TCMA Is still An emerging Market

The TCMA market is characterized by a relatively small number of early-adopter customers and a ton of TCMA vendors.4 Thus the average revenue size of TCMA vendors is small, and their relatively small stature and limited resources lead many of them to focus on select vertical markets (see Figure 1).5 The irony is that most of the TCMA vendors’ products have no vertical specificity (although some support regulatory content). The product of a TCMA vendor focused on the consumer franchise/dealer market may fit the bill well for a tech company, and vice versa.

FIGUre 1 TCMA Vendors Tend To Target Tech, Financial services And insurance, And Franchise/retail

Tech and telecom

Financial services/insurance

Franchises/retail

Other

TIE Kinetix

SproutLoudZift Solutions

Averetek

Partnermarketing.com

StructuredWeb

BrandmuscleRevenew

Standard Register

Distribion

Balihoo

Bridgeline Digital

EarthIntegrate

BrandMaker



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Different TCMA strokes For Different Folks: Know Your Channel Partners

As noted, a foundational governance principle of TCMA is latitudinal discretion, whereby B2B marketers can determine how much editing and execution latitude they prefer to offer their channel partners. The appropriate TCMA style is also strongly influenced by the marketing profile of the channel partners themselves (see Figure 2).Typically, partners fall into the following categories of marketing proclivity and efficacy:

› Independents who call their own marketing shots. Your largest channel partners will likely have their own marketing programs and tools. Moreover, they may carry a number of vendor/manufacturer brands in their portfolios, and they may want to both remain agnostic in representing any one brand’s marketing and combine multiple vendors’ products into their own branded solutions. While these marketers are not likely to participate in your through-channel marketing program, they will appreciate access to branded assets and syndicated content, and integration into their marketing automation and digital asset management capabilities will be important to them.

› Professional marketers who prefer DIY tools. some savvy channel partners have their own power marketers who prefer do-it-yourself (DiY) enablement. These power marketers are likely found in your large or midsize single-tier channel partners. in addition to knowing their target markets well, they have a well-thought-out marketing strategy and effective execution capacity. DiY channel partners will use your packaged campaigns, but they also require a high degree of content customizability to inject their own brand messages and value propositions into syndicated campaign materials. Many DiY marketers will also want to construct their own campaigns from your raw materials (marketing assets).

› Neophyte marketers who need DIFM programs. For most B2B marketers, the biggest slice of channel partners today will need the do-it-for-me (DiFM) approach to through-channel marketing. These channel partners may have some basic marketing program (say, an email newsletter program), but they aren’t staffed or skilled to design or deploy a multistage or multichannel marketing campaign. DiFM services might take the form of canned rules-based campaigns, where campaign tactics are triggered and executed based on some predefined event or schedule. or they can be even simpler, such as the option to opt in to turnkey, cobranded subscription programs the partner can “set and forget.”

› Luddites who prefer to remain uninvolved in local marketing. You’ll most likely find luddite marketers among your smaller channel partners, which have traditionally relied on sales, business development, and relationships to grow the business. some luddites may wind up taking advantage of some of your subscription-based DiY offerings, but don’t spend too much time trying to recruit them into your through-channel marketing program. The most successful TCMA strategy for luddites is to offer on-behalf-of (oBo) services such as distributing leads from centrally executed programs, setting up a local web presence, managing local directory listing services, or even running geographically segmented performance marketing programs.



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FIGUre 2 The spectrum of B2B Channel Partners’ Marketing efficacy

Partner marketing pro�le TCMA approaches

Corporate marketer• Large single-tier partners or distributors• Carries many global brands• In-house marketing automation• Sophisticated marketing practitioners

Independent“Give me branded assets andsyndicated content.”

Power marketer• Large or midsized single-tier partner• Knows its target market well• Competent marketing strategists

Do it yourself (DIY)• “Give me content and assets that make

it easy to sell your products.”• “Give me the tools to execute programs.”• “Let me cobrand, customize, and create.”

