Partnership ecosystems

Geckoboard connected to more than 90 tools, but each ecosystem had its own ICP, language, buying journey, marketplace rules, and partner politics. The same product needed translating differently in each one: Zendesk was about real-time support visibility, HubSpot about live sales and service performance, and Aircall about call centre operations and partner-led conversations. The job was to lean into what made each ecosystem unique, then turn that into useful routes to market without a huge sponsorship budget or a large partnerships team. Close links with integration partners were strategically important too: we often needed a quick line to unblock a technical challenge, a good relationship when API issues appeared, or help crafting positioning that set us apart from the native reporting and analytics in those tools.

I acted as the product marketing and partnerships bridge: working with partner managers, maintaining ecosystem relationships, shaping marketplace messaging, creating partner-ready narratives, and choosing where a tiny team should spend its time. The useful questions were usually both product and marketing questions: what does the integration actually do, who is it for, why does the ecosystem care, and what should a buyer do next?

Some of the work was formal, like becoming a HubSpot Certified App or sponsoring Zendesk partner events. Some of it was much scrappier: showing up, making useful assets, finding the right person in the ecosystem, and looking for the small opportunities that could make Geckoboard feel more present than our budget suggested. The question was usually where one useful appearance, listing improvement, asset, or partner conversation could do more than one job.

Geckoboard punched above its weight in several partner ecosystems. Our marketplace presence — particularly in Zendesk — became an important acquisition channel, we were regularly featured in the Zendesk App Marketplace as a standout integration, won Zendesk's 2024 partner award for customer adoption, became a certified HubSpot app, and were invited to demo at Aircall Ascend, Aircall's 2025 partner summit in Paris.

The useful bit was learning that partnership marketing is rarely one big move. It is a lot of small, specific building blocks: what does this ecosystem care about, what proof do they need, which story will their customers recognise, and where can we credibly show up?