Q&A with Jesse Moeinifar, CEO & Founder at Viafoura

Q&A with Jesse Moeinifar
Jesse  Moeinifar, CEO & Founder at Viafoura, is a serial entrepreneur with multiple successes spanning a range of industries, including real estate, digital media and software. Dedicated to innovation, Jesse is passionate about game-changing ideas and credits his accomplishments to assembling teams of smart individuals committed to solving challenging problems. Currently, Jesse acts as a mentor to young startups at the Founder Institute and is also an advisory board member for NuBinary, an organization that helps new companies with their technology development needs. When he isn’t building successful companies, Jesse enjoys the challenges of high-altitude mountaineering. He’s summited the highest and most difficult climbing routes across North America, South America, and Europe.

The realization that you can’t achieve anything meaningful if you’re afraid of failure. Understanding that building a company is truly a team sport and the importance of partnering with people who are as excited and obsessed with the vision.


MEDIA 7: What would you say are the biggest mountains you have had to climb in your professional journey?
JESSE MOEINIFAR:
The realization that you can’t achieve anything meaningful if you’re afraid of failure. Understanding that building a company is truly a team sport and the importance of partnering with people who are as excited and obsessed with the vision.

M7: The Independent has recently switched to Viafoura to replace its traditional commenting solution. How do you ensure highest content engagement for publishers like The Independent?
JM:
We pride ourselves on delivering the best-in-class audience engagement and community-building solution for global brands and publishers. In order to drive the highest level of engagement on our customers’ digital properties, we focus on customizing and implementing a highly integrated solution that includes:

- Identity management to support user registrations and conversions
- Engagement products like real-time conversations, live chat, live blogs and Ask Me Anythings to drive user-generated content (UGC) and user engagement
- Content recirculation solutions that surface the top engaging content across the site to drive new page views and reader engagement
- Personalized notifications, including push and email notifications and our proprietary on-site notification feed to create new channels to communicate with and engage users on-site; and
- Our industry-leading AI-powered moderation technology is customized to our customers’ community guidelines and ensures brand-safe and civil discourse to support a vibrant and engaging community.

Coupled with our best-in-class solution is our dedication to client success. We take the time to train all stakeholders and the newsroom to ensure high adoption rates of our tools. We also share best practices on a regular, proactive basis and conduct quarterly business reviews to stay on top of our customers' digital community's health, and provide recommendations to continue to build engagement.


It really is about creating a relationship with your digital community in a safe and protected environment, delivering value exchange moments and building stickiness into your site such as notifications.

M7: What are some of the ways in which Viafoura ensures high free-to-paid content conversion rates for its clients?
JM:
We’re proud to say that Viafoura is the most significant contributor of new registrations and conversions across our network of 600+ brands, with 80% of conversions happening on pages with our engagement tools. We are able to achieve this high rate of conversion through our always-on customer acquisition model that engages, converts and monetizes our customers’ digital audience. By enabling multiple “value-exchange moments” such following a topic or author to receive personalized content updates or participating in a live Q&A with an expert or posting a comment or opinion on a content article, we create a highly integrated and distributed always-on model for converting free users into registered users and ultimately paid subscribers.

M7: With Viafoura, protection against uncivil comments and internet trolls are a guarantee. What are the parameters based on which your auto-moderation engine identifies and removes them?
JM:
Our AI-powered automated moderation engine uses root word analysis, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and semantic pattern matching to assess millions of comments in real-time to ensure they adhere to and comply with our customers’ community and brand guidelines. Specifically, our technology identifies 6.5 million variations of any word to ensure that it cannot easily be obfuscated or camouflaged — a common strategy among trolls — and it understands the context of words and sentences to ensure that the term “snowflake”, for example, is approved for discussions about weather or sports but is automatically rejected when used as a political or personal attack. We custom tailor the semantic pattern rule sets for each of our customer’s sites, based on the rules they are asking their community to abide by.  In addition, our moderation technology includes the ability to identify behavioral patterns to predict which users are likely to emerge as trolls and easily ban them from the site before they pollute the community with their toxic comments and behavior.


The reality is community engagement and UGC is a largely untapped method of increasing resolution of data and it represents the lowest hanging fruit for media organizations to build up their first-party data.

M7: According to you, what are the best methods to build a thriving online community for online publications?
JM:
It really is about creating a relationship with your digital community in a safe and protected environment, delivering value exchange moments and building stickiness into your site such as notifications. You can read more about it in this article.

