ActiveCampaign, Canva, HubSpot Talk: Ecosystem Influenced ARR

Expert advice from Danny Porter, Russell Bradly-Cook, Allie Schratz, and Gwen Sioson. 

Introduction

Top technology partner managers agree: we are operating at a moment when partnerships can either be your clearest path to predictable revenue or a collection of one-off integrations and unmet expectations. The difference isn’t glamour; it’s discipline. It’s how you translate strategic intent into repeatable workstreams, how you measure influence rather than only source, and how you run multi-year programs while still shipping features and campaigns every quarter.

The obsession of companies to KPI partnership teams on source revenue is an enormous miss on the opportunity. – Russell Bradley Cook

Table of Contents

• Why partner KPIs should tilt toward influence and adoption
• Leading vs lagging indicators for partner success
• Examples of partner activations and the motions behind them
• Prioritizing partners: how large platforms triage inbound requests
• API-first thinking and measuring platform usage
• Co-marketing and go-to-market expectations
• Managing projects, tasks, and transparency: the operational core
• Tools and workflows used by partner teams
• How to vet a partner: first conversation checklist
• Framework: three stages to partner-driven product outcomes
• How CoPort and partner ops fill the “in-between” gaps
• Practical playbook: a sample 90-day partner activation plan
• Common mistakes to avoid
• Conclusion
• FAQs

Why partner KPIs should tilt toward influence and adoption

Many organizations default to a simple metric: partner-sourced revenue. It’s neat, reportable, and fits cleanly into sales dashboards. But across modern platform companies the richest value of partnerships sits elsewhere — in product enhancement, activation that reduces churn, increased ARPA through upsell, and ultimately in partner-influenced ARR. That’s what these partnership leaders argued.

Russell pushed back hard on the fixation with sourced revenue, calling it an “enormous miss.” The point is blunt but critical: measuring only direct deals attributed to a partner ignores the product-level contributions partners make. A partner may enable a new workflow that reduces churn by improving onboarding, or it may unlock a feature set that increases license usage for existing customers. These are harder to attribute, but they are vital drivers of long-term ARR.

Gwen from ActiveCampaign framed the measurable outcomes she cares about as partner-influenced ARR and quarterly growth in integration adoption. She emphasized that integration adoption is both the signal and mechanism for impact: when customers use a partner-built workflow, the partnership is delivering product-level value. That value compounds over quarters; the initial install may not immediately produce revenue, but it improves retention, opens up upsell paths, and reduces friction.

Allie at Canva echoed the emphasis on adoption by describing their focus on premium monthly active users and API adoption. For a freemium platform like Canva, conversion to paid plans and sustained usage are the most important outcomes partners can help accelerate.

When you reframe KPIs toward influence and adoption, two things change:

• You measure quality and longevity (cohort retention, ARPA lift, churn reduction) instead of one-off transactions.
• You design partner programs around product fit and product usage, which naturally aligns partner incentives with customer value.

Adoption is the metric that matters — premium monthly active users and API adoption prove a partner’s impact. – Allie Schratz

Leading vs lagging indicators for partner success

Understanding the difference between leading and lagging indicators is essential for building repeatable partner outcomes. Lagging indicators are the outcomes executives care about: ARR, NRR, churn rates, and deals closed. Leading indicators are the observable actions and milestones that predict those outcomes: API calls per active customer, integration installs per month, monthly active users that originated through a partner flow, time-to-first-success for users on an integration, and product usage cohorts.

Gwen described an internal approach using AI to parse “jobs to be done” and product usage so that teams can identify which automation workflows are most valuable. In practical terms, that means capturing product telemetry that aligns with specific JTBD (jobs to be done) so both platform and partner teams can prioritize the workflows that map to measurable outcomes. These telemetry points are your leading indicators.

Danny emphasized the need for a process that bridges discovery and activation — “the in-between.” Too many tools, docs, and pitches stop at launch. The real work is operational: enablement, product roadmaps, co-marketing, and capturing signals that show the integration is delivering value. Those signals are the leading indicators that let you predict the lagging KPI movement.

How do we get from ‘we think you’re a great fit’ to ‘we’re both successful together’? – Danny Porter

Examples of partner activations and the motions behind them

Concrete examples illuminate the nuance. Here are several partner activations discussed by the panel and the partner motion that made each successful.

