Intercom Principal, Integrated Marketing, Mark Iafrate profile picture

Mark Iafrate

Principal, Integrated Marketing at Intercom

7 questions answered
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Intercom Principal, Integrated Marketing, Mark Iafrate
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Partner Marketing

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Question
How do you know if your partner co-marketing strategy is successful?
Answer
The success of a partner co-marketing strategy varies depending on your business goals, but generally speaking, the impact can be measured by tracking a few different sets of metrics. Product Usage: One would be integration installs and usage over time. For instance, at Intercom, once customers use four or more integrations, key metrics such as retention, churn, lifetime value (LTV), average contract value (ACV), and customer health scores improve significantly. The number of integrations it takes to see a substantial verifiable impact varies company to company, but generally speaking, deeper integration engagement drives overall customer success and satisfaction, a stickier product, and better retention over the long term. Pipeline: This will vary depending on your GTM motion(s), but the most common partner-specific I see are sales referrals, sourced partner deals, and acquired leads from partner activations. At Intercom I also pushed for “reengaged leads” which are leads that were dormant but became active through partner efforts. Then you should also use your existing marketing attribution model to measure partner marketing campaigns the same way you measure all your other non-partner campaigns. This ensures consistency across all your campaigns and reporting. We use a W-shaped attribution model and have a specific system for naming and then reporting on campaigns. We “plugged” partner marketing into these systems so we can track those campaigns the same way. For New Business I report on Leads (Total Influenced Conv.); MQLs (Total Influenced Conv.); S2s (Total Influenced Conv.); S2 (Influenced Oppty ARR); S2 (Attributed ARR); Closed-Won (Total Influenced Conv.); Closed-Won (Influenced Oppty ARR); Closed-Won (Attributed ARR). It's the same for Expansion Business but without the Leads and MQL metrics. If you're earlier in your journey, focus on campaign-level metrics—high registration rates and engagement in joint webinars, for example, are strong indicators of an effective strategy and that your campaigns are resonating with your audience.
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Question
I'm a partner marketer that reports up to marketing and I'm struggling to get my partner-related projects prioritized. I suspect the main problem is lead attribution and how it affects team budgets/priorities between marketing and partnerships. Do you have any tips for increasing collaboration?
Partner Marketing
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Service partner
Question
How does the Partner Marketing function work at Intercom? Which metrics do you focus on and how do you collaborate with different teams?
Answer
At Intercom, Partner Marketing is integrated deeply within the demand generation team (specifically Integrated Marketing), rather than being a standalone function. This setup fosters better collaboration, as the partner marketing lead is in tune with both the overall marketing strategies and the needs of the partnership team. This collaboration enables smoother planning and more efficient execution, allowing us to align partner activities with broader marketing goals, such as product launches or thematic campaigns. Collaboration is key: by working closely with content, product marketing, sales, customer success, and other teams, we can seamlessly integrate partners into existing marketing motions. This leads to more impactful campaigns and stronger alignment on goals. The key metrics we track include both sales and marketing indicators. On the sales side, metrics like referrals, source deals, and influenced ARR are essential. On the marketing side, we focus on acquired leads, reengaged leads, and the progression of these leads through the funnel (e.g., MQLs, S2s, closed deals). Integration installs and app usage are also critical, as they reflect direct engagement with the partner ecosystem. Over time, we track how deeper integration usage correlates with improvements in LTV, ACV, retention, and churn, helping us understand the long-term value of these partnerships. For teams just starting out, simpler metrics like event registrations and webinar attendance can provide early indicators of campaign success.
Partner Marketing
Technology partner
Service partner