Neophyte• Large or midsized single-tier partner• Knows its target market• Already executing some marketing

activities, such as events or emailcampaigns

Luddite• Small or midsized single-tier partner• Relies heavily on sales, business

development, and relationships togrow the business

Do it on behalf of (OBO)• “Conduct localized, cobranded

marketing programs without myinvolvement.”

• “Give me leads.”

5%

20%

35%

40%

Do it for me (DIFM)• “Give me content and assets that make

it easy to sell your products”• “Give me options for turnkey, cobranded

programs that I can opt in to ‘set andforget.’”

Note: Data comes from customer interviews with 24 users of through-channel marketing automation (TCMA)solutions.



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The TCMA Platform evaluation Process explained

To assess the state of the TCMA platform market — and see how the vendors stack up against each other — Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the top TCMA platform vendors.

evaluated Vendors Have Functional Depth And Proven Market success

in this Forrester Wave evaluation, Forrester’s first of TCMA platform vendors, we looked at how vendors support traditional TCMA management capabilities — content syndication and asset management — as well as meet the emerging needs of TCMA marketers in marketing campaign management, cross-channel execution, social campaigns, and analytics. Forrester included 14 vendors in the assessment: Averetek, Balihoo, BrandMaker, Brandmuscle, Bridgeline Digital, Distribion, earthintegrate, Partnermarketing.com, revenew, sproutLoud, standard register, structuredWeb, Tie kinetix, and Zift solutions (see Figure 3). each of the participating vendors has:

› A multifunctional TCMA platform. each vendor included in this evaluation has sufficient functionality to operationalize the key stages of TCMA management.

› A sustained presence in the TCMA market. Vendors included in this evaluation target the B2B marketing automation market and have offered a product to the market for at least three years.

› evidence of marketplace viability. included vendors must generate more than $5 million in annual revenue from the reviewed product functionality or have at least 10 customers actively using the product.

› Customer references. each of the vendors provided us with at least three reference customers that we interviewed to validate the utility of the product. All of the references provided were in organizations typical of Forrester’s client base.

› Mindshare within Forrester’s client base. included vendors are frequently mentioned in Forrester client inquiries and other forms of client interaction.



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FIGUre 3 evaluated Vendors: Product information And selection Criteria

Vendor

Averetek

Balihoo

BrandMaker

Brandmuscle

Bridgeline Digital

Distribion

EarthIntegrate


Revenew

SproutLoud

Standard Register

StructuredWeb

TIE Kinetix

Zift Solutions

Product evaluated

Averetek

Balihoo Local Marketing Cloud

Marketing Ef�ciency Cloud

BrandBuilder

iAPPS

Distribion Distributed Marketing Platform

Pando Relationship Marketing Platform


Revenew

SproutLoud

SMARTworks

Channel Marketing Automation 2015

Demand Generation Platform

ZiftMarcom, Zift123

Product versionevaluated

1.0.4

5.7

5.0

5.3

3.08

3.35

8.3

15.11



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FIGUre 3 evaluated Vendors: Product information And selection Criteria (Cont.)

Inclusion criteria

A product that supports partner pro�le management.

A product that supports digital asset management.

A product that supports campaign management.

A product that supports program funding and payment.

A product that supports business intelligence (BI) and performance management.

A product that supports web content syndication.

A product that supports through-channel traditional marketing vehicles.

A product that supports through-channel digital marketing vehicles.

A product that supports through-channel social marketing.

Three public enterprises (1,000 or more employees) as reference customers that are running applications on the platform. These references must be publicly disclosable.

Platform must be generally available to customers and meet nine out of 10 selection criteria listed above as of April 15, 2015.

evaluation Criteria Include Current Offering, strategy, And Market Presence

We assessed the products across 20 criteria — based on past research, user need assessments, and customer practitioner interviews — involving the vendors’ current offering, strategy, and market presence. strategy scoring takes into account the vendors’ corporate strategy per their product vision/road map, channel/ecosystem development, and capitalization, as well as their go-to-market model involving industry penetration and geographical coverage. For market presence, we considered the vendors’ revenue, revenue growth, and number of customers. The current offering assessment component covers:

› The brand’s governance capabilities. When letting loose of some of your marketing execution to a large number of channel partners, you need a level governance to curb the potential entropic effect of doing so. We incorporated B2B marketing professionals’ TCMA governance wish list, including the ability to offer partners varying degrees of latitude in what they can do themselves (e.g., assemble their own marketing campaigns from provided digital assets); the ability to determine the level and types of partners’ value-add customization to marketing content; the ability to monitor and measure partners’ take-up and performance and campaign/tactic effectiveness; and the ability to automate via a rules-based mechanism that uses partner profile attributes.



