Everything You Need To Know About Azure Marketplace Rewards

Imagine getting rewarded for selling your B2B SaaS products on a marketplace. Here is the thing, you no longer have to imagine it. Azure marketplace rewards are all you need to check out.  

Once your offer is live on the marketplace, you are eligible for various Azure marketplace rewards. The best part? The rewards just keep getting better and bigger as you cross different revenue thresholds.  

This blog will cover the A to Z of Azure marketplace rewards along with testimonials from businesses who are already benefitting from them.  

The Azure marketplace rewards differ on the basis of the listing of the offer. So, let’s begin with the different types of listings provided by Azure and assess the Azure marketplace rewards for each.  

Types of Offer Listing

1. Free Trial: The Free Trial allows prospective customers to utilize your offer at zero cost. The trial period may range between one month to six months, depending on the offer type.

2. Test Drive: The Test Drive is similar to the Free Trial. It provides a preconfigured environment to the prospective customer for a duration of a few hours. However, Test Drive also includes a hands-on, self-guided tour of your product’s key features and benefits being demonstrated in a real-world implementation scenario. 

3. Contact Me: The Contact Me button on your offer’s listing page is used by customers to request you to connect with them about your offer. 

4. Get It Now: The Get It Now listing option includes Get It Now (Free), bring your own license (BYOL), Subscription, and Usage-based pricing.    

• List and Trial offers receive one-time use benefits. They earn benefits based on whether or not a free trial is attached.  
• Transact offers are eligible for evergreen benefit engagement as you increase your billed sales.   

According to the eligibility of the offer, a member of the Rewards team will contact you. The Azure marketplace rewards can be easily viewed in the Sales and Marketing benefits tab of the Marketplace Rewards page in Partner Center. 

Marketplace success is just a click away.

Azure marketplace rewards

Driving traffic to a new offer on the Azure Marketplace can be challenging, hence Microsoft Azure Marketplace Rewards support its growth right from the first step, which is awareness. As the offer progresses in terms of growth in revenue, new rewards and benefits are unlocked.  

Note that all Trial and Consulting Azure marketplace rewards expire after three months. In a situation where there is a requirement to change the listing type of the offer, SaaS offers can simply update to Transact and republish.  

For other changes, a new offer listing would be required. SaaS supports both monthly and annual subscriptions. It also provides Metered billing and per user (per seat) pricing. List and Trial publishers can opt in or opt out to activities per offer publication. Partners may opt out of any engagement at any time. 

Source

Types of rewards

Azure marketplace rewards are designed to assist in marketing, sales, and technical activities; hence the rewards are broadly categorized in the same manner.  

1. Marketing benefits 

Source

The various Azure marketplace rewards in the marketing category listed in the image above create an environment conducive to exponential growth of your published offer.  

1. 1. Social Promotion Spotlight: A social promotion spotlight would put your offer in front of the right audience. 
   2. In-depth customer review: A consumer case study for a partner-drafted customer provides Microsoft reviewed case study showcasing the success of a customer using your solution. 
   3. Marketplace Rewards Testimonial: Such a testimonial would highlight the abilities of the offer to attract customers looking for the mentioned abilities. 
   4. Press release support: A press release would bring your offer out to thousands of potential customers, like a free advertisement.   
   5. Commercial marketplace what’s new blog: New offers such as yours get a head start by coming in front of the numerous blog readers. 
   6. Partner or customer success story: A success story of your customers act as reliable sources and add reason for other potential customers to choose your offer. 
   7. Commercial marketplace marketing toolkit: This incredibly helpful toolkit provides an overview of best practices, the setup process and other helpful resources. 

Go-To-Market (GTM) Resource Desk works with you to execute GTM activities including, but not limited to, your one point of contact for GTM help, expertise, and guidance. Don’t take our word for it, see for yourselves how startups like Veeam and Drizti are taking advantage to shape their company. 

“Assisted by the Microsoft GTM Services team, our press release drew nearly 107 million unique visitors, helping Veeam to attract customers.” – Ratmir Timashev, CEO, Veeam Source 

“Marketplace Rewards was such a pleasant surprise. Drizti, being a startup, could now benefit from the marketing power of Microsoft to highlight its solutions. This really helps to solidify our choice of Azure Marketplace as our go-to-market strategy for the near future.” – Devarajan Subramanian, CTO, Drizti. Source 

2. Sales benefits 

Source
 

Though the above list might seem a little brief, it is immensely powerful.  

1. Azure portal solution promotion: A promotion on the Azure portal has the potential to shoot up the sales.
2. Microsoft seller webinar: This webinar could update you on the current needs of the market and help you update your offer accordingly.  
3. Co-sell solution finder listing guidance: Guidance in helping you find co-sell solution finders greatly reduces the tedious task of finding the perfect co-sell solution. 
4. Azure sponsorship for deployment: An expensive task of deployment is sponsored, which would definitely help increase your profits.  

Nicole from Barracuda Networks understands the ideal opportunity:

“With clear evidence of the commercial marketplace driving low-touch growing deals (both revenue and Azure Consumed Revenue), and enterprise capabilities that are drawing in deals from our larger customers, Barracuda sees strong opportunity to use our multiple Co-sell Ready/Preferred solutions to engage our sellers for joint selling via Azure Marketplace.” —Nicole Napiltonia, VP of Business Development and Alliances, Barracuda Networks Source 

3. Technical benefits 

Source 

People involved in marketing and sales are less likely to be familiar with technical responsibilities. Hence the Azure marketplace comes in with the perfect guidance to help through the process. Right from the onboarding to an active directory, the technical benefits are the complete package for a smooth experience on the platform.  

1. 1. Onboarding documentation: Documentation is essential for understanding the working of the platform. 
   2. Microsoft 365 E5 developer subscription: The developer subscription is extremely fruitful as it would allow effective maintenance of customers or records. 
   3. Azure sponsorship for commercial marketplace publishing development/testing: Azure sponsors even the development and testing of new solutions, which usually is the main component, thus saving your funds or increasing profit.  

All the listed Azure marketplace rewards ease the technical aspects of the platform, even for non-technical users. See how it could strengthen the stand for OnePlace Solutions and KUMAVISION in the competitive market. 

“The availability of OnePlaceMail in Microsoft AppSource is critical to running our business and generating leads. More than 71% of our leads over the past 12 months have come through AppSource.” – James Fox, CEO, OnePlace Solutions. Source 

“The @MSFTDynamics365 tweets exposed KUMAVISION to a targeted audience of 65K+ followers and achieved 8K+ impressions. Overall, AppSource has quickly generated more than 100 contact inquiries for KUMAVISION.” – Holger Schüler, Director of Business Unit KUMA365, KUMAVISION Source 

Learn what SaaSify can do for you

This blog was originally published on SaaSify.