All Posts

There is no single best approach to data mapping here. There are right matches between specific models and organizational decisions. The seven partner attribution models worth knowing are last-touch, first-touch, linear, time-decay, deal-registration, sourced versus influenced, multi-partner shared credit, and marketplace channel attribution.

Most partner case studies are not bad because they are poorly written. They are bad because the partner case study template they were built from is structurally incomplete. It tells the vendor's story, it mentions the partner, it quotes the customer, and it does not equip the field.

Most channel incentive programs reward transactions. The best ones shape behavior. That distinction is the difference between an incentive structure that lives on a slide and one that actually moves a partner organization.

Attribution theater is the act of presenting MDF ROI with a level of certainty the underlying data cannot support. Linear "spend in, leads out" math was built for a world where buyers followed one path, and that world is gone.

AWS Marketplace marketing in 2026 is a co-sell engine, not a lead channel. The 2026 changes (Agent Mode, Express Private Offers, and 50% more MDF for Agentic AI competencies) only pay off when your marketing simultaneously generates direct customer pipeline and arms AWS sellers with the assets they need to champion your solution

Most Canadian AWS partners I talk to are pitching co marketing campaigns that should have been retired in 2022. The hard truth about co marketing with AWS in 2026 is that AWS is not funding "cloud migration awareness" anymore, and the partners who keep proposing it keep wondering why their MDF requests come back unsigned.

B2B messaging that sticks is the only kind that converts on a cold list, on a quick-turnaround timeline, on MDF dollars that have to defend themselves at the next QBR.

Cold lists rarely produce closed-won pipeline — even with MDF behind them. Maya Lyte breaks down the partner-marketing reality check, and what your MDF dollars should actually be doing.

TL;DR for the time-poor VP of Marketing: 95% of B2B deals are won by a vendor already on the buyer's Day One shortlist (6sense, 2025). IT decision-makers spend just 17% of their evaluation time with sales reps and only 5–6% with any single vendor (Gartner). 60% of partners say their marketing is only somewhat effective or worse (The Channel Company, 2025). The leverage isn't more campaigns. It's better messaging, owned jointly by the vendor and the partner, that survives the

Below: the seven-slide agenda we use, the metrics checklist both sides should walk in with, and the failure modes that quietly kill partner programs.

Walk into any channel marketing meeting, and you'll hear "co-op" and "MDF" used like they're the same thing. They aren't. They're funded differently, governed differently, claimed differently, and reported on differently, and treating them as interchangeable is how brands end up with leftover budget at year-end and partners end up with rejected claims.

MDF utilization is the metric everyone in partner marketing obsesses over and the one most likely to mislead them. Below is our take on the themes where we'd back the panel, and where, as a team that helps vendors design MDF programs from the ground up, we'd challenge the default.

Channel marketers are brilliant at executing under a merciless clock. But the MDF model most of us inherited was built for a world that no longer exists: one where a buyer saw an ad, took a call, and signed in the same fiscal quarter the funds were released.

The 2026 HubSpot State of Marketing report reveals a massive shift in B2B dynamics: while AI has made content volume trivial, it has made brand point-of-view (POV) and human-centric video the ultimate competitive moats. For tech and partner marketers, success in 2026 requires transitioning from traditional SEO to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and prioritizing "human-in-the-loop" content to capture high-intent AI referral traffic.

If your channel strategy is just a series of "feature and benefit" emails, you aren't being rational; you’re being forgettable. You are creating the linguistic equivalent of beige.

In the B2B technology sector, where software vendors and consulting partners attempt to build webinars, whitepapers, or demand gen campaigns, the gap between a "good idea" and a "published asset" is where most programs die.