Microsoft Clarity + HubSpot

Russell highlighted Microsoft Clarity as one of the most successful recent activations. The Clarity integration is a PLG-oriented partnership: it filled a clear product need, had a low barrier to adoption (free forever model), and integrated easily with HubSpot’s marketplace search demand. The results were quick installs and adoption — 1,000 installs in the first month — and the team’s responsiveness and product focus accelerated value delivery.

Aircall + HubSpot

Aircall demonstrates a more “enterprise-friendly” partner motion. The integration is central to upmarket deals in which phone functionality is mandatory for customer success and service teams. The partner’s solution fit into the enterprise buying motion, and the sales teams leveraged the technical integration to close deals. This is a co-sell/co-market scenario where product fit aligned with a clear enterprise need and contributed to sourced revenue while also influencing conversion and ARPA.

Placing a PLG partner like Clarity into our marketplace quickly scales installs when demand is visible in search. – Russell Bradley Cook

Wix + ActiveCampaign

Wix is a multi-year initiative for ActiveCampaign. Gwen described the partnership as taking two years to plan and launch, with multiple lanes of activation to drive adoption across solopreneurs and enterprise customers. The team aligned on goals, staged releases, and focused on measuring integration adoption and churn reduction as the KPIs that demonstrate success. This example highlights how strategic partnerships often require a multi-year roadmap and cross-functional alignment.

MailChimp + Canva

Allie described Canva’s integration with MailChimp as a banner partnership that came after Canva released REST APIs that enabled third-party platforms to embed Canva’s design experience. The motion here was product-led: embed the Canva editor inside MailChimp, enable users to compose email templates directly in Canva, and sync them back to MailChimp. It solved a clear pain point and created an intuitive UX that drove adoption at events and via marketing campaigns.

Embedding Canva into native authoring environments removes friction and increases premium usage. – Allie Schratz

Prioritizing partners: how large platforms triage inbound requests

All three platform-side practitioners explained how they handle the flood of incoming partnership requests and decide who to support with engineering and marketing resources.

• Self-serve documentation and discoverability: Allie pointed to open developer docs (e.g., canva.dev) as the first filter. If a company can self-serve, they should — and platforms make it easy for them to do so.
• Data-driven signals: Russell described internal dashboards that show installs, monthly active users, and 12-month retention cohorts. These dashboards help prioritize partners with traction.
• Customer demand and feedback: Gwen emphasized that customers drive the integration roadmap. Partners that solve identifiable JTBD for customers get prioritized.
• Resources required: Platforms weigh whether the partner expects the platform to land heavy engineering work or whether the partner has the resources to build and maintain the integration themselves. If the platform’s resourcing is required, timelines lengthen and prioritization becomes competitive.

From the smaller partner’s perspective, the message is clear: be ready to self-serve, provide a quantitative business case, and demonstrate early traction. Platform teams rarely have unlimited marketing or engineering lift to push every new partner to the forefront.

API-first thinking and measuring platform usage

APIs are the common language of modern partnerships. Platforms that provide easy-to-use, well-documented APIs lower the friction for partners and make prioritization simpler. Allie explained how Canva’s REST APIs enabled partners like MailChimp to embed Canva functionality in their native environment — a classic example of API-first expansion driving measurable adoption.

How do you measure API usage in meaningful ways?

1. Track install-to-activation ratios: how many installs actually reach first completed workflow (first design saved, first email template sent)?
2. Measure API calls per active user: volume of API usage per account is a proxy for depth of adoption.
3. Monitor retention cohorts: follow users who came through the partner flow and see if they retain at a higher rate than organic users.
4. Surface friction with instrumentation: track error rates, failed API calls, and support tickets associated with partner flows.

Be the internal voice that helps quantify the partner’s impact with a simple, digestible story. – Gwen Sioson

Co-marketing and go-to-market expectations

One recurrent theme: partners often come in expecting platform marketing support. The reality is more nuanced. Russell advised partners to assume they will not get co-marketing resources and to proceed as if they must build their own go-to-market motion. When HubSpot or similar platforms do provide marketing support, it’s a bonus — not a guaranteed entitlement.