M7: What are some of the biggest challenges for online publications in the post Covid-19 era?
JM:
Publishers saw a massive spike in readership as people looked for reliable, trustworthy information on the pandemic. However, with things starting to return to normal, it's important to look at the information you've gathered from your community. What did they read? What did they opt-in for? What actions did they take on a piece of content? What is their sentiment on that content? This should inform strategies for personalization, content development and conversions moving forward.

This kind of data will also allow you to create more robust advertising strategies with partners. The more you focus on increasing the volume, accuracy, and recency of your data the more value your data has to advertisers. Media organizations have often overlooked or shied away from the critical importance of audience engagement as key driver of conversion and 1st party user data which is going to be fundamental for online publications post Covid and post third-party cookies.

The reality is community engagement and UGC is a largely untapped method of increasing resolution of data and it represents the lowest hanging fruit for media organizations to build up their first-party data. One of the reasons many shy away from this strategy is the fears and costs traditionally associated with managing and cultivating thriving communities, but modern automated moderation technology is making UGC and community not only viable, but also highly cost-effective for driving engagement and proprietary 1st party data.

M7: If you were not a serial entrepreneur, who would you be?
JM:
I have a bit of an obsession with mountain climbing and BBQing, so I would either be a full-time climber or I’d set up a small BBQ shack.

ABOUT VIAFOURA

Viafoura partners with over 600 media brands to engage, convert and monetize their digital audiences. With best-in-class engagement and content moderation solutions — including real-time conversations, live blogs, community chat, personalization tools and AI-powered moderation — Viafoura helps companies create active, civil and loyal online communities. Advanced data analytics also offer customers access to unique and valuable insights into their audience's behaviors and preferences. As a result, the Viafoura solution drives higher registrations and subscriptions as well as better-targeted content and advertising.

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Q&A with Ryan Phelan, Marketing Chief / Fractional CMO at Origin Email

Media 7 | April 14, 2020

Ryan Phelan, Marketing Chief / Fractional CMO at Origin Email has nearly two decades of global online marketing experience focusing on driving GTM strategies for high growth SaaS software and Fortune 250 companies. Ryan is a respected thought leader and nationally distinguished speaker with a history of experience from Adestra, Acxiom, BlueHornet, Sears Holdings, Hewlett-Packard (Global), Skype, First National Bank of Omaha, and U.S. Bank and others. In 2013 he was named one of the top 30 strategists in online marketing and is the Chairman Emeritus of the EEC Advisory Board.   MEDIA 7: With two decades of global online and email marketing experience, how do you see the online marketing landscape evolving as we tread through uncertain times? RYAN PHELAN: What powers marketing best is that it's predictable and influenced by data. That has changed. Here’s what’s coming in the next 12 months: At every level, from B2B to B2C, you have to throw your marketing plans out the window. These uncertain times not only detail the unpredictability of commerce but also highlight consumer unpredictability. Companies must start weekly strategy sessions that rely on following the news, statistics and customer sentiment. Start war rooms – virtual or not – that look at how to speak to different parts of the country. These war rooms look at each channel to ensure that the message is consistent and ties into the socioeconomic channels in cities and states across the country. We also need to look at new ways of communicating with customers. Communications have to focus on the emotive and empathetic part of marketing instead of "Buy this." This is a challenge because it requires non-traditional, non-predictable thinking. It requires a strategic approach, which most marketers aren't used to taking. I've written often about the need to set down a strategy first and then figure out the tactics later. This need is more present and more fluid today than ever before. What's your strategy for this week? For next week? That fluidity in the strategy-making process is going to be a challenge for most marketers. You can see this today in the absence of advertising from Fortune 100 companies. Rightly so, many have pulled back on ads to rethink their strategy. Finally, systems like CRMs  are not designed to rapidly react to events or predict what will happen. All that investment we put into our systems to help us plan our marketing will now have to pivot. We will be reworking technology to fit in with a narrative that is not planned far in advance but created weekly. These uncertain times have created chaos and is testing the resolve and creativity of marketers across the spectrum.

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Q&A with Dmitri Lisitski, CEO & Co-Founder at Influ2

Media 7 | September 30, 2021

Dmitri Lisitski, Co-founder and CEO of Influ2, has more than 15 years of experience in advertising, online media and e-commerce. He is a co-founder of BonusTec, an IT services company sold to GlobalLogic in 2006. Dimitri holds an Executive MBA degree from Columbia Business School and London Business School.

