Measuring Results: What Has Your MDF Done for You Lately?

If you are an MDF partner with Dell Technologies, then you will be familiar with our “data-driven approach”. As a company we rely heavily on data insights from past marketing activities to inform us on how to move forward into the future. Partners can use this same technique to grow their business - by analyzing what is working well in their MDF activities and what is not.

One look at our partner MDF POI and ROI Results Dashboard1 will prove this point. The dashboard provides a graphical representation of a partner’s MDF spend on demand generation and the accompanying results generated by those marketing activities. Certainly, ROI results measurement is a ‘best practice’ that any company should be employing albeit there are many ways to do this and can vary by company.

Most companies know that measuring results are needed, but not all companies do, or do it well.

Here’s a quick review of reasons why a partner company would want to measure the results of their MDF spend:

1. Performance Evaluation: By measuring marketing results, partners can assess whether their strategies are achieving the desired outcomes. This allows them to understand what’s working and what isn’t, ensuring that resources are used effectively. Partners stay ahead of the competition by responding more quickly to market trends and consumer demands.

2. Return on Investment (ROI): Partner companies invest significant amounts of time, money, and effort into marketing. Measuring results helps quantify the return on that investment. It allows businesses to calculate the profitability of each campaign or initiative and adjust spending accordingly.

3. Optimization and Improvement: Analyzing marketing results helps identify areas for improvement. Partners can optimize their campaigns by focusing on high-performing tactics and eliminating underperforming ones, leading to more efficient use of resources.

4. Customer Insights: Measuring marketing outcomes gives partner companies deeper insights into customer behavior, preferences, and engagement. This information can be used to refine target audiences, messaging, and product offerings, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. With clear metrics, partner businesses can make more strategic decisions based on evidence rather than intuition, which leads to better outcomes.

5. Accountability and Goal Alignment: Marketing and Sales teams are accountable for delivering specific outcomes. Measurement ensures alignment with business objectives, setting clear goals and tracking progress toward them.

How Dell Technologies and our Partners Make it Happen

While fancy graphical images are fun there’s real work behind the eye candy. How we’re able to make that ROI calculation involves some effort and coordination but there are benefits won by both MDF partners and Dell Technologies.

A critical component of the MDF program is for partners to submit the Leads generated by their demand generating MDF activities as proof of execution. The partner’s leads are then routed into their Dell Technologies Lead Management account where they can manage and convert their leads directly to a deal registration.? Partners may also use their own CRM to work their leads, and upon submitting a deal registration, either Dell or the partner will match MDF lead data to Deal registrations. Matching Leads to Deal Registrations allows both Dell and our partners to associate MDF spend of their marketing activity to the value of their deal registration (pipeline), and ultimately revenue. The result can then be found within our partners MDF POI and ROI Results Dashboard, enabling performance measurement and data driven insights.

Success Metrics

Dell Technologies considers success to generate an ROI of at least $20 and a POI of $80 after 4 rolling quarters. In other words, for every MDF dollar in demand generation we aim to generate at least $80 in pipeline and $20 in revenue. For example, a partner can spend $5,000 MDF on a demand generation activity, turn in 100 leads, convert or match 12 deal registrations with a total pipeline of $420K. 2 Deal registrations already converted into Won business with a total revenue of $110K. This results in $84 POI and $22 ROI.

So, what has your MDF done for you lately? Login to the Incentives Center and check the MDF POI and ROI Results Dashboard (Activities > View ROI) to monitor your results and use these insights to your advantage. Data-driven-decisions will spur your business forward to greater growth and profitability.

1You will need access to Dell Technologies MDF and be logged in with your Partner Portal account for this URL to work.

Subject Matter Expert and Author:

Lyn Toomey , Consultant, Global Partner Marketing Strategy & Investments