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› The partner’s execution enablement. Because through-channel marketing program success depends greatly on partner adoption, we evaluated the TCMA vendors’ products from the partner’s perspective. We factored in criteria like a wide variety of marketing tactics/vehicles (email, pay-per-click, social, video, print) and the ability for a partner to determine how it wants to participate.

› Technology fundamentals. in particular, we tested for user interface/user experience (Ui/UX) intuitiveness, navigability, and aesthetics, for both the back end (brand/vendor governance) and front end (partner execution). And we credited mobile app support, as more and more partners are using mobile devices as their primary conduit to their brand/manufacturer partners.

› API integration. We also assessed the products on their ability to integrate with other technology solutions in the customer engagement stack, as well as their APi architecture (see Figure 4).

FIGUre 4 How Through-Channel Marketing Automation Fits into The Customer engagement Technology stack

Enterprisemarketing

automation

Listproviders

Customer data

TCMA

Customerdata

Leaddata

Campaignconstructs

Customerdata

Partnerpro�les

Partnerpro�les

MDFaccounts

Customers

“Sharp end” of marketing(partners, �eld)

Brand marketing(corporate)

Partner systemof record

Customerrelationship

management

Partnerrelationship

management



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evaluated Vendors offer A Powerful Mix of Tools And services

The evaluation uncovered a market in which (see Figure 5):

› There are no clear Leaders. TCMA is still an emerging software market. The vendors have functional parity for most of the core TCMA capabilities (e.g., content syndication), but features at the fringe can vary depending on the genesis of the vendor (e.g., the seminal industry, business model, or geography). Although we were impressed with the functional depth of the leading vendors in the field, we still see room for Leaders to emerge. To be fair, our evaluation criteria are far ahead of the state of through-channel marketing practice, so vendors have been careful not to invest too far ahead of the demand curve.

› Ten vendors emerge as strong Performers. Balihoo, BrandMaker, Bridgeline Digital, Distribion, earthintegrate, revenew, sproutLoud, structuredWeb, Tie kinetix, and Zift solutions each validated their position as a strong Performer. BrandMaker, Distribion, and revenew scored well in the overall governance dimension. sproutLoud distinguished itself in execution on the strength of its digital marketing execution capabilities. structuredWeb was a standout for business intelligence and performance management, and Zift for having a deep integration capability involving partners’ applications.

› Four vendors are Contenders. Averetek, Brandmuscle, Partnermarketing.com, and standard register demonstrated that they are strong Contenders in this space. TCMA practitioners should note that more is not always better when evaluating a TCMA vendor; sometimes more is just more. if one of these Contenders has strong features that are important to your marketing process, or is exceptionally amenable to your channel partners’ needs, it could be a good fit for you.

Fine-Tune The TCMA Criteria Weights To Find Your right strategic Fit

The TCMA market is in an early stage of evolution, so the vendors’ products represent a vast and varied array of capabilities. This evaluation of TCMA platform vendors is intended to be a starting point only. We encourage clients to view detailed product evaluations and adjust the criteria weightings to fit their individual needs through the Forrester Wave excel-based vendor comparison tool. Use this Forrester Wave to guide how you think about TCMA solutions and:

› Change the weightings to reflect your company’s marketing needs. Do your channel sales involve complex products and solutions, which dictate a longer, more studied approach to engaging customers? if so, you may want to weight certain factors higher, such as campaign management and web content syndication. Do your buyers have a propensity for digital engagement? Then increase the weighting on digital and social marketing channels and decrease the weighting on traditional vehicles.