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A customer-centric approach is crucial to building successful partner ecosystems, says Heather Tenuto, CRO at Zift Solutions

Media 7 | September 28, 2022

Heather Tenuto, Chief Revenue Officer at Zift Solutions, elaborates on her expertise in channel marketing, sales, and operations and how ZiftONE provides a streamlined and comprehensive channel management solution. Read on to learn more about her thoughts on IT channel partners and how cultivating a revenue strategy helps maintain a partner ecosystem. Q.1. Tell us about your journey into channel strategy and indirect sales. How was it different from direct sales? A.1. I started my sales career right out of college working for a Sun Microsystems reseller. I was on the direct side, but worked closely with supplier reps and took note of the difference in our jobs. I ended up leaving sales for two years to participate in NYC’s Teaching Fellows program. In that program, I was a 9th grade English teacher in a “hard-to-staff” high school in Manhattan.  It was an amazing experience where I learned the power of influence in an environment where you often don’t have direct control. These skills served me well as I transitioned back into sales with a focus on building channels. Just like the classroom, enablement is key, and I was soon able to use my skills to develop and evolve channel organizations for highly transitional suppliers. Q.2. How effectively do you think IT channel partners are adapting to dynamic buyer journeys? How has this shift impacted revenue prediction across the industry? A.2. IT channel partners have come to realize that buyers are choosing the way they want to consume products and services; it’s left to the rest of us to adapt.  IT partners can be more agile than their supplier partners. They are the first to hear buyer demands and often have the flexibility to meet them. However, this asks their supplier partners to be less rigid with programs to allow IT partners to meet the evolving demands of end-users.  All this flexibility makes revenue prediction more difficult, but not impossible.

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Q&A with Ryan Phelan, Marketing Chief / Fractional CMO at Origin Email

Media 7 | April 14, 2020

Ryan Phelan, Marketing Chief / Fractional CMO at Origin Email has nearly two decades of global online marketing experience focusing on driving GTM strategies for high growth SaaS software and Fortune 250 companies. Ryan is a respected thought leader and nationally distinguished speaker with a history of experience from Adestra, Acxiom, BlueHornet, Sears Holdings, Hewlett-Packard (Global), Skype, First National Bank of Omaha, and U.S. Bank and others. In 2013 he was named one of the top 30 strategists in online marketing and is the Chairman Emeritus of the EEC Advisory Board.   MEDIA 7: With two decades of global online and email marketing experience, how do you see the online marketing landscape evolving as we tread through uncertain times? RYAN PHELAN: What powers marketing best is that it's predictable and influenced by data. That has changed. Here’s what’s coming in the next 12 months: At every level, from B2B to B2C, you have to throw your marketing plans out the window. These uncertain times not only detail the unpredictability of commerce but also highlight consumer unpredictability. Companies must start weekly strategy sessions that rely on following the news, statistics and customer sentiment. Start war rooms – virtual or not – that look at how to speak to different parts of the country. These war rooms look at each channel to ensure that the message is consistent and ties into the socioeconomic channels in cities and states across the country. We also need to look at new ways of communicating with customers. Communications have to focus on the emotive and empathetic part of marketing instead of "Buy this." This is a challenge because it requires non-traditional, non-predictable thinking. It requires a strategic approach, which most marketers aren't used to taking. I've written often about the need to set down a strategy first and then figure out the tactics later. This need is more present and more fluid today than ever before. What's your strategy for this week? For next week? That fluidity in the strategy-making process is going to be a challenge for most marketers. You can see this today in the absence of advertising from Fortune 100 companies. Rightly so, many have pulled back on ads to rethink their strategy. Finally, systems like CRMs  are not designed to rapidly react to events or predict what will happen. All that investment we put into our systems to help us plan our marketing will now have to pivot. We will be reworking technology to fit in with a narrative that is not planned far in advance but created weekly. These uncertain times have created chaos and is testing the resolve and creativity of marketers across the spectrum.

Read More

Q&A with Dmitri Lisitski, CEO & Co-Founder at Influ2

Media 7 | September 30, 2021

Dmitri Lisitski, Co-founder and CEO of Influ2, has more than 15 years of experience in advertising, online media and e-commerce. He is a co-founder of BonusTec, an IT services company sold to GlobalLogic in 2006. Dimitri holds an Executive MBA degree from Columbia Business School and London Business School.

