At Upsun (formerly Platform.sh), a strategic partner integration channel dropped visitors straight into product registration. I owned the go-to-market for that arrival experience: hypothesized that arrivals needed trust and product context before committing, built a landing experience that delivered it, and set and reported the metrics. Conversion rose 20% in six weeks, and activation rose 20% by three months.
A Partner-Channel Go-to-Market That Lifted Conversion 20%
Developer tooling / PaaSSep 2020 - Jul 2021
Role: Growth Marketing Manager
+20%
conversion
A landing experience built trust and explained the value of key actions before asking arrivals to register.
within 6 weeks
+20%
activation
About 120 more arrivals went on to create the template project they came to deploy.
by 3 months
Trust before action
the hypothesis
Arrivals needed trust and product context before committing.
tested
+1 step
the deliberate bet
Added a landing step to the funnel, accepting friction on the bet that context beats a shorter path.
tradeoff
Company context
Company context
Upsun, the cloud application platform humans and AI agents love, is a Series D startup having raised over $180 million in equity funding. It is a fully managed cloud application platform (PaaS) designed to help developers build, test, and deploy software without managing underlying infrastructure.
- Company fact
- A Series D company
- Company fact
- Raised $180 million in total funding
- Company fact
- Developer platform / cloud infrastructure
Where arrivals landed
At Upsun (formerly Platform.sh), a strategic partner integration channel routed visitors directly into product registration. The traffic had genuine intent. These were people arriving from an ecosystem where the platform solved a real problem, but the funnel expected them to register and act in a single motion.
The hypothesis
Channel intent alone wasn't enough. Drawing on customer interviews and campaign data, I hypothesized that arrivals needed to trust the platform and understand the value of specific actions before committing. Dropping them into a registration form skipped both.
Adding a step on purpose
I built a landing experience that eased arrivals into product knowledge first, covering what the platform does and what they'd get from taking specific actions, before asking them to register. That meant deliberately adding a step to the funnel, betting that trust and context would beat a shorter path.
Results
Conversion rose 20% within six weeks. By three months, activation had risen 20%: about 120 more arrivals had created the template project they came to deploy.
- A strategic partner integration channel delivered high-intent visitors, but the funnel dropped them straight into product registration.
- The channel expected immediate registration and action, and too many arrivals did neither.
- The traffic itself was good; the arrival experience was the constraint.
Challenge / opportunity
- A strategic partner integration channel delivered high-intent visitors, but the funnel dropped them straight into product registration.
- The channel expected immediate registration and action, and too many arrivals did neither.
- The traffic itself was good; the arrival experience was the constraint.
Message and landing experience
- Targeted landing pages replaced the direct drop onto product pages, with content tailored to what each arrival came to do.
- The message explained what the platform does and the value of the specific next actions before asking for registration.
- For this channel, the action that counted was creating the template project the arrival came to deploy.
The bet and its tradeoff
- Adding a landing step meant more friction. Conventional funnel wisdom says fewer steps win.
- The bet: arrivals needed trust and an understanding of what specific actions would get them before committing.
- Conversion up 20% in six weeks settled the argument; activation up 20% by three months confirmed the quality.
Measurement
- Success was defined before launch: registration conversion first, activation as the lagging quality check.
- Six-week and three-month readouts covered the leading and the lagging signal.
How the work unfolded
- 1
Diagnosis
2020
A strategic partner channel sent high-intent visitors straight into product registration, with nothing in between.
- 2
A bet on trust
2021
Arrivals needed to trust the platform and understand the value of specific actions before committing.
- 3
Landing experience ships
2021
Built a landing experience easing arrivals into product knowledge before registration, deliberately adding a funnel step.
- 4
Measured results
2021
Conversion rose 20% within six weeks; activation rose 20% by three months.
Need a channel taken to market with metrics attached?
I define the audience, the message, and the metric, then ship the path and report what happened.