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› Adjust for your channel partners’ marketing proclivities and proficiencies. The latitudinal range of execution capability varies greatly by TCMA vendor. some vendors’ products lean toward DiY power marketers; others toward the DiFM neophytes or the oBo luddites. Look closely at the scale explanations. They provide insight into the execution options available for partners.

› Go deeper. in an emerging market Forrester Wave, we limit the number of evaluation criteria, in this case to 20. in serious consideration of a TCMA solution, you’ll need to factor in additional evaluation criteria beyond the scope of this Forrester Wave (e.g., price and pricing/consumption model, agency support, architectural scalability).

› Go broader. As previously noted, besides the 14 vendors evaluated, there are several other notable TCMA vendors that you should include in your consideration (this Forrester Wave was oversubscribed). We have relevant perspectives on those vendors as well.

FIGUre 5 The Forrester Wave: Through-Channel Marketing Automation Platforms, Q3 ’15

Challengers Contenders LeadersStrong

Performers

StrategyWeak Strong

Currentoffering

Weak

Strong

Go to Forrester.com to

download the Forrester

Wave tool for more

detailed product

evaluations, feature

comparisons, and

customizable rankings.

Market presence

Averetek

BalihooBrandMaker

Brandmuscle

Bridgeline Digital

Distribion

EarthIntegrate


RevenewSproutLoud

Standard Register

StructuredWeb

TIE Kinetix

Zift Solutions



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FIGUre 5 The Forrester Wave: Through-Channel Marketing Automation Platforms, Q3 ’15 (Cont.)

CURRENT OFFERING Governance (brand/ manufacturer/vendor) Execution (partners) Technology

STRATEGY Corporate strategy Industry strategy Geographical coverage strategy

MARKET PRESENCE Number of customers Financials

3.102.80

3.303.40

3.102.005.003.00

3.575.002.40

Forr

este

r’sW

eigh

ting

50%45%

35%20%

50%40%25%35%

0%45%55%

3.453.35

3.503.60

2.513.003.001.60

2.233.001.60

2.892.90

2.803.00

2.672.003.003.20

2.904.002.00

1.991.65

2.202.40

2.172.001.003.20

1.221.001.40

2.912.95

2.803.00

1.962.001.002.60

1.441.001.80

3.162.70

3.503.60

2.322.003.002.20

2.002.002.00

2.853.35

2.003.20

3.573.005.003.20

2.684.001.60

2.021.90

2.401.60

2.771.005.003.20

3.674.003.40

3.793.95

3.803.40

3.194.003.002.40

2.332.002.60

3.573.30

3.903.60

2.863.003.002.60

2.112.002.20

1.842.00

2.101.00

2.402.005.001.00

4.334.004.60

3.173.05

3.203.40

2.212.002.002.60

1.991.002.80

2.422.25

2.203.20

3.092.003.004.40

2.662.003.20

3.212.85

3.104.20

2.823.002.003.20

2.222.002.40

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

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Vendor Profiles

strong Performers

› revenew brings a comprehensive enterprise-class offering to the TCMA landscape. revenew’s TCMA offering is distinguished at several levels, including control, transparency, and a holistic view of localized marketing. revenew seeks to enable enterprise brand marketers, who are accustomed to the sophistication and targeting strategies available in enterprise marketing automation, with the same ability when executing strategies at scale across a local ecosystem. it currently has about 70 customers. Partner management (categorization, permissioning) is strong. Management of market development funds (MDF) and co-op is strong, although revenew doesn’t support alternate payment schemes. The product supports a broad tactical landscape: it can support a number of cobranded marketing assets (including cobranded video); it ranges far beyond the TCMA digital staples of cobranded multiple campaigns to include digital advertising and digital billboards; and it supports traditional channels (print and even telemarketing). revenew’s patented technology for integrating the marketing programs from multiple brands/vendors (including joint dual-vendor programs) represents true innovation in the TCMA space.