Best practices for co-marketing discussions:

• Lead with proof: marketplace reviews, retention cohorts, and customer case studies make marketing investment conversations easier.
• Be specific in asks: precise co-marketing actions (e.g., webinar slot, email send date, event booth share) are easier to evaluate than vague requests for “promotion.”
• Set shared timelines: marketing needs predictable dates. If product timelines are uncertain, marketing will struggle to plan campaigns.
• Create shared collateral early: logos, case studies, demo videos, and pre-built landing pages reduce execution friction.

Managing projects, tasks, and transparency: the operational core

Long-term partnerships survive or fail on the quality of their project management. Justin and Danny’s conversation centered on the idea that partnerships require long-term planning and disciplined management: tasks, calendars, and visible next steps. If a partner conversation is not captured and inspected regularly, it will slip.

Practical operational rules that top teams use:

1. Centralized task tracking: Use a shared artifact to track integration status, blockers, and go-to-market items. Russell described using shared Google Sheets for top partners because they are simple, shareable, and accessible across cross-functional teams.
2. CEO-level alignment: When partnerships are priorities for a partner’s CEO, work accelerates. Top teams attempt to secure executive sponsorship early for strategic integrations.
3. Weekly checkpoints with clear owners: Set an owner for every task. Without single-point responsibility, coordination stalls.
4. Visibility for stakeholders: Make progress visible to sales, product, engineering, and marketing so that dependencies are apparent.

If your company is going one way and your partner’s going another, alignment at the outset saves wasted months. – Danny Porter

Tools and workflows used by partner teams

Teams use a mix of tools depending on scale and habits. The panel mentioned Notion, CoPort, Google Docs, Asana, Crossbeam, CRM platforms, and ad-hoc Google Sheets. The lesson isn’t the tool; it’s consistent usage and clear handoffs.

Tool selection guidance:

• Start simple. Google Sheets or a lightweight project board often beats a half-used enterprise tool.
• Integrate with your CRM when partner activity ties directly to accounts (deal registration, co-sell pipelines).
• Use shared developer docs and SDKs to enable partner self-serve. Public documentation reduces one-to-one questions and filters for partners who can execute independently.
• Instrument telemetry into product and partner dashboards so that installs, MAUs, and API calls are visible to partner managers.

How to vet a partner: first conversation checklist

When a promising partner appears, ask straightforward questions and require crisp evidence. The goal is to decide whether to invest platform resources, guide the partner to self-serve, or deprioritize.

• Who is your target customer? (Align with platform ICPs.)
• What specific JTBD do you solve? Provide measurable examples.
• Do you have customers asking for this integration? Provide signals (support tickets, NPS comments, marketplace search queries).
• What resources do you have to build and maintain the integration? (Engineering headcount, SRE, documentation.)
• What is your go-to-market plan? (Events, content, paid ads, partner referrals.)
• How will success be measured? (Installs, MAUs, conversion to paid, upsell, reduced churn.)

Framework: three stages to partner-driven product outcomes

Turn intent into impact with a simple three-stage framework. Each stage has clear milestones and artifacts you can inspect.

1. Discover & Qualify — Product fit evidence, customer demand signals, API feasibility review, resource assessment.
2. Build & Activate — Integration development, QA, documentation, initial pilot cohort, enablement playbook, co-marketing plan ready to go.
3. Measure & Expand — Telemetry and cohort analysis for adoption, ARR/NRR influence mapping, churn impact measurement, and a repeatable expansion plan.

At each stage, define the leading indicators that will predict the next stage’s success. If a partner pilot shows strong retention and MAU growth, the case for additional co-marketing and resourcing becomes obvious and defensible.

If a partner can show cohort retention, their ask for further investment becomes a data-driven conversation. – Russell Bradley Cook

How CoPort and partner ops fill the “in-between” gaps

Danny described CoPort as built for the precise gap many partnership teams face: the structured operating model that tracks alignment, tasks, and progress across long timelines. The platform perspective is helpful here. If PRMs manage relationship metadata and marketplaces handle discovery, partner ops platforms handle operational alignment — the “how do we actually get this done?” layer.

What a partner ops layer should deliver:

• A single place to map company-level strategy to partner-level outcomes: why this pairing matters and how it aligns to both roadmaps.
• Playbooks and templates for qualification, launch, and measurement that scale across dozens or hundreds of partners.
• Shared artifacts that keep marketing, product, engineering, and sales aligned on timelines and responsibilities.
• Leading indicator dashboards accessible to partner managers and their counterparts inside partner companies.

