Spark Promises to Reignite Channel Marketing
New company focuses on providing vendors with better through-partner marketing with multimedia content
Vendors and solution providers are getting a new marketing and lead-generation resource, Spark Your Channel, a marketing automation company by Heather Margolis, founder of channel marketing specialist Channel Maven Consulting.
The Lowdown: Spark was born out of the idea that leveraging and personalizing content — particularly the gamut of existing multimedia content — will aid vendors and partners in reaching customers with impactful, actionable messages that translate into sales leads and revenue.
The Details: The cloud-based Spark platform gives vendors and solution providers the ability to quickly and easily personalize a wide range of content, including videos, webinars, podcasts, e-books, sales sheets, and infographics. The idea is to make the full library of vendor content more accessible and valuable to solution providers.
Spark will offer the platform to vendors, who will in turn open it up to their partners’ sales and marketing teams. Partners using the platform can generate new marketing campaigns and give vendors the ability to track activity without compromising their customer contact lists.
The Impact: Spark purports to be the first marketing automation platform that enables this level of multimedia content customization. While Spark can tailor many types of content, the big impact is video. According to Forrester Research, only 17% of vendors are satisfied with their current through-channel marketing automation (TCMA) systems; at the same time, demand for TCMA solutions is increasing at a compound annual rate of 25%. According to The 2112 Group, 50% of vendors are increasing through-partner marketing spending in 2020. The combination of low satisfaction and high growth creates ideal conditions for Spark to disrupt the current channel marketing automation segment.
The Buzz: “We developed Spark Your Channel to address challenges of through-channel marketing, giving vendors and their partners an affordable and easy-to-use channel marketing automation platform,” said Margolis, founder and CEO of Spark Your Channel. “Most important, it puts the sales rep in control. They can personalize professional content and share it with prospects via their own e-mail, social, marketing automation, or texts as part of their existing sales process.”
“We’ve been doing demand generation on our own for years, even though our vendors use a through-channel marketing automation tool,” said Sean Lardo, vice president of partner development at managed VoIP provider at OIT. “We find it too cumbersome and have no interest in loading our list. The entire team is really excited to use Spark Your Channel as a way of personalizing our vendors’ videos and sending them out ourselves.”
“Spark is addressing an underserved part of the channel go-to-market equation: through-partner marketing. One-half of vendors are increasing their through-partner marketing spending, focusing on video and more consumable content,” said Lawrence M. Walsh, CEO of channel consulting and strategy firm The 2112 Group. “Customers are gravitating toward accessible, actionable content to help guide their product and services consideration and purchases. Spark is the solution that connects vendor and partner content seamlessly to make an impact on customers.”