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› sproutLoud brings local presence into through-channel marketing. some channels, such as a retail electronics store, are obviously local. some channels (e.g., a networking value-added reseller) are not so obviously local. But in both those situations, local presence — the ability to be found — is a significant contributor to new leads and business. sproutLoud’s local presence capabilities include local listing, local web presence, and local advertising. its distributed marketing capabilities can support the engaged DiY partner with features like one-time ordering, which allows partners to order all the services for an upcoming campaign — including local event management, media buying, direct mail, social, email, and so on. At the same time, strong subscription and date-triggered campaigns can support the less engaged DiFM partners. And sproutLoud offers strong governance. All campaigns have integrated funds management (co-op and MDF). The brand can control the entire customer life-cycle campaign globally, with touchpoints triggered and customized on behalf of local partners relevant to their specific customer.

› BrandMaker has a diverse customer set comprising B2B2B and B2B2C marketers. BrandMaker, headquartered in germany, has been delivering TCMA solutions to large brands and manufacturers across europe for the past several years, and it is now expanding in north and south America. The company’s european DnA — reflected in a multilingual, multicurrency, and multicultural product — has helped it acquire about 200 customers in over a dozen industries for its TCMA offering. strong centralized control is supported with robust digital asset management, a web-to-web capability for web content syndication, and a performance management approach that emphasizes strong key performance indicators (kPis) rather than volume metrics. Flexible decentralized operations are enabled via a Digital Marketing Center for email, retargeting, performance display, and social media. The product also supports vehicles for the offline world (e.g., print advertisements, trade show booths, posters, and printed collateral).

› Bridgeline is a digital engagement company aiming to be a saas TCMA player. over the past 15 years, Bridgeline Digital has acquired more than 2,500 clients and delivered websites driven by iAPPs, a scalable software-as-a-service (saas) platform that comprises web content management, eCommerce, digital marketing, analytics, and social media management. The majority of the company’s revenue comes from services, rather than software, but the mix is shifting. Bridgeline has demonstrated success in franchise systems, dealer and distributor networks, and original equipment manufacturer (oeM) and private-label companies. not surprisingly, given its roots, Bridgeline has strong content syndication capabilities that B2B marketers can use to manage content on partners’ sites, create microsites, or stand up new sites altogether. Digital campaigns are email-based and simple, but more sophisticated campaign construction is on the road map. Bridgeline has flexible social syndication and is one of the few TCMA vendors with a social listening capability. The product is very strong for the DiFM partner landscape.

› Zift solutions aims to inject its TCMA solutions into partners’ systems of engagement. What sets Zift apart in the TCMA vendor landscape is a commitment to transparently integrating its TCMA solutions into the partner’s application landscape. if the partner is using a marketing automation product like Hubspot, then campaign assets are available through Hubspot. if the



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partner is using a CrM platform like salesforce, then leads and customer insight are available through salesforce. This lowers the barrier to action and drives partner engagement above the average of 20%. Zift’s offering provides a comprehensive range of email marketing tactics, from single email blasts to multitouch, automated drip and nurture marketing, cobranded print marketing (for use at events, in sales literature, or in direct mail), online advertising (AdWords, retargeting, social), social media marketing, and syndicated website content of all types, from banner ads to full server-side widgets to embed product showcases. The company currently services nearly 10,000 channel partner organizations around the globe, representing over 50 vendors.

› Distribion brings a strong architectural bent and application flexibility to TCMA. Formed in 2009, Distribion is one of the few TCMA vendors whose genesis is purely in saas distributed marketing management (as opposed to an offshoot of an agency offering or print/fulfillment), and its product is built upon a robust APi foundation. Distribion has approximately 180 customers and 180,000 users in a variety of industries, with a large client base in financial services and insurance. The product scored high in digital, social, and traditional marketing execution. it’s one of the few products with a robust campaign workflow editor for multistage campaigns with complex decision-pathing to support personalized prospect nurturing. Another differentiating feature is the Prospect Finder module, a real-time data pipe to a number of data providers that provides DiFM partners with access to over a million business and consumer records, refinable by more than 300 attributes. A strong partner permissioning scheme and flexible payment options enable Distribion to serve a wide variety of TCMA use cases.

