Channel Marketing Agency: We Run the Campaigns Your Channel Partners Won’t

Short answer: A channel marketing agency runs marketing through your resellers, VARs, MSPs, distributors and integrators, and the list goes on. Many build campaign kits and hope partners launch them. Forecastable is a channel marketing agency that runs the campaigns itself, in the partner’s name, on email, LinkedIn, calls and events. So the meetings count as partner-sourced. Partners often fund it with MDF, and we’re measured on meetings held, SQOs and pipeline.

What does a channel marketing agency do?

A channel marketing agency helps a vendor sell through partners instead of only selling direct. The partner is the route to the buyer. So the agency’s job is to get your message to the partner’s customers and prospects, with the partner’s credibility behind it.

Typically, that work falls into five areas:

• Partner recruitment: finding and signing new resellers or integrators.
• Campaign assets: co-branded emails, landing pages and one-pagers.
• Through-channel marketing: syndicating campaigns so partners can send them.
• MDF execution: planning and claiming market development funds.
• Reporting: tracking what partners launched and what it produced.

If you want the full picture of the discipline first, start with our guide to channel marketing. This page is about who should run it and what that looks like in practice.

Why do channel partner marketing programs stall?

Because of the campaign-in-a-box problem. You build a great kit and hand it to a partner, and then it sits in their inbox. Partners have limited marketing teams too, and your campaign is competing with every other vendor’s. Partners are also typically bad at outbound, and few can afford top sales talent.

So you end up asking questions you can’t answer:

1. Did the partner run the campaign as is, or tweak it?
2. Did they tweak it well?
3. Who did it go to?
4. Did anyone reply?
5. Did it book a single meeting?

You can’t see inside a partner’s systems, so you can’t see their sends, opens or replies. And when the quarter closes, you can’t tell what worked or how to help them improve.

Why your own channel SDRs don’t fix it

Many teams try to fill the gap with internal channel SDRs. They work accounts and chase partners for intros. But there’s a catch. If your SDR team books it, it isn’t partner-sourced, because that meeting usually counts as yours. By contrast, when a motion runs with the partner, it counts as partner-sourced. Credit then follows each platform’s own attribution policy. Here’s how partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline differ.

Why buyers need the partner’s voice

The partner’s credibility is the whole point. Buyers know you’re biased about your own product. When a partner they already trust says the same thing, it carries more weight. The research points the same way. According to Gartner’s research on the B2B buying journey, buyers spend only 17% of their buying time meeting with potential suppliers. And a typical buying group for a complex purchase has six to 10 decision makers. So much of the decision happens without you. A partner who already works with the account can be there when you aren’t.

How is Forecastable different from a typical channel marketing agency?

We don’t build the kit and walk away from it. Instead, we run the motion with the partner and own the follow-up. And when the goal is broad demand, not one channel, we run it as B2B demand generation through partners.

	Typical channel marketing agency	Forecastable
What they deliver	Campaign kits, portals and syndicated content	GTM motions run end to end
Who sends	The partner, if they get to it	Our team, as the partner, you, or both
Target accounts	Broad partner lists	Named accounts from partner overlap data
Channels	Email and content	Email, LinkedIn and calls, plus webinars and events
Follow-up	Left to the partner	Real people approve every reply
Visibility	Launch reports	Every party sees activity in real time
Who pays	Your channel budget	Often partners, through MDF
Measured on	Assets launched and leads	Meetings held, SQOs, pipeline

Forecastable is a B2B partnerships agency. We work with resellers, VARs, MSPs, distributors, SIs and GSIs, technology partners and hyperscalers, and the list goes on. We don’t run affiliate or influencer programs. And we’re not a through-channel marketing automation tool. If you already own one, keep it, and we’ll run the work it can’t.

What’s included in our channel marketing agency program?

Channel motions run inside Produce My Pipeline, our done-for-you Partner-Sourced Pipeline program. Here’s what you get:

• A dedicated team. A campaign operations specialist, an SDR and the platform.
• Named target accounts. We work your Crossbeam overlaps to find accounts where a channel partner already has the relationship.
• Partner-specific messaging. Each partner gets its own reason to engage, so two partners don’t send the same pitch to the same account.
• Multichannel outreach. Email, LinkedIn and calls go out as the partner, as you, or both. They can send from partner domains or from warmed domains we buy.
• Calls. A real human SDR, not AI, makes about 1,000 cold calls a month. With three to five motions running, we prioritize which motions get SDR calls, or add a second SDR for more calling.
• Co-marketing. Webinars, dinners and roadshows run as co-marketing motions when they fit the account list.
• Funding help. We help partners put MDF behind the motions.
• Visibility without a login. You see everything through the Forecastable MCP in Claude, ChatGPT or Microsoft 365 Copilot. Meanwhile, Eva, our AI partner ops agent, watches the data in the background.

Which GTM motions work best through the channel?

