HPE has built on the Digital Marketing program they announced last year with a new digital marketing maturity assessment tool, and increased resources through Marketing Pro Academy,
Jesse Chavez, HPE’s vice president, worldwide channel sales and alliances, enterprise group
LAS VEGAS — Last year, at their Global Partner event, Hewlett Packard Enterprise expanded their partner-focused digital marketing efforts with a new Partner Ready Digital Marketing Program, which augmented their existing marketing initiatives with new investment, new programmatic elements, and a unified messaging strategy. This year, at their Global Partner event here, HPE has doubled down on this strategy, with increased funding, new tools, and new capabilities.
“We are making two key announcements here,” said Jim Jackson, HPE’s Chief Marketing Officer, in the partner keynote. “One is a new digital marketing maturity assessment tool. It assesses five different criteria and will give you an assessment of your digital marketing maturity, to provide you with a personalized assessment which considers your capabilities in relation to your peers. The other is Marketing Pro Academy, which provides tools and resources to understand how you can augment your existing marketing capability. You will see us augment your marketing capabilities further as you go on your journey.”
“Last year, we rolled this program out, redid all the tools, and gave partners the tools to syndicate under their own logos,” said Jesse Chavez, vice president, worldwide channel sales and alliances, enterprise group, at HPE. “What we are doing now is an evolution of what we started then. Last year, the focus was more on syndicated content. This year, we have gotten more sophisticated. This new initiative is more targeted, to allow partners to determine the value of their campaigns, and to use analytics to get better at it.”
The five criteria encompassed by the assessment tool are Digital Identity, Organizational Commitment, Analytical Framework, Customer Relationship Management, and Campaign Planning and Execution. The assessment provides personalized reports with steps and recommended actions for improvement.
“When we tested this, the partners on the Advisory Board took this really seriously,” Chavez said. “They made the recommended changes to improve their capabilities, but they also aggressively completed with each other.”
The concept of the new digital marketing maturity assessment tool started with HPE’s Marketing Advisory Board. Chavez said that in the APJ region, it was expanded with the survey and questionnaire, and the idea of building it out to allow partners to compare themselves to their peers. Now, HPE has two ways to give partners access to this material.
“First, we are doing workshops across the world, to expose this to the partner community,” he said. “Second, for partners who can’t attend these workshops, we are making online training guides available so that they can do this on their on.”
Regardless of the way the partners access the tool, there is no cost to them for its use.
Chavez said that last year’s program has gotten a good response, and HPE has strong expectations for the expanded initiative.
“There has been a pretty significant pickup rate, and that’s why we are continuing to expand this,” he said. “When we rolled the program out last year, there was quite a bit of skepticism, but partners turned out to have an appetite for this.”
The other addition, the HPE Partner Ready Marketing Pro Academy, provides additional educational resources to help partners improve their digital marketing proficiency and effectiveness to generate additional leads, pipeline, and revenue. HPE authorized partners receive full access to videos, white papers, presentations, and guides designed to educate them on the latest digital marketing topics and trends.
“We help lift partners’ level of capability and effectiveness, and it will raise our business as well,” Chavez said.
