Tech Data partners with Citrus to add state-of-the-art digital advertising system to InTouch online sales platform

Tech Data has announced it has introduced sponsored product search and targeted banner advertising to its online sales platform InTouch, in partnership with Citrus, a world-leading digital advertising system provider. The enhancements to InTouch will allow Tech Data to provide a more personalised user experience for customers across its European footprint and improved visibility of return on investment for vendors’ digital marketing activities, enabled by Citrus’s advanced data analytics and machine learning capability.

Resellers using InTouch will benefit from personalised search results, product suggestions and banner ads based on their buying behaviour and search history. Meanwhile vendors will be able to target advertising to specific customer groups, connecting resellers with new propositions at the moment they are searching for products and making purchasing decisions. Vendors will manage their own sponsored search advertising with a fully automated, cloud-based, self-service process that will enable greater transparency and agility.

Andy Gass, senior vice president, Digital and UK & Ireland, at Tech Data said: “With these updates to InTouch, we are making a best-in-class e-commerce platform even better for partners and vendors alike. Supported by Citrus’s cutting-edge digital advertising system, we can more effectively connect resellers to margin-making opportunities and new value propositions, making it easier for them to make the right purchasing decisions in less time. For our vendors, we can now provide more granular analytics and richer insight on user behaviour, helping them to choose digital marketing activities that deliver clear return on investment. All this ultimately means that Tech Data is better positioned to accelerate the growth and transformation of our channel partners’ businesses, which is fundamental to our role as a trusted advisor for the IT channel.”

Brad Moran, CEO at Citrus, said the company is looking forward to its integration into Tech Data’s InTouch e-commerce platform: “We are proud that an industry leader like Tech Data is launching our technology across Europe. We look forward to our platform not only enhancing and personalising Tech Data customers’ online shopping experiences but also delivering to their vendors a very targeted and measurable digital advertising system.”

The InTouch digital advertising enhancements are now live in the UK, France, Germany and Belgium and will be rolled out across Europe in the coming quarter.

InTouch is Tech Data’s web-based sales platform in Europe, enabling partners to access thousands of products, solutions and services from the distributor’s end-to-end portfolio. The site is visited by an average of 60,000 partner users per day, and each year, it handles more than five million purchases*. InTouch is part of a suite of specialist Tech Data tools and programs for driving digital sales, including StreamOne, Digital On-Demand and Software Store.

“Since its launch nearly 20 years ago, InTouch has established itself as Tech Data’s core strategic e-commerce platform for connecting our vendors’ solutions with Tech Data partners across the region. Now, in partnership with Citrus, we are moving to better leverage the phenomenal volume of data that these interactions produce, continuing InTouch’s evolution as the channel’s online sales platform of choice,” added Gass.

*Tech Data Internal Data: InTouch Web Analytics and Sales Data (2018)

About Tech Data
Tech Data connects the world with the power of technology. Our end-to-end portfolio of products, services and solutions, highly specialized skills, and expertise in next-generation technologies enable channel partners to bring to market the products and solutions the world needs to connect, grow and advance. Tech Data is ranked No. 83 on the Fortune 500® and has been named one of Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies for nine straight years. To find out more, visit www.techdata.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

About Citrus
Launched in 2016, Citrus is a world first digital platform that has unleashed the potential of online shelf space. Citrus effectively turns online retailer websites into highly targeted and revenue generating digital advertising platforms, and in the process has changed the way in which retailers, suppliers and customers manage and experience ecommerce. Citrus brings personalisation and monetisation together for the very first time and provides a true win for every party in the value chain.

Amanda Hassall, Origin Comms amanda@origincomms.com
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