The competitive slugfest among marketing automation vendors is spilling over into the services space, as Eloqua recently parted ways with demand generation agency The Pedowitz Group after a long history between the two companies.
Eloqua cited reseller exclusivity as the reason for the divorce. “It's essential to note that reseller exclusivity is not a policy; it's a priority,” said Joe Chernov, Director of Content Marketing, Eloqua. “It's higher priority with regard to resellers in the demand generation space than it is for our global systems integrator partners, of course.” Chernov said all of Eloqua’s resellers are aware of the company’s committed priority of exclusivity.
“We believe that exclusivity is in the best interest of the customer, because there is no room for opacity in the vendor selection process,” he said. “For the most part, resellers have pre-committed to a vendor before sitting down with a prospect, so to that end, this notion of vendor neutrality doesn't always hold up in the real world.”
In The Pedowitz Group’s press release, CEO Jeff Pedowitz emphasized the disconnect between the two companies’ business models. "The Pedowitz Group is 100% focused on the customer," he said. "Eloqua is focused on ensuring that all channel partners sell their products and services exclusively. We insist on retaining the freedom to leverage all marketing automation platforms to best serve our customers — not just the offerings of one vendor.”
Pedowitz told DemandGen Report that the agency believes in a “greater good” philosophy about expanding and fueling the growth of the automation market. “We believe that intellectual property is developed and shared around customers, partners, vendors, analysts, community at large,” he said. “The space is still young and growing. Customers are best served by having a collective knowledge across a wide variety of technologies and know-how. That’s how we help them be successful.”
Eloqua’s SVP of Business Development, Robert Brewster, took to Eloqua’s blog last Friday to comment on the company’s concern for the sharing of its intellectual property.
“Over the last year, TPG undertook a strategy to be an agency that represents multiple competing brands in our space. This approach is inconsistent with our vision for Eloqua’s channel because we are concerned about sharing our intellectual property (IP) with any company that works closely with our competitors. When you get right down to it, Eloqua is an IP company,” Brewster wrote. “”What differentiates us is not only the technology we supply to clients, but also our vertical knowledge, best practices acumen, and our insights into the demands on marketing which change as one moves from the SMB sector up through the enterprise. Reseller exclusivity allows us to share this IP — as well as our technology roadmap — with partners, confident that the knowledge transfer will benefit only Eloqua users. If our partners know our most important ideas, they can better serve our customers. We did not want to stop sharing those ideas.”
TPG has worked with Eloqua over the past three years, and at last year’s Eloqua Partner Summit, TPG was recognized as Eloqua's top revenue provider and ranked highest in customer service among the company's 40+ partners. Pedowitz actually served as VP of Client Services for Eloqua during its formative years.
Though TPG will no longer serve as a distribution partner for Eloqua, Pedowitz said they will continue to actively support over 350 Eloqua customers, providing full support services. Moving forward, the firm will continue working with its other leading marketing automation partners, which include Marketo and Genius.
Marketo also chimed in on the debate on its blog. CEO Phil Fernandez wrote that he found the “’IP company’ rationale to be somewhat odd. Software companies have a long history of partnering closely with integrators and service providers large and small, and the vast majority of successful partnerships of this sort are non-exclusive.”
