How Drip earns 12.5% of revenue through partners

Drip is a powerful marketing automation platform that helps online brands build meaningful customer relationships while driving conversions through personalized email and SMS marketing campaigns. As a trusted partner for businesses, Drip delivers strategic marketing, intuitive automation and seamless integrations.

Beyond its platform, Drip also fuels growth for businesses through the Drip Agency Program. Led by Joe Vargas, Partnership Development Representative at Drip, the agency-focused initiative empowers forward-thinking digital marketing agencies to help their eCommerce clients navigate the evolving landscape of online marketing tech and thrive with customized email marketing and intelligent forms. To streamline communication and create seamless workflows, Vargas uses PartnerStack to ensure Drip’s marketing agency partners have the tools and support they need to succeed.

Drip’s shift in focus

Since entering the partnership space in 2018, Drip has explored various partnership models to find the best fit for their platform and goals. After reevaluating their approach and ending their affiliate program in 2023, Drip strategically prioritized digital marketing agency partnerships. “Primarily, I'm focused on digital marketing agencies that manage the accounts of our mutual customers,” Vargas explains.

This direction allows Drip to better align with agencies that are well-positioned to drive value for both Drip and their shared eCommerce clients. In fact, 18% of Drip’s customers are now acquired through partners, underscoring the growing and critical role that partnerships play in Drip’s business model.

Finding a solution-first approach to partnerships

Just as Drip’s customers turn to them for the tools to automate and elevate their email marketing, Drip turned to PartnerStack for the right ecosystem to help their partnership program grow. 

Here, Vargas sees a clear connection between PartnerStack’s comprehensive suite and Drip’s goals.

“It’s a very comprehensive and focused tool suite. It has an end goal in mind. It has a solution-first mentality, in my mind. So, all of the tools there support the end goal of nurturing and managing these relationships.”

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Turning tedious processes into time saved

One of the key areas PartnerStack helps Drip is improving overall efficiency. Managing multiple partnerships requires streamlined processes, and without PartnerStack’s automation and tools, the administrative work would be overwhelming.

“With everything having to be manual, without an automated process to manage this many relationships, I don't know how they were managing beforehand, to be completely honest,” says Vargas. “It’s not only the relationship management side, but also the financial aspect. How do we get all of these financial reports together? How do we make sure commission is paid in a timely manner?”

“Having that process automated has got to be a huge, huge boon for us. I know it makes my life easier.”

Cumulatively, the time savings that PartnerStack’s automations unlock across teams at Drip are significant. Vargas estimates the company saves many hours weekly across teams, including finance and support.

“Across our organization, if I had to give it an estimate, we save somewhere between 50 to 60 hours — about a week's worth of work,” Vargas adds.

How PartnerStack helps Drip build stronger partner relationships

Clear, consistent and timely communication is essential for building strong partner relationships — the foundation for successful partner programs. Here, PartnerStack empowers Drip to provide a better experience for their partners through more efficient overall communication.

This starts with a streamlined onboarding process, which benefits both Drip and their agency partners.

As Vargas explains, PartnerStack is key to their smooth onboarding process “from a communication standpoint, not having to individually send emails to onboard every new partner that we bring in. We average at least 10 a month just through natural inbound, if we're not doing any recruitment. So, not having to send those one to one, that's tens of hours a month saved.”

After onboarding, PartnerStack’s messaging feature enables centralized communication, allowing Vargas to keep track of interactions more efficiently.

“One thing that I love with PartnerStack is the messaging feature,” Vargas says. “Everyone uses that. I tell people they can email me, but they never do. They always send it in the messages. And it's just really nice to have that kind of accountability for myself to look like, ‘Oh, wait, no, I didn't get back to that yet.’ That little red bubble helps so much. I really love that as well.”

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The right recipe for better customer retention

The Drip Agency Program focuses on digital marketing agencies that manage the accounts of mutual customers. As Vargas explains, this referral-style marketing — powered by PartnerStack’s ecosystem — delivers long-term benefits for Drip. 

In particular, customers brought in and supported by agency partners tend to stay longer and see greater success, making partner acquisition and retention key to meeting overall revenue goals.

“Churn is a consistency in all businesses, but especially businesses with a subscription model,” Vargas says. “One thing we’ve found is that customers that are supported by an agency partner tend to stick around a lot longer. They tend to see success because they have that extra assistance.”

Fueling revenue growth through partners — with PartnerStack’s help

As Drip’s partner program expands, so does the complexity of managing a larger number of partners — as does the importance of partner-driven revenue to the overall business. At Drip, the impact is clear, with 12.5% of revenue acquired through partners.

This makes a partner ecosystem platform like PartnerStack essential for scaling efficiently and driving revenue growth. 

“PartnerStack makes managing a large scale of partnerships possible, and those partnerships are really critical for hitting our financial goals,” Vargas says. “Over the years, we've gone in ebbs and flows, changed directions as business, things that are very natural, especially in the tech space. But a consistency has been the delivery of our partners, so I see PartnerStack as absolutely critical.”

“And, based on the investment from our company and our teams across the organization, I think everyone agrees: it's essential for us.”

PartnerStack: A ‘critical tool’ for powering partnerships at Drip

Having handled relationship management in various capacities throughout his career, Vargas understands the complexity of scaling and maintaining partnerships. He credits PartnerStack as an essential resource in Drip’s partner program journey — helping streamline workflows, strengthen operations and provide responsive, reliable support.

“PartnerStack has been a critical tool for us. For growing partnerships and maintaining those partnerships, it's essential,” Vargas says. “And the support we've gotten, whether it's when something in our own API messes up and breaks, or I just need to know how to do something, the help has always been quick and comprehensive.”