Read More

A customer-centric approach is crucial to building successful partner ecosystems, says Heather Tenuto, CRO at Zift Solutions

Media 7 | September 28, 2022

Heather Tenuto, Chief Revenue Officer at Zift Solutions, elaborates on her expertise in channel marketing, sales, and operations and how ZiftONE provides a streamlined and comprehensive channel management solution. Read on to learn more about her thoughts on IT channel partners and how cultivating a revenue strategy helps maintain a partner ecosystem. Q.1. Tell us about your journey into channel strategy and indirect sales. How was it different from direct sales? A.1. I started my sales career right out of college working for a Sun Microsystems reseller. I was on the direct side, but worked closely with supplier reps and took note of the difference in our jobs. I ended up leaving sales for two years to participate in NYC’s Teaching Fellows program. In that program, I was a 9th grade English teacher in a “hard-to-staff” high school in Manhattan.  It was an amazing experience where I learned the power of influence in an environment where you often don’t have direct control. These skills served me well as I transitioned back into sales with a focus on building channels. Just like the classroom, enablement is key, and I was soon able to use my skills to develop and evolve channel organizations for highly transitional suppliers. Q.2. How effectively do you think IT channel partners are adapting to dynamic buyer journeys? How has this shift impacted revenue prediction across the industry? A.2. IT channel partners have come to realize that buyers are choosing the way they want to consume products and services; it’s left to the rest of us to adapt.  IT partners can be more agile than their supplier partners. They are the first to hear buyer demands and often have the flexibility to meet them. However, this asks their supplier partners to be less rigid with programs to allow IT partners to meet the evolving demands of end-users.  All this flexibility makes revenue prediction more difficult, but not impossible.

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ZINFI Releases Its Latest Complimentary Best Practices Guidebook: "The Ultimate Guide to Channel Partner Management"

PR Newswire | January 04, 2024

ZINFI Technologies, Inc., a company leading the definition and creation of Unified Partner Management (UPM) solutions, today announced that its latest best practices guide —The Ultimate Guide to Channel Partner Management — is now available as a complimentary downloadable eBook. Among the most comprehensive and practical guides to partner management, the guidebook was designed to help organization of all sizes and in every industry learn how to unlock new markets, innovate faster, and deliver better customer experiences. The Ultimate Guide to Channel Partner Management consists of 10 detailed chapters based on common questions from business professionals, including: What Are the Different Types of Channel Partners? How to Find and Recruit Channel Partner What Are the Benefits of Having Channel Partners? How to Choose the Right Channel Partners for Your Business How to Get Started with Channel Partnerships How to Align Partners with Overall Business Strategy What Are the Challenges of Managing Channel Partners? How Do We Evolve Channel Partnerships over Time? What Are the Best Practices for Channel Partnership Management? What Are the Future Trends in Channel Partnerships? "We know that effective partnerships can significantly extend a company's market reach, enhance product distribution and fortify its competitive edge," said Sugata Sanyal, CEO and founder of ZINFI Technologies. "Channel partners are not just another route to market. Indeed, they are a strategic asset that, when managed well, can become a source of sustained competitive advantage. But what exactly constitutes a channel partner, and how can a business harness a robust network of partners to realize its full potential? We created this new guidebook to provide detailed answers to a whole host of questions like these that people ask us every day as they try to understand how to unleash the power of partner relationships and partner ecosystems. The future of channel partnerships is bright, and this guidebook is just what business executives and marketing professionals need to prepare for a world of opportunity." The Ultimate Guide to Channel Partner Management can be downloaded here: https://www.zinfi.com/guidebooks/channel-partner-management-ultimate-guide/ ZINFI has consistently been named a PRM "leader" by G2, the world's leading business solutions review website. ZINFI has earned this distinction over multiple consecutive quarters dating back to 2019, most recently in G2's Winter 2024 G2 Grid® Report for Partner Management Software. G2 scores are based on the responses of real, verified users and data aggregated from online sources and social networks. To access more information about ZINFI's partner relationship management platform or to download a copy of ZINFI's best practices guide on partner relationship management, please visit our website at www.zinfi.com. You can also follow ZINFI Technologies on LinkedIn and at the ZINFI Channel Marketing Best Practices blog. ZINFI offers its potential customers a 30-day free trial (no credit card required) providing access to its entire Unified Partner Marketing (UPM) automation platform. This will allow any prospective buyers to test-drive its industry-leading channel management applications before making a purchase decision. About ZINFI Technologies ZINFI Technologies, Inc., a company leading the definition and creation of Unified Partner Management (UPM) solutions, enables vendors and their channel partners to seamlessly collaborate in a virtual environment to achieve profitable growth on a global SaaS platform. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, USA, we at ZINFI see an immense opportunity to build high-performing sales channels by deploying a powerful virtual collaboration platform that has been rated #1 by leading analyst firms for simple to complex enterprise channels. ZINFI's state-of-the-art SaaS Unified Partner Management (UPM) automation platform allows brands and their global partner networks to work together remotely throughout the entire partner lifecycle via three core state-of-the-art SaaS applications—partner relationship management, partner marketing management and partner sales management. ZINFI's UPM is super easy to use and affordably priced, and it comes with a complete set of do-it-yourself tools in multiple languages.

