Adobe to expand customer reach

It currently has 10 Gold channel partners and 12 Silver partners but wants to increase the number of silver partners it has.

Craig McGregor, channel sales manager A/NZ Adobe, said the company restructured its global channel partner program 18 months ago to make it the same for each country and more 'structured and formalised'.

It has also started to roll out various marketing promotions to attract more resellers to persuade them to buy more than just one product at a time and buy different packages.

"We want to get the message across about Acrobat and the various capabilities of the applications rather than just being a pdf creator," said McGregor.

"People are using 50-60 percent of the capabilities to some degree but how do we get them to access more."

Samantha Salier, channel marketing manager Adobe, said the company is looking to expand the Adobe customer reach.

She said the software is not just for people at work like graphic designers but for people who want to make presentations and use it for personal use.

Salier said Australia and New Zealand were the first countries to trial the Online Creative Festival and the first event attracted 3,000 people.

She said it plans to run three or four of the festivals a year and the next one is in October.

Salier said the festival is like an e seminar held from 11-4pm with an Adobe store guide and gold partners who are available to answer specific enquiries.

"We are trying to branch out to reach an 'Adobe at home' type of customer. Adobe is not just for the high end customer, we want to push it out to everyone," she added.

"We initiated the online festival  in A/NZ and now it will be rolled out to other countries. We want to demonstrate what we are talking about rather than just hold physical events all the time."