Earlier this fall, Structured brought the channel marketing community together in New York for Structured for Growth, a one-day flagship event we hosted to unveil our new brand identity and introduce Structured.ai, our next-generation platform built from the ground up to help vendors scale smarter, more personalized partner engagement.
Steven Kellam
CRO, Structured
It was a day filled with sharp insights, candid conversations, and real-world examples of how AI is reshaping the channel. In this recap, I’m highlighting the biggest takeaways, from bold brand strategy to scalable AI-driven marketing, and why this launch represents a turning point in how enterprises empower their partners to grow.
Explore how Structured helps global brands market smarter through partners
The event kicked off with a powerful conversation between Structured CEO Daniel Nissan and Udi Ledergor, current Chief Evangelist and former CMO of Gong and author of Courageous Marketing. The big theme across their conversation was that bold, human-centric brands don’t require massive budgets. They require creative courage, operational alignment, and a willingness to break the mold.
Udi shared how his background as a stage performer shaped his marketing mindset. He sees marketing as an experience where the job is to take something complex, like enterprise technology, and make it feel simple, intuitive, even magical.
“Technology is complicated. Our job as marketers is to make it feel like magic.” — Udi Ledergor, Former CMO of Gong
Safe campaigns lead to safe results, and if you want to stand out, being slightly better isn’t enough. You have to be different. He also emphasized that branding can’t live solely within marketing. It only works when the entire company lives it, from CEO to recruiting coordinator to support engineer. Every touchpoint either reinforces the brand or dilutes it.
Even if you don’t control the brand or define the category, you can shape perception through consistency. Udi urged teams to revisit their customer stories, align language across teams, and equip partners to deliver the message with confidence.
When asked how he built such massive visibility with a startup budget, Udi offered a framework for punching above your weight. It’s all about leveraging attention-grabbing media in unexpected, cost-effective ways and amplifying the results. He explained how he used platforms like Blip Billboards to run digital ads in Times Square for as little as $500. He even ran regional Super Bowl ads for a fraction of the national rate and made it feel like Gong had a seven-figure marketing engine.
He closed with a challenge to everyone working through partners: don’t let limited control become an excuse for playing it safe. Instead, create a space where your team can test ideas, experiment with media, and try something new, even if it doesn’t work the first time. Because the cost of doing what everyone else is doing is far higher than the risk of standing out.
Channel Marketing and AI: Lessons from the Front Lines
Next, I took the stage joined by four leaders who are helping shape how AI is changing the channel landscape: Leslie Vitrano Hubright of Schneider Electric, Joan Morales of Klaviyo, Eric Ehlers of ServiceNow, and Diane Brode, formerly of Dell Technologies.
Each of them is at a different stage in their AI journey, but all agreed on one fundamental truth: AI only delivers value when it’s tied to a real business problem. The conversation centered on how vendors can balance experimentation with measurable outcomes, and how AI can empower, not replace, the human side of partner engagement.
Leslie Vitrano Hubright set the tone early, noting that she has found success when AI initiatives are tied directly to the sales cycle rather than to program administration. By connecting AI projects to measurable revenue levers like deal registration, Leslie said she’s now seeing genuine traction across the business with 26 AI projects in the pipeline.
For Joan Morales, the key lies in using AI to meet partners at the moment of opportunity. He described how Klaviyo is building AI-driven systems that respond instantly when a partner submits a lead or opportunity, automatically serving up content and proposals tailored to that specific deal.
“When a partner brings us an opportunity, we give them everything they need, including content in their language and a proposal they can use, without them having to search.”
It’s a model that transforms AI from an efficiency tool into a true enabler of partner success. If vendors can make every partner interaction feel immediate, personal, and useful, they’ll win loyalty far faster than with another generic portal or campaign.
Eric Ehlers of ServiceNow focused on the scalability side of AI, particularly how it helps smaller partner marketing teams support global ecosystems. When he started in ServiceNow’s channel organization, his team worked with about 14 partners. Today, they’re supporting nearly 3,000 without adding headcount. AI has been central to making that possible while keeping relationships personal and relevant.
“It’s about scale, but in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re handing partners off to AI.”
Eric highlighted that AI isn’t just about automation; it’s about freeing up time and data to focus on higher-value collaboration. With AI assisting in content localization, campaign creation, and data analysis, his team spends less time managing logistics and more time helping partners grow.
