I’ve spent years working with B2B brands that sell through distributors, dealers, and resellers. Over and over, I see the same challenge: MarTech stacks are great for direct engagement, but they weren’t built for partner ecosystems.
This is where through-channel marketing (TCM) comes in. TCM refers to the programs, campaigns, and incentives that brands deliver through their partners – the distributors, dealers, and resellers who sit between them and the end customer. It’s one of the most powerful growth engines in B2B, but it’s also one of the hardest to measure, because much of the engagement happens outside of first-party attribution.
At the same time, marketing is facing a major shift, with Google’s phaseout of third-party cookies affecting nearly 3.5 billion Chrome users, and other browsers like Safari and Firefox already blocking them by default, traditional data sources are disappearing.
Nearly 32% of in-house marketers and 31% of agency marketers still heavily rely on third-party cookies, yet fewer than 46% of businesses feel prepared for marketing without them.
Statistica
The good news? The data we need is already available. But to capture it while respecting privacy, marketers have to look beyond direct engagement and into partner ecosystems.
The Problem: Blind Spots in Partner Ecosystems
In most marketing stacks, we can track clicks, leads, email opens, and conversions. That works well when the customer interacts directly with our campaigns. But in through-channel marketing, most buying influence happens through partners, and much of that activity sits outside of first-party attribution.
Here’s what I see every day:
- A distributor takes over a lead, and visibility disappears.
- Training completions, incentive redemptions, and sales claims aren’t captured in the same tools as marketing campaigns.
- Platforms often only allow you to see attribution within a silo.
This leaves marketers guessing about which partners are driving growth, where to invest resources, and which relationships are at risk. In short, we’re making decisions based on incomplete information.
How To Turn Blind Spots Into Insights
The first thing I tell my team is to rethink what counts as a signal. Instead of relying on cookie tracking or modeled behaviors, we focus on consent-based, intent data our partners generate every day. Marketing and incentive programs, in particular, create some of the richest signals: sales claims that connect campaigns to revenue, training completions that show readiness, incentive redemptions that reveal motivation, warranty registrations that tie partners to end customers, and portal logins or content engagement that provide early hints of advocacy or disengagement.
Once you know where to look, the challenge becomes acting on these signals. Here’s the playbook I share with teams:
- Unify your systems – Bring incentives, training, portal activity, and sales data together. Without integration, the insights are scattered and hard to act on.
- Focus on consent-based capture – Signals are only valuable if they’re accurate. Moving away from inferred behavior toward consented actions gives us richer, more reliable data.
- Apply predictive analytics – We look at trends and patterns in partner behavior to anticipate churn, identify growth opportunities, and spot emerging shifts in the market.
- Invest in partner-first MarTech – Your stack should work for the partner ecosystem, not just direct channels. Integration across tools lets you see partner activity in context.
The Solution: Our Partner Experience Platform
At Extu, we’ve built the Partner Experience Platform to help marketers do exactly this. It unifies marketing, incentives, and partner data into a single platform, giving us:
- Visibility across first-, second-, and third-party interactions
- Predictive analytics that flag risk and opportunity in real time
- Simplified access through a single login and consistent dashboard
With this system, we no longer have to guess which partners are driving growth. We can intervene early, invest smartly, and make decisions confidently.
By pulling partner signals from incentives, training, portal activity, and sales claims into a single view, we no longer have to guess which partners are driving growth. Predictive insights allow marketers to intervene early, invest smartly, and make decisions confidently.
Why Privacy-First Isn’t a Compromise
Many people see privacy regulations as a barrier. I see them as an opportunity. By focusing on consent-based behaviors, we actually get cleaner, more trustworthy data than cookies ever provided. We know exactly what partners are doing, why they’re doing it, and how it affects the business.
This approach keeps us compliant and gives us a competitive advantage. Teams that capture and integrate partner signals now are building a foundation that competitors can’t easily replicate.
Takeaways
The lesson is clear: MarTech stacks fail when they ignore the partner ecosystem. Growth happens through partners, and unless you capture, unify, and analyze their signals, you’re making decisions in the dark.
By embracing consent-based data, unifying it across systems, and applying predictive analytics, you can turn blind spots into proactive growth opportunities. That’s how channel marketers win in a privacy-first world.
Book a demo of Extu’s Partner Experience Platform to see how predictive insights can drive channel growth:
Book a Demo of Extu’s Partner Experience Platform
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