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Channel Partnerships

ServiceNow Unveils Next Wave of Partner Program Transformation with New Specializations

Business Wire | January 24, 2024

ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW), the leading digital workflow company making the world work better for everyone, today unveiled the next wave of partner program transformation with new Specializations. As part of the revamped ServiceNow partner program announced in January 2023, the recently developed Partner Specializations are the next step in the partner program evolution for partners to unlock new revenue opportunities and earn a range of benefits to further grow their practice. Announced today at ServiceNow Partner Kickoff in Las Vegas, partners can obtain three Specializations which include Service Operations, Serve the Customer, and Power the Employee. ServiceNow is on a path to significantly increase the percentage of net new revenue sourced by partners in the coming years by supporting partners who build the ServiceNow platform into the core of their business models. Partners can acquire the new Specializations by showcasing a combination of product and sales expertise through customer wins and a go-to-market strategy. The new Partner Specializations showcase partners’ unique strengths in the market and encourage innovative ways to continue to grow their ServiceNow practice. “Last year at this time, we made a massive commitment to our partner community by completely transforming our partner program to ensure that partners are front and center in everything we do as a company,” said Erica Volini, senior vice president, global partnerships at ServiceNow. “With the launch of Specializations, our customers can easily identify partners with the best experience and expertise they need to help solve some of their biggest digital transformation challenges.” Obtaining a Specialization will help partners in three critical areas: Differentiate among the ecosystem:Partners will receive badging that will appear across their ServiceNow profiles with increased visibility on the ServiceNow Partner Finder. Prospective customers will also be able to search partner experts in Partner Finder based on the current Specializations. Unlock new revenue opportunities:Each Specialization addresses a pressing customer need that presents a large, untapped market opportunity and high year-over-year growth. Earn benefits to grow ServiceNow practices:ServiceNow will offer additional benefits for partners to build and grow their business through invitation to the ServiceNow Partner Advisory Council to ensure their needs and counsel are being addressed across the broader ServiceNow ecosystem. Qualifying partners will also have access to ServiceNow co-marketing programs and the ServiceNow Partner Development Fund announced last January. The program is launching with three Specializations, Service Operations, Serve the Customer and Power the Employee, that present large market opportunities with high year-over-year growth and a large total addressable market (TAM). All Specializations can be obtained at the regional and global level as well as two levels of achievement for further differentiation. Additional Partner Specializations are expected to be launched in 2024. The three Partner Specializations are expected to be available for partners to obtain starting in ServiceNow’s second quarter of 2024. Many partners have already expressed their feedback on the importance of the ServiceNow Partner Specializations including: Jason Rosenfeld, Senior Vice President at Cask: “ServiceNow’s new Partner Specializations offer an opportunity for Cask to showcase our unique consulting expertise and change management solutions to drive digital transformation across enterprises. Program updates like subsequent badging and product line achievements provide greater reach and visibility with organizations looking for the best partner to meet their specific needs. We believe Specializations and the partner finder are a winning combo for connecting customers with the right support and implementations.” Michael Lombardo, Chief Executive Officer at GlideFast Consulting: “We’re thrilled about the new designations to ServiceNow’s Partner Program. With new Partner Specializations, we can continue expanding our technical consulting services and delivering deep ServiceNow expertise to new markets. We look forward to helping customers find value in the Now Platform.” Michael Vadini, Chief Executive Officer at Infocenter:“Today, organizations are looking for a collaborative partner for support with the adoption and scale of new technologies. ServiceNow’s new Partner Specializations will help Infocenter build industry-specific solutions and accelerate technology for customers and their businesses more quickly. We are excited about the enhanced benefits offered by ServiceNow and the continued focus on partners.” Jon Reynolds, Senior VP Global Alliances & Corp Development at Thirdera, a Cognizant Company:“As our company looks to further expand our work across different industries, we’re focused on differentiating our services and ServiceNow platform expertise. ServiceNow's comprehensive Partner Program provides valued guidance and incentives to improve how we advise, implement and optimize technology for businesses worldwide. ServiceNow sets a standard for what it means to be an innovative partner.” ServiceNow is also launching a brand-new partner channel on LinkedIn. Join the new social community for the latest ServiceNow partner news here. For more information on the ServiceNow Partner Specializations visit here. About ServiceNow ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) makes the world work better for everyone. Our cloud-based platform and solutions help digitize and unify organizations so that they can find smarter, faster, better ways to make work flow. So employees and customers can be more connected, more innovative, and more agile. And we can all create the future we imagine. The world works with ServiceNow™. For more information, visit: www.servicenow.com.

