**Editor’s Note: Click here for a list of February’s important channel-program changes you should know.**

Intermedia, the cloud-services provider, on Tuesday announced a new marketing automation platform and expansion of its Intermedia University partner education platform.

These new resources are designed to better enable partners across the entire customer life cycle, from marketing and lead generation, to sales and order fulfillment, and from onboarding and migration to ongoing technical support.

Jon Borgese, Intermedia’s senior director of channel marketing, tells Channel Partners his company has provided partners with full control over their customer relationships, from billing and pricing to branding. Intermedia has more than 6,000 active channel partners consisting of MSPs, VARs, IT consultants, telcos and distributors.

“To continue to stay ahead of the curve, Intermedia strives to make partner-program improvements to help channel partners overcome any obstacles in their path to profitability and growth,” he said. “Our new through-partner marketing automation platform and the expansion of Intermedia University provide support in key functional areas where channel partners need help — sales and marketing. Both of these new programs are part of Intermedia’s overarching strategy and commitment to supporting partners across the entire customer life cycle.”{ad}

The automation platform contains content that Intermedia partners can brand as their own with pre-made templates for email, landing pages, social media and more. Automated workflows enable partners to schedule an entire campaign and let it go to work for them. Partners also have access to campaign metrics and real-time lead alerts to help track the success of their campaigns and win new customers.

Intermedia University provides partners with training to effectively close the leads they generate through the marketing automation platform. It just expanded to include training resources across Intermedia’s core products, including Hosted Microsoft Exchange, Email Archiving and SecuriSync.

“Channel partners acknowledge the importance of increasing focus on sales and marketing to help drive new customer acquisition,” Borgese said. “This is likely why CompTIA’s research revealed there was a 64 percent increase in the number of channel firms that expect more revenue to come from new customers over the next two years. The problem is that channel partners aren’t entirely confident in their sales and marketing efforts. CompTIA’s research also revealed that only 32 percent of channel partners consider their sales and marketing efforts highly effective. And that isn’t surprising — it’s very challenging for partners to be sales and marketing experts for all of the products tied to the dozens of vendors that they work with.”

The growth of Intermedia’s partner program will be the “driver of our success in 2016 and beyond,” he said.

“We’ll continue to invest heavily in our partners, who will remain at the forefront of our company strategy,” Borgese said.