› earthIntegrate focuses on enabling local sales producers. earthintegrate, recently acquired by Pageflex, describes its Pando product as a relationship marketing management system. its goal is to enable well-governed marketing programs to be executed through distributed sales channels. To support localized sales execution in regulated industries, the Pando product has strong digital asset management for both branded marketing and customer relationship artifacts. The central brand marketing team can create master multistage, multichannel campaigns with triggers defined by corporate business rules. Local sales agents and field marketers can select and localize campaigns, and they can mandate approval prior to execution. The product is designed to lower the bar for field execution, with an easy-to-use interface, print and mail fulfillment options, and integrated list sourcing. There are fewer options for the DiFM partner. The focus on campaign execution through sales reps, agents, or affiliates is accompanied by weakness in local presence capabilities, such as web content syndication, local search, and social marketing.

› Balihoo focuses on national brands wanting to execute hyperlocal campaigns at scale. Balihoo’s platform leverages internal customer and third-party data, based upon preset conditional logic, to execute automated, highly targeted, localized campaigns. Balihoo’s 75 customers are large (50-plus locations) national brands in the financial services, manufacturing, banking, retail, and insurance industries. its TCMA offering supports a wide variety of local marketing channels — and associated activation endpoints — through an extensible cloud-based platform approach. supported marketing channels include local websites, email, direct mail, paid search, display advertising, and



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social. Balihoo brings scale to through-channel marketing automation through partnerships that support programmatic automation in media selection/buying. Balihoo’s solution has traditionally been used by brand marketers and their agencies — rather than by the local partners themselves — to create, activate, and manage marketing campaigns on behalf of their local affiliates and resellers.

› structuredWeb provides TCMA solutions suited for complex, extended buying cycles. structuredWeb focuses its TCMA product on the entire TCMA process, not just the marketing to execution process. it starts with tools that allow the brand/vendor and the partner to develop annual or quarterly plans, designed to meet revenue goals, which factor in historical conversion rates to calculate the number of required leads and determine the number and type of marketing programs (as well as budget and resources) necessary to attain the revenue goal. it ends with a CrM capability for partners that aren’t using a formal CrM. Along the buyer journey, capabilities exist for lead nurturing (using a combination of email, direct mail, and telemarketing) and lead scoring — with linear scoring currently, and predictive scoring in structuredWeb’s product road map. All of this management structure comes with ease of use and strong functionality for campaign management and digital and social marketing execution, as structuredWeb was among the top scorers in all those dimensions. structuredWeb’s customer base is slanted toward the technology vertical, but the product is suited for any brand or vendor selling complicated solutions through a channel.

› TIe Kinetix streamlines TCMA for small teams and time-strapped partners. Tie kinetix has been delivering supply chain and commerce solutions to oeMs, manufacturers, and vendors for 26 years. it has focused its TCMA solutions on the long tail of through-channel marketing — those partners that are not going to engage actively with any given vendor’s through-partner marketing efforts. Content syndication figures large in Tie kinetix’s strategy. The product’s Dynamic showcase syndication module allows vendors to filter content within a syndicated microsite on a partner-by-partner basis. This filtering allows partners to configure their content profile to ensure that only relevant content will be dynamically syndicated on their website. Tie kinetix also deploys a syndicated approach for social marketing, pay-per-click (PPC), and cobrand/personalized collateral development (assets are automatically cobranded), requiring no interaction, time, skills, or resources from the partner. The only exception is email marketing, where partners need to go through a four-step wizard to comply with regulations and select their email list. This opt-in subscription approach to TCMA is well suited to vendors and brands with less sophisticated or less engaged partners or channel base.

Contenders

› Averetek has optimized its TCMA offering for the needs of the technology industry. since 2000, Averetek has focused almost exclusively on the technology sector. it counts only eight global manufacturers as clients, but through those eight global vendors, the company serves 52,000 channel partner entities and over 200,000 users. This tech industry focus has shaped Averetek’s TCMA offering: strong web content syndication supports complex and rapidly changing product



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portfolios; marketing program capabilities favor digital campaigns and events; strong partner categorization reflects the industrial and geographic diversity of the global tech partners; and a “marketing store” capability makes it easy for partners to use MDF for approved programs, tactics, and services. To grow, Averetek will need to provide solutions tuned for smaller technology companies and support an expanded set of marketing tactics (such as local and social marketing) that are critical success factors in other industry segments.