Danny’s core rationale is that partnerships deserve the same operational rigor any other repeatable growth channel receives. Goals, assumptions, tasks, cadence, and measurement — that is how you scale partnership-driven outcomes.

When integration timelines are fuzzy, marketing cannot plan. Clear timelines make co-marketing possible. – Allie Schratz

Practical playbook: a sample 90-day partner activation plan

Below is a sample, practical activation plan you can adapt. The objective is to move from signed agreement to measurable adoption within three months.

1. Week 0–2: Kickoff & Discovery
   • Executive alignment call (confirm sponsorship and top goals).
   • Define ICP and JTBD the integration solves.
   • Create a one-page success metrics doc with agreed leading indicators.
   • Identify dependencies and resourcing needs.
2. Week 2–6: Build & Pilot
   • Share developer docs and credentials; begin engineering sprints.
   • Run pilot with a small cohort of customers or internal users.
   • Produce enablement materials (support article, demo, FAQ).
3. Week 6–10: Soft Launch & Measure
   • Open the integration to a larger set of customers, but keep marketing limited.
   • Track installs, first-success metrics, and usage depth (API calls per user).
   • Identify and fix friction points from pilot telemetry.
4. Week 10–12: Full Launch & GTM
   • Coordinate a modest co-marketing push (blog, webinar, email) if metrics justify it.
   • Share initial cohort retention results and create a roadmap for feature improvements.
   • Set 90-day checkpoint to review ARR influence and next steps.

Common mistakes to avoid

Partnerships fail for predictable reasons. Avoid these common traps:

• Assuming marketing resources are free: don’t plan your GTM around co-marketing that’s unlikely to materialize without proof.
• Ignoring leading indicators: If installs don’t convert to active usage, the integration won’t influence ARR.
• Not documenting responsibilities: If something is not in a shared tracker with an owner, it won’t finish.
• Waiting for the platform to build your business: platforms expect partners to do much of the early GTM work.
• Underestimating cross-functional costs: integrations often require support, docs, and product changes; budget for those.

FAQs

What KPI should my partnership team report to the executive team?

Report a combination: partner-influenced ARR or NRR as a lagging KPI, and a set of leading indicators (integration installs, MAU from partner flows, time-to-first-success, and retention cohorts). This provides both the outcome and the signals that predict future performance.

How do we prioritize partner requests when we have limited engineering resources?

Prioritize based on product fit, demonstrated demand (customer requests, marketplace search data), and whether the partner can self-serve. Require a one-page quantitative business case for requests that need platform engineering time and reserve platform lift for strategic, customer-driven initiatives.

What is the difference between partner-sourced revenue and partner-influenced revenue?

Partner-sourced revenue is direct deals attributed to partner referrals or co-sell motions. Partner-influenced revenue includes cases where a partner’s integration increases conversion, upsell, or retention across your customer base. The latter captures product-level contributions that are frequently larger and more durable.

How should a small startup approach integrations with a large platform?

Start with their public developer docs and a self-serve integration if possible. Provide clear, quantitative evidence of your ICP, JTBD, and early traction. Ask for an initial pilot or sandbox access rather than immediate co-marketing, and be explicit about what you will do to drive adoption.

Which tools are best for managing partner projects?

Use whatever your cross-functional stakeholders will actually maintain. For early stage programs, a shared Google Sheet with clear owners and status often outperforms an under-adopted enterprise tool. As you scale, introduce a partner ops layer that structures alignment across product, sales, and marketing.

Conclusion

Partnerships are not a single metric exercise. They are a multi-quarter, cross-functional endeavor that rewards disciplined processes, clear telemetry, and honest alignment on goals. When you move KPIs from a narrow focus on partner-sourced revenue to a broader, product-centered view — one that tracks adoption, retention, and ARR influence — you give your partnerships a chance to deliver compounding value.

Operational rigor matters. Define the success metrics, instrument the product to capture leading indicators, set clear owners, and use a shared operating system — whether that’s a simple Google Sheet for the top ten partners or a partner ops platform like CoPort for scaling ecosystems. Above all, treat partners like product investments: test, measure, and double down where the data proves the impact.