Finally, Diane Brode shared one of the most compelling examples of how AI is changing partner engagement. When Dell launched its AI-powered through-channel marketing platform, Diane expected to see efficiency gains in localization and brand compliance. What she didn’t anticipate was how much insight the system would generate about what partners actually wanted.
“We were watching partners get smarter with their prompts, and suddenly realized we were reading their minds.”
By analyzing what partners asked for through the platform, Diane’s team uncovered needs and challenges that traditional surveys never would have revealed. It changed how they thought about content strategy, partner education, and even product communication.
The panel’s collective takeaway was simple but powerful: AI is no longer a future concept. It’s a strategic multiplier when tied to the right problems, and the most successful teams are the ones using AI intentionally and fearlessly.
Personalization at Scale: How Microsoft Is Rethinking Partner Engagement
In one of the most anticipated sessions of the event, Shane Edmonds, Chief Technology and Product Officer at Structured, welcomed Colleen Tyler, Microsoft’s leader of global partner marketing and go-to-market strategy, for a behind-the-scenes conversation on how AI is transforming partner engagement at one of the world’s largest tech companies.
Microsoft’s global partner ecosystem is vast with over 500,000 partners operating in every country. Most of these partners never interact directly with a Microsoft rep. Instead, they rely on digital systems to access marketing content, product information, and program benefits. And as Colleen shared, that experience has long been overdue for reinvention.
“Partners need the latest, localized content instantly,” she said. “Nobody has extra time in their day. It’s critical we figure out how to do this at scale.”
It was wonderful to hear the shared vision between Microsoft and Structured: Empower partners through AI tools embedded directly into the platforms they already use. As Shane noted, when AI is missing from vendor platforms, partners turn to outside tools like ChatGPT. This not only creates brand inconsistency, it also blocks vendors from seeing what partners are trying to do.
“If you’re not giving partners AI where they need it, they’ll go elsewhere. And you won’t see the data,” Shane warned.
By integrating AI directly into Microsoft’s partner platforms, her team can now see what content partners are searching for, what gaps exist, and what’s actually driving engagement — all in real time.
“It’s exciting to finally have data and insights to help prove ROI in partner marketing,” she said.
Together, Microsoft and Structured are piloting a new standard for what partner enablement should look like: personalized, responsive, and measurable.
The “Just Ask” Future: Inside the Structured AI Demo
The final session of the day offered a glimpse into the future of channel marketing, one powered by a reimagined user experience and seamless AI integration. Shane Edmonds showcased a live demo of the new Structured.ai platform, and the crowd quickly saw why this next-gen release has major implications for partner engagement.
Structured.ai places natural language interaction front and center. Gone are the days of clicking through clunky portals or navigating dense menus. Instead, partners simply type what they need in plain language, and the platform gets to work. At Structured, we’re calling it “Just Ask”.
For example, a partner logging in for the first time might just ask: “I need an email campaign for BI and AI solutions.”
In response, Structured.ai does more than search. It recommends using intelligent agents trained on both the vendor’s campaign assets and the partner’s own business profile, which the system gleans from domain data and even their public web presence.
The system then tailors content suggestions, streamlines customization, and walks the partner through deployment. Partners move from ask to activation in minutes, all without formal onboarding.
Shane also explained how partners can use Structured.ai to:
Generate full marketing campaigns across multiple tactics
Ask for messaging guidance for specific industries or buyer personas
Get real-time product information
Customize tone and style based on their own branding
Ask operational questions, like “Who do I contact for deal registration?”
One particularly impactful moment came when he showed how the system learns — not just from one partner’s activity, but from aggregate usage patterns across the entire ecosystem. If a campaign is trending among peers, Structured will surface it. If partners keep asking for messaging on a specific topic, the system notes that too.
“We’re already learning what’s resonating. The system will evolve to recommend the most effective assets based on real-world usage.”
Localization is also built into the core. The platform currently supports 130 languages, not just for content, but for the full conversational interface. This is a critical feature for global vendors like Microsoft, who are betting on Structured to deliver campaign performance across continents.
As the session closed, one message was clear: Structured.ai isn’t just a layer on top of old systems. It’s a total reinvention of how vendors can support, scale, and activate their entire partner base — through AI that’s practical, personalized, and incredibly easy to use.
With features that simplify onboarding, tailor content on demand, support 130 languages, and learn from partner behavior across the ecosystem, the platform represents a real leap forward in partner enablement. An entirely new standard for vendors looking to deliver value at scale.
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