With the rise of content marketing as a primary way to engage the target audience and drive sales, channel marketing is also evolving rapidly. A decade or two ago, channel marketing pretty much meant running events (for recruitment, training and lead generation) and giving away market-development funds to those who knew how to leverage them. Today, unified channel management is changing the way companies invest, track and improve ROI from their channel marketing activities. A core set of channel marketing metrics play a critical role in driving better ROI.Before we take a deep dive into the channel marketing metrics that truly matter, let’s step back and clearly define the objectives of channel marketing. If marketing is about driving awareness, engagement and customer intimacy, channel marketing essentially means the same thing, but it operates in more dimensions: The first two dimensions are the channel partners who resell the products and services, and the end users who procure them. To that you add a third dimension: increasing reach at a lower cost. Channel marketing metrics need to address all three core dimensions, measuring ROI from partner marketing, ROI from end user marketing and expansion of reach.* Partner engagement – This channel marketing metric focuses on how well you are engaging partners across various partner types, geography and channel programs. A state-of-the-art channel marketing automation platform should dynamically show clear engagement metrics.* Program utilization – Every company has ongoing programs in place to drive channel marketing. They key is to figure out the core metrics of those programs, in terms of partner recruitment, partner training, multi-partner demand generation and incentives programs. It’s essential to have a channel marketing automation platform in place that can allow the channel management team to slice and dice the data to understand what is truly going on in the channel.* Program effectiveness – Unlike program utilization metrics, which focus on the ways in which partners are engaged in program activities, program effectiveness metrics are focused on measuring the ROI delivered by specific programs. This applies to both indirect marketing channels (e.g., search and social) and direct channels (e.g.., collateral, email, telemarketing, etc.) as well as marketing programs. These are key channel marketing metrics, and they should allow the channel management team to understand how well each program is meeting its objectives, as well as driving ROI.* Partner portal effectiveness – Partner portals play a critical role in communicating to the partners what is going on with the various aspects of the company’s channel marketing They also provide partners with access to all necessary tools related to program components like marketing, sales and incentives.* Sales reach – The very purpose of a channel is to extend reach, but very rarely do companies run territory analysis to understand over- and under-penetration from an end-user demand perspective. We will discuss in detail how to do this separately, as it requires partner profiling. The important point here is that sales reach is an essential metric when it comes to channel marketing program selection. If you don’t understand what is selling where, program selection and execution is a little like shooting in the dark.* Return on incentives– These very important channel marketing metrics measure the effectiveness of three core incentives programs: co-marketing funds (or market development funds), sales rewards and rebates. Without a proper partner relationship...