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Channel Partnerships

Webvar Announces Launch of New Platform for Channel Partners

EIN News | January 03, 2024

Webvar, a dynamic 3-sided enterprise software platform that enhances the experience for buyers, vendors, and resellers from discovery to fulfillment on cloud marketplaces, today announced the launch of a new platform designed to assist channel partners in scaling their business on AWS Marketplace. Fully integrated with AWS Marketplace, the platform streamlines backend operations and simplifies the management of private offers and contracts, while providing customers a complete digital marketplace experience from discovery to fulfillment. The platform does more than just make operations easier – it helps businesses expand and get paid quicker. With the rapid growth of cloud marketplaces, there is a huge opportunity for businesses. Around $300 billion is locked in committed spend on the top three cloud marketplaces. The shift to online sales for software is just starting, and the new platform helps manage that shift. As a part of the new platform, Webvar has launched a unique Marketplace-as-a-service (Maas) offering, allowing businesses to leverage Webvar’s solutions while maintaining their brand identity. MaaS allows brands to offer a personalized marketplace experience to their customers by curating a catalog of approved products. They can create unique sets for different accounts within the client’s organization to help them easily find and deploy vetted products. "Our new service, Marketplace as a Service (MaaS), is more than just a way to find products. It's designed specifically for channel partners, offering a white-label solution that they can use without needing to invest resources in building a marketplace,” said Maxim Tarasiouk, Webvar CEO. “Recently, Webvar assisted a Canadian channel partner in scaling their revenue to $6 million, in a jurisdiction where AWS Marketplace does not operate. Our goal is to empower channel partners to scale on cloud marketplaces while delivering a cutting-edge buying experience to their customers,” he added. About Webvar Webvar is a platform that simplifies and accelerates enterprise software commerce for buyers, vendors, and channel partners. Founded by Maxim Tarasiouk, a professional with 10+ years experience at industry leaders like Crowdstrike and Proofpoint, Webvar aims to unify the fragmented software ecosystem. The platform offers an intuitive interface and powerful tools that allow users to streamline transactions, make informed decisions, and automate time-consuming processes, all while enjoying a streamlined marketplace experience from start to finish. Backed by FJ Labs, Webvar is an AWS APN partner and an official Crowdstrike partner.

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Channel Partnerships

ZINFI Releases Its Latest Complimentary Best Practices Guidebook: "The Ultimate Guide to Channel Partner Management"

