StrategyMix is an information hub for the IT industry.
We operate in Australia / New Zealand and the UK, pretty much on a 50:50 basis.
About 50% of what we do is related to Cyber Security. The rest is mostly focused on cloud, data and emerging technologies, such as AI.
The information formats include panel sessions, roundtables (usually with tasting sessions - whiskey, rum, etc), videos and Q&A forums.
The company was started in Australia in 2004 with a simple email and event registration system, which we developed to help IT companies promote seminars and other events. Computer Associates was our first client.
Jim Fisher, CA’s Marketing Director at the time, then introduced us to Hugh MacFarlane of the MathMarketing Group. Over the next few years, we introduced a range of innovative new features such as active surveys, smart responses and logical campaigns. While we didn’t realise at the time, these building blocks were the forerunners of what is now called Marketing Automation.
After the credit crunch or the GFC, depending on what you call it, the marketing teams within many of our clients, who were the Australian subsidiaries of US-Based IT Vendors, were significantly downsized.
In response, we introduced a range of marketing services (database building, telemarketing and copywriting) to support these clients so they could still do effective marketing.
This was how we began to offer Managed Marketing Automation.
We introduced our unique master / sub-system channel marketing solutions in 2012. This combined the best of a stand-alone marketing automation system which could be used by Partners for all their marketing with the centralised reporting and “campaign publishing” capability that is necessary for vendors.
This solution is still superior to any of the Channel Marketing Portals, with their not-so-positive combination of relatively high cost and low usage rates.
Recognising that many of our clients were global organisations, we started developing our global presence and began operations in the UK, and the US, as well as in Australia.
In May 2015, we introduced our Managed Channel Marketing Solution which was called: Channel 555. The 555 simply stood for “5 Partners, Running 5 Campaigns, Over 5 Months”. Palo Alto Networks in Australia was our first client.
A unique feature of this managed program was the very high partner participation, which was mostly driven by partner interest in running events, rather than just promoting digital assets like white papers.
From these simple beginnings, the program grew to over 30 partners – which is a lot for the relatively small Australian market.
In January 2016, we introduced our Channel Marketing Automation solution. Our first client was M-Files, an innovative document management company based out of Finland.
This program quickly grew to over 30 partners and generated many thousands of leads.
By early 2017, we had recognised that even though we had very high partner participation in our marketing programs and were able to generate very large quantities of leads, we still had a problem that we needed to solve – low lead conversion rates.
At this point we introduced our “Full Spectrum Solution”. This was a Partner-lead, Multi-Vendor, Highly Intensive and Fully Managed Program, which generated huge customer loyalty. Our Net Promoter Score on this program was an astonishing 100. Literally every client but one gave it a 10 out of 10 and that client gave it a 9 of 10.
By early 2018, our Full Spectrum program had morphed into the current Account-Based Channel Marketing Program, which is the most effective channel marketing program on the planet.
To understand more about this amazingly powerful program, click on Account-Based Channel Marketing.
By 2019, our Account-Based Channel Marketing had transitioned into a series of Round-Table Marketing Events.
Some of these events are organised specifically for IT Resellers. Others are sponsored by IT companies on a more ad-hoc basis.
Early 2020, started out much as we'd finished 2019.
Then Covid hit.
The result was a scramble to transition to virtual events, which we did first with roundtables and then with panel sessions. By the end of 2020, we were mostly running combined panel sessions and video campaigns.
In late 2021, we re-launched our website as a membership driven information site.
The primary objective was to significantly increase the value of the information we provide by filtering our content based on the topics, which members have pre-selected as being relevant to them.