VERSATEX Adopts the ZINFI Partner Portal to Provide Its Network of Dealers and Distributors with Advanced Marketing Tools

Overview

A major US manufacturer of high-quality cellular PVC building products, VERSATEX Building Products was founded in 2004 by building industry professionals to meet the evolving requirements of builders, architects, installers, fabricators, and homeowners with application solutions. Its products include cellular PVC trimboard, sheet, corners, T&G profiles, soffit systems, one-piece column wraps, mouldings, skirtboard, and more. OEMs also use VERSATEX sheet material to manufacture custom corbels, brackets, fencing, chairs, and flower boxes.

VERSATEX sells across an extensive network of distributors and dealers, who sell to contractors and builders, and employs a team of more than 40 field representatives who work closely with customers and distributors in the US, Canada, and Australia.

Challenges

When VERSATEX began looking into software for partner relationship management (PRM) and partner marketing management (PMM), its primary goal was to offer more effective, easy-to-use marketing tools to its partner base. According to Cassidy Huff, Channel Marketer at VERSATEX, many of the dealers the company sells to are essentially "mom-and-pop shops without a specialized marketing person and with little the time to devote to marketing."

In addition to providing partners with more effective ways to market and sell its products, VERSATEX was also hoping ZINFI's software would help it generate broader awareness of its brand and the diversity of its product line. It gives potential customers and prospects a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of its value to the industry.

Solutions

VERSATEX began using the ZINFI platform and its intuitive partner portal in July 2019. The platform quickly exceeded the expectations of Huff and other stakeholders at the company as a marketing and sales tool offering immediate ROI. Huff is incredibly impressed with the versatility of the platform. "The best thing about it is that we can use it to make custom modules," she says. "We can use it exactly as we see fit." For example, the company can easily select which content in the portal to make available to specific partners or partner types. It can also create customized tools to manage and streamline processes unique to the company, such as agreements with individual customers.

Huff also points out that sharing the portal's marketing tools with partners is remarkably easy: "All they do is plug-and-play." Huff herself logs in to the ZINFI partner portal every workday and even occasionally on weekends. She uses ZINFI software to assign leads to VERSATEX Sales Reps and monitor how Sales Reps and partners use the software. Huff also conducts regular training with VERSATEX employees and new partners to introduce them to the partner portal and show them how to do their jobs more efficiently. In addition, she is busy creating customized email campaigns to engage leads and prospects. One recent activity she began quickly notifies relevant leads and opportunities when VERSATEX acquires a new stocking dealer in their area.

VERSATEX also makes tools and materials included in the partner portal's content library-including logos, images, collateral, and marketing copy, available to outside contractors who handle the company's social media marketing activities. In addition to members of the VERSATEX marketing team and its third-party social media experts, users of the partner portal include the company's entire sales organization, the operations team (which processes event collateral requests and handles website error tickets), the accounting and customer service teams-and even the company's president. Huff estimates around 65 VERSATEX employees currently use the portal, which doesn't include the users among its partner bases.

Results

Working with the partner portal has made Huff aware of another significant benefit of the ZINFI platform: tracking sales activities and monitoring the entire customer journey through the sales pipeline. "We are using the ZINFI portal as our VERSATEX CRM," she says, "and it's been working out amazingly. We can track how the salespeople in the field are selling and quickly determine what's working and what's not." When the VERSATEX procurement team first began investigating channel management products in the marketplace, it primarily focused on offering partners and distributors' marketing functionality. "We weren't expecting to be able to use the partner portal for all of these other functions," says Huff. "That was fantastic!"

While VERSATEX's partners are not yet developing and running campaigns on their own using the portal, Huff is onboarding and training them to become familiar with the software. Many are currently using materials from the content library to supplement their existing in-house marketing efforts.

Huff recommends that other companies who market and sell through a partner network take a close look at the ZINFI platform. "ZINFI exceeded our expectations, absolutely," she says. "Just in the fact that you not only offer the out-of-the-box modules but modules, we can customize. Honestly, there's more value in it than is reflected in the price."