PR Newswire | January 04, 2024

ZINFI Technologies, Inc., a company leading the definition and creation of Unified Partner Management (UPM) solutions, today announced that its latest best practices guide —The Ultimate Guide to Channel Partner Management — is now available as a complimentary downloadable eBook. Among the most comprehensive and practical guides to partner management, the guidebook was designed to help organization of all sizes and in every industry learn how to unlock new markets, innovate faster, and deliver better customer experiences. The Ultimate Guide to Channel Partner Management consists of 10 detailed chapters based on common questions from business professionals, including: What Are the Different Types of Channel Partners? How to Find and Recruit Channel Partner What Are the Benefits of Having Channel Partners? How to Choose the Right Channel Partners for Your Business How to Get Started with Channel Partnerships How to Align Partners with Overall Business Strategy What Are the Challenges of Managing Channel Partners? How Do We Evolve Channel Partnerships over Time? What Are the Best Practices for Channel Partnership Management? What Are the Future Trends in Channel Partnerships? "We know that effective partnerships can significantly extend a company's market reach, enhance product distribution and fortify its competitive edge," said Sugata Sanyal, CEO and founder of ZINFI Technologies. "Channel partners are not just another route to market. Indeed, they are a strategic asset that, when managed well, can become a source of sustained competitive advantage. But what exactly constitutes a channel partner, and how can a business harness a robust network of partners to realize its full potential? We created this new guidebook to provide detailed answers to a whole host of questions like these that people ask us every day as they try to understand how to unleash the power of partner relationships and partner ecosystems. The future of channel partnerships is bright, and this guidebook is just what business executives and marketing professionals need to prepare for a world of opportunity." The Ultimate Guide to Channel Partner Management can be downloaded here: https://www.zinfi.com/guidebooks/channel-partner-management-ultimate-guide/ ZINFI has consistently been named a PRM "leader" by G2, the world's leading business solutions review website. ZINFI has earned this distinction over multiple consecutive quarters dating back to 2019, most recently in G2's Winter 2024 G2 Grid® Report for Partner Management Software. G2 scores are based on the responses of real, verified users and data aggregated from online sources and social networks. To access more information about ZINFI's partner relationship management platform or to download a copy of ZINFI's best practices guide on partner relationship management, please visit our website at www.zinfi.com. You can also follow ZINFI Technologies on LinkedIn and at the ZINFI Channel Marketing Best Practices blog. ZINFI offers its potential customers a 30-day free trial (no credit card required) providing access to its entire Unified Partner Marketing (UPM) automation platform. This will allow any prospective buyers to test-drive its industry-leading channel management applications before making a purchase decision. About ZINFI Technologies ZINFI Technologies, Inc., a company leading the definition and creation of Unified Partner Management (UPM) solutions, enables vendors and their channel partners to seamlessly collaborate in a virtual environment to achieve profitable growth on a global SaaS platform. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, USA, we at ZINFI see an immense opportunity to build high-performing sales channels by deploying a powerful virtual collaboration platform that has been rated #1 by leading analyst firms for simple to complex enterprise channels. ZINFI's state-of-the-art SaaS Unified Partner Management (UPM) automation platform allows brands and their global partner networks to work together remotely throughout the entire partner lifecycle via three core state-of-the-art SaaS applications—partner relationship management, partner marketing management and partner sales management. ZINFI's UPM is super easy to use and affordably priced, and it comes with a complete set of do-it-yourself tools in multiple languages.

Read More

Channel Partnerships

ServiceNow Unveils Next Wave of Partner Program Transformation with New Specializations

Business Wire | January 24, 2024

ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW), the leading digital workflow company making the world work better for everyone, today unveiled the next wave of partner program transformation with new Specializations. As part of the revamped ServiceNow partner program announced in January 2023, the recently developed Partner Specializations are the next step in the partner program evolution for partners to unlock new revenue opportunities and earn a range of benefits to further grow their practice. Announced today at ServiceNow Partner Kickoff in Las Vegas, partners can obtain three Specializations which include Service Operations, Serve the Customer, and Power the Employee. ServiceNow is on a path to significantly increase the percentage of net new revenue sourced by partners in the coming years by supporting partners who build the ServiceNow platform into the core of their business models. Partners can acquire the new Specializations by showcasing a combination of product and sales expertise through customer wins and a go-to-market strategy. The new Partner Specializations showcase partners’ unique strengths in the market and encourage innovative ways to continue to grow their ServiceNow practice. “Last year at this time, we made a massive commitment to our partner community by completely transforming our partner program to ensure that partners are front and center in everything we do as a company,” said Erica Volini, senior vice president, global partnerships at ServiceNow. “With the launch of Specializations, our customers can easily identify partners with the best experience and expertise they need to help solve some of their biggest digital transformation challenges.” Obtaining a Specialization will help partners in three critical areas: Differentiate among the ecosystem:Partners will receive badging that will appear across their ServiceNow profiles with increased visibility on the ServiceNow Partner Finder. Prospective customers will also be able to search partner experts in Partner Finder based on the current Specializations. Unlock new revenue opportunities:Each Specialization addresses a pressing customer need that presents a large, untapped market opportunity and high year-over-year growth. Earn benefits to grow ServiceNow practices:ServiceNow will offer additional benefits for partners to build and grow their business through invitation to the ServiceNow Partner Advisory Council to ensure their needs and counsel are being addressed across the broader ServiceNow ecosystem. Qualifying partners will also have access to ServiceNow co-marketing programs and the ServiceNow Partner Development Fund announced last January. The program is launching with three Specializations, Service Operations, Serve the Customer and Power the Employee, that present large market opportunities with high year-over-year growth and a large total addressable market (TAM). All Specializations can be obtained at the regional and global level as well as two levels of achievement for further differentiation. Additional Partner Specializations are expected to be launched in 2024. The three Partner Specializations are expected to be available for partners to obtain starting in ServiceNow’s second quarter of 2024. Many partners have already expressed their feedback on the importance of the ServiceNow Partner Specializations including: Jason Rosenfeld, Senior Vice President at Cask: “ServiceNow’s new Partner Specializations offer an opportunity for Cask to showcase our unique consulting expertise and change management solutions to drive digital transformation across enterprises. Program updates like subsequent badging and product line achievements provide greater reach and visibility with organizations looking for the best partner to meet their specific needs. We believe Specializations and the partner finder are a winning combo for connecting customers with the right support and implementations.” Michael Lombardo, Chief Executive Officer at GlideFast Consulting: “We’re thrilled about the new designations to ServiceNow’s Partner Program. With new Partner Specializations, we can continue expanding our technical consulting services and delivering deep ServiceNow expertise to new markets. We look forward to helping customers find value in the Now Platform.” Michael Vadini, Chief Executive Officer at Infocenter:“Today, organizations are looking for a collaborative partner for support with the adoption and scale of new technologies. ServiceNow’s new Partner Specializations will help Infocenter build industry-specific solutions and accelerate technology for customers and their businesses more quickly. We are excited about the enhanced benefits offered by ServiceNow and the continued focus on partners.” Jon Reynolds, Senior VP Global Alliances & Corp Development at Thirdera, a Cognizant Company:“As our company looks to further expand our work across different industries, we’re focused on differentiating our services and ServiceNow platform expertise. ServiceNow's comprehensive Partner Program provides valued guidance and incentives to improve how we advise, implement and optimize technology for businesses worldwide. ServiceNow sets a standard for what it means to be an innovative partner.” ServiceNow is also launching a brand-new partner channel on LinkedIn. Join the new social community for the latest ServiceNow partner news here. For more information on the ServiceNow Partner Specializations visit here. About ServiceNow ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) makes the world work better for everyone. Our cloud-based platform and solutions help digitize and unify organizations so that they can find smarter, faster, better ways to make work flow. So employees and customers can be more connected, more innovative, and more agile. And we can all create the future we imagine. The world works with ServiceNow™. For more information, visit: www.servicenow.com.