› Brandmuscle aims to be a trusted steward for a vendor’s brand assets. Brandmuscle’s BrandBuilder solution is specifically designed to allow channel partners to cobrand creative materials provided by the corporate brand. strict rules apply to how these users access both the site and the materials, as well as what can be edited within the materials. The system includes automated workflows and customizable approval loops to streamline production and ensure compliance, and it can support the cobranding of nearly any type of traditional, digital, or social media. Brandmuscle has strong partnerships with a wide variety of complementary service providers for print production, fulfillment, email processing, social media execution, web project hosting, and more. over 200 well-known brands use the Brandmuscle platform, spanning virtually every industry — financial, retail, manufacturing, nonprofits, hospitality, beverage/alcohol, travel, technology, telecom, internet/cable providers, pharmaceuticals, and restaurants.

› Partnermarketing.com brings governance and scale to distributed campaigns. in 2009, Partnermarketing.com began the evolution from a fully managed campaign services company (its partner company, Uk-based creative agency Twogether) to a software company with a TCMA offering. With its roots in the creative side of marketing, it’s not surprising that campaign creation and execution are the strongest aspects of the Partnermarketing.com solution. nor is it surprising that the Partnermarketing.com team manages the process for development and creation of all digital assets. Campaign assets (from email templates to landing pages to physical advertising templates) are designed in line with the vendor brand and messaging guidelines. They are then configured to make it easy for partners to customize. The solution also provides a comprehensive workflow to ensure campaign approval. However, the emphasis on strong campaign management comes at the expense of other TCMA features, such as web content syndication, local search, and social marketing.

› standard register combines digital with its physical heritage to enable TCMA. Founded in 1912 as a printing company, standard register’s robust capabilities in traditional channels differentiate it from vendors with a genesis in the digital age. it attributed roughly 25% of its $275 million revenue in 2014 to its TCMA solutions. With its legacy strengths, standard register led the TCMA field in our criteria for traditional marketing vehicles and program funding and payment. in fact, standard register is the only vendor in our evaluation with a marketing supply chain that offers cost-effective access to a number of branded physical “things” like pens and table drapes and tchotchkes. in most digital marketing capabilities, the company’s offerings are far off the lead. But for brands and vendors managing their own transition from a physical to a digital world,



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standard register’s sMArTworks platform helps accelerate that transition by enabling distributed field resources to select, personalize, and engage customers with digital content in a governed, easily managed operation.

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supplemental Material

Companies Interviewed For This report

Aflac

Align Technology

Avaya

Averetek

Balihoo

Bowers & Wilkins

BrandMaker

Brandmuscle

Bridgeline Digital

Ciena

Cisco systems

Control4

Cruiseone

Curves

Distribion

earthintegrate

emerson reid

infor

intel

key Bank

LiMrA

Lincoln Financial

McAfee

nuance


red Hat

revenew

safe-guard

shaw Floors

sproutLoud

standard register

structuredWeb

The Motorists insurance group

The UPs store

Tidesmart

Tie kinetix

Unify

Zift solutions



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endnotes1 A few savvy B2B manufacturers/vendors and brand leaders have been doing through-channel marketing for years.

now it’s time to up your game. see the “Turn Your Channel into A Marketing Machine” Forrester report.

2 some TCMA vendors, having started out as a distributed physical/print marketing software vendor, refer to marketing materials and goods as marketing products — and thus use the term “products” in their software solution for what most B2B marketing professionals now consider to be assets (or marketing assets).

3 savvy B2B marketing leaders are going beyond revenue performance management to transform marketing into the architect of engagement across the customer life cycle. see the “The Forrester Wave™: Lead-To-revenue Management Platform Vendors, Q1 2014” Forrester report.

4 in addition to the 15 vendors evaluated in this Forrester Wave, there are many other notables, including: Ad giants, Direxxis (acquired in May 2015 by Broadridge), Datasource, elastic Digital, Fision, LiveTechnology, saepio, PTi (MarcomCentral), siM Partners, TreeHouse interactive, and Zinfi.

5 it also makes these companies them ripe for potential acquisition.




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