Here are motions from our menu that fit channel partners:

1. Overlap Outbound: reach shared accounts together.
2. Vertical Door-Opener: a partner’s industry opens doors.
3. Competitive Rip-and-Replace: go where a partner holds the account.
4. Wake the Dead: reopen closed-lost deals through a partner.
5. Cross-Sell (Whitespace): fill the gaps in your installed base.
6. Open-Opportunity Surround: bring partner insight into live deals.

Crossbeam’s own guide on what to do after you find overlaps makes the same point. Start with “accounts that are your partner’s customers but still prospects for you.”

What about distributors?

Distis want resellers. So arm the distributor with a motion its resellers will want to take to their accounts. We work the motion out in advance, offer it through that one distributor, and ask the distributor to co-invest and help shape it. The distributor then offers it to its resellers as a special program. Each reseller can opt in and fund campaigns we run, or send it themselves while we manage the project and the follow-up.

How does a channel marketing engagement run?

Here’s the sequence:

1. Program-Fit Analysis. First, a 30-minute call with a senior partnerships leader to see which program fits, if any.
2. Workshop. Next, we learn where you need to win and which channel partners should produce.
3. Account list. Then we set the named accounts in advance for each partner.
4. Build. A working GTM motion is typically ready about two weeks after the workshop.
5. Launch. Motions go live in two to three weeks. Calendars and sending domains are the only real blockers. If a partner can’t give us an inbox on its own domain, a new domain needs about 30 days of warming.
6. Run. After launch, motions run for two full months while everyone watches activity as it happens.
7. Expand. Finally, we contract a quarter at a time, with no long-term lock-in.

How do partners fund channel marketing?

Often with MDF. AWS, for example, says its Marketing Development Funds “help offset your marketing costs to drive demand generation and build your sales pipeline.” Most large vendors run something similar. The M in MDF is market, not marketing. And MDF is meant to be spent, because nobody gets promoted for saving it.

So partners can fund all of a program or split it with you. For a reseller or VAR, the money usually doesn’t come from the reseller. It comes from getting its OEM relationships and distributors to chip in. Every dollar of MDF should compete on one number: cost per SQO. Our MDF guide explains how the money works.

How do you choose a channel marketing agency?

Use these five checks:

1. Does the agency run the campaign or just build it? Kits are cheap, and execution is the hard part.
2. Whose name goes on the outreach? If it’s only yours, the meetings likely won’t count as partner-sourced.
3. Can you see activity in real time? Monthly decks hide what’s working.
4. Is it measured on pipeline? Ask for meetings held and SQOs, not assets launched.
5. What’s the first term? Start short. We contract a quarter at a time.

Related reading

• B2B Channel Marketing: What It Is and How to Run It
• Co-Marketing Campaigns That Actually Convert (and Why Most Don’t)
• Partner Channel Management: Run It as a System
• Partnership Marketing: What It Is and How to Run It
• Sales Channel Management: Run a Multi-Channel Mix

Frequently asked questions

How much does a channel marketing agency cost?

Our Partner-Sourced Pipeline program starts at $50,000 a quarter. That activates a campaign operations specialist, an SDR and the platform. It’s the floor, not a cap, and it grows with the program. Each GTM motion plans at about $12,500, so four fill the $50,000. Partners can cover all or part of it, so it could cost you $0. See our pricing for the full list.

What’s the difference between a channel marketing agency and a partner marketing agency?

The terms overlap. Channel usually means resellers and other partners who sell your product. Partner marketing covers every B2B partner, including technology partners and platforms. We do both, with the same team and the same method. Here’s our partner marketing agency page.

Is a channel marketing agency the same as TCMA?

No. Through-channel marketing automation is software that syndicates campaigns to partners. An agency like ours runs the campaigns and handles the follow-up.

What is a B2B channel agency?

It’s a channel marketing agency focused on business buyers. B2B channel marketing runs through partners because a trusted third party carries more credibility than the vendor.

Do we need Crossbeam?

It helps a lot, because overlap data picks the accounts. Still, when data can’t be shared, partners will usually hand over an account list as long as there’s a plan for it. Pointed at a short list of named accounts, the same approach becomes account-based marketing through partners.

How fast can a channel program launch?

Typically, a working GTM motion is ready about two weeks after the workshop. It then goes live in two to three weeks, depending on calendars and sending domains.

Will this replace our channel managers?

No, because channel managers own the partner relationships. We take the lists, sends, calls and follow-up off their plates.

What’s the bottom line?

Channel marketing stalls when the partner is left holding the kit. So pick the accounts from partner data, run the campaign in the partner’s name and handle the follow-up yourself or with us. Then measure it on meetings held, SQOs and pipeline.

Forecastable is an independent third-party professional services company, a B2B partnerships agency and Crossbeam’s Solutions Partner of the Year. Our evaluations of other vendors are based on publicly-available information as of November 2026 and our own client experience.

Want your channel campaigns actually run, in your partners’ name? Book a Program-Fit Analysis