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Channel Partnerships

Webvar Announces Launch of New Platform for Channel Partners

EIN News | January 03, 2024

Webvar, a dynamic 3-sided enterprise software platform that enhances the experience for buyers, vendors, and resellers from discovery to fulfillment on cloud marketplaces, today announced the launch of a new platform designed to assist channel partners in scaling their business on AWS Marketplace. Fully integrated with AWS Marketplace, the platform streamlines backend operations and simplifies the management of private offers and contracts, while providing customers a complete digital marketplace experience from discovery to fulfillment. The platform does more than just make operations easier – it helps businesses expand and get paid quicker. With the rapid growth of cloud marketplaces, there is a huge opportunity for businesses. Around $300 billion is locked in committed spend on the top three cloud marketplaces. The shift to online sales for software is just starting, and the new platform helps manage that shift. As a part of the new platform, Webvar has launched a unique Marketplace-as-a-service (Maas) offering, allowing businesses to leverage Webvar’s solutions while maintaining their brand identity. MaaS allows brands to offer a personalized marketplace experience to their customers by curating a catalog of approved products. They can create unique sets for different accounts within the client’s organization to help them easily find and deploy vetted products. "Our new service, Marketplace as a Service (MaaS), is more than just a way to find products. It's designed specifically for channel partners, offering a white-label solution that they can use without needing to invest resources in building a marketplace,” said Maxim Tarasiouk, Webvar CEO. “Recently, Webvar assisted a Canadian channel partner in scaling their revenue to $6 million, in a jurisdiction where AWS Marketplace does not operate. Our goal is to empower channel partners to scale on cloud marketplaces while delivering a cutting-edge buying experience to their customers,” he added. About Webvar Webvar is a platform that simplifies and accelerates enterprise software commerce for buyers, vendors, and channel partners. Founded by Maxim Tarasiouk, a professional with 10+ years experience at industry leaders like Crowdstrike and Proofpoint, Webvar aims to unify the fragmented software ecosystem. The platform offers an intuitive interface and powerful tools that allow users to streamline transactions, make informed decisions, and automate time-consuming processes, all while enjoying a streamlined marketplace experience from start to finish. Backed by FJ Labs, Webvar is an AWS APN partner and an official Crowdstrike partner.

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Viafoura

Viafoura

Viafoura partners with over 600 media brands to engage, convert and monetize their digital audiences. With best-in-class engagement and content moderation solutions — including real-time conversations, live blogs, community chat, personalization tools and AI-powered moderation — Viafoura helps compa...

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