Co-marketing
Contents
PostHog complements a lot of other software companies. Since we’re active in the startup ecosystem and built around integrations, co-marketing opportunities come up naturally.
Who takes the lead with co-marketing?
Sales, engineering, or support will sometimes tag marketing into customer Slack channels where someone mentions co-marketing. There’s no obligation to say yes just because a partner is enthusiastic. If you’re unsure whether something is worth pursuing, ask in the #team-marketing Slack channel.
If it does seem promising, a product marketer will take the lead and loop in events or other teams as needed.
What this article doesn’t cover:
- Influencers and newsletters
- Rev-share partners and individual consultants
- Sponsorships
Integrations and CDP destinations
We have a CDP with 50+ destinations and a data warehouse that connects to tools like databases, Stripe, and HubSpot. Any time we ship an integration, there’s a baseline level of co-marketing we should do:
- Make sure docs are solid on both sides
- Add it to the changelog (and changelog email if it’s really good)
- A simple social media post like this one
If you have a new integration which deserves marketing support, the best way to get it is to ask in the #team-marketing Slack channel. The team will discuss and specific product marketer will take responsibility for running co-marketing.
When to level up: Most integrations stop here. But if there's genuine opportunity, then it's worth doing more:
- A practical tutorial like this one
- A video walkthrough if the workflow is complex
- A blog article or other co-authored content
Typically whenever we are pursuing work like this with a partner, we work with them to reciprocate to their audience through their channels.
In some cases where there's big partnership potential, the partnership is of a strategic significance, and the ICP is the same, feel free to explore a joint in-person event that will gather the community of both partners and deliver value from both sides.
Like all PostHog marketing, co-marketing should be useful to the reader. A super simple way to signal compatibility without being promotional is to casually reference partner companies in docs and editorial. However, we avoid case studies where there isn't an interesting story, guest posts, and other marketing 'fluff' content.
For example, PostHog docs might say "If you're routing LLMs (e.g. via OpenRouter)..." while OpenRouter docs say "Track downstream behavior in PostHog..."
We do this out of goodwill anyway in blog posts like this. It helps readers and costs us nothing.
Enterprise integrations
We haven't done much co-marketing with enterprises like Slack or HubSpot because big companies typically move slowly, and we haven't prioritized it.
If you find yourself working with an enterprise integration partner that's actually responsive and interested in co-marketing, go for it. Just don’t let their timeline block other work.
PostHog customers
If a customer is a logo we’d proudly show on the site, represents who we build for, and is getting real value from PostHog, then a case study usually makes sense.
Examples:
Social media co-marketing for case studies naturally follows since most companies are excited to have their story featured. It's usually worth raising an art request for these opportunities.
We also will typically thank customers who participate in case studies and collab content by sending them a merch voucher. We're nice like that.
Startup and ecosystem partnerships
We already run a strong startup program. Accepted companies get $50K in PostHog credits plus access to partner benefits. This is one of the best types of co-marketing because it’s a simple value exchange: we help their users, they help ours.
However, we are very selective about which teams we partner with here because these partnerships usually offer outsized benefits to them. As a rule, we want to have no more than three such partners at once - and it's one-in, one-out.
Examples:
- Easier incidents with Incident.io ($1,500 off a teams plan)
- Better SDKs with Speakeasy (50% off for 6 months)
- Better search with Chroma ($5,000 of credit for their search and retrieval service)
If we're signing anything with legal commitments, that needs to go via #legal. If it's an informal exchange of perks, you can usually just coordinate directly with the partner company.
If you’re giving PostHog credits, check with the
When a new startup perk goes live:
- Add the offer to the PostHog for startups page
- Create a new Startup landing page for this partner
- Announce it on social media like this
- Add the offer to relevant emails and onboarding flows (the startup program has dedicated flows)
As a rule we don't commit to reporting sign-up performance to startup partners, as it just adds overhead and they should have their own methods of tracking. We also don't typically agree to rev share deals as part of this program, as it's a long tail activity.
More questions about startup program partnerships? Head to the project Slack channel.
Other ecosystem partners
Co-marketing goes both ways! PostHog’s startup program is promoted through partner channels like Stripe Atlas perks and the Fin Startup Pack.
We maintain a spreadsheet with most of our current partnerships. This also includes partnerships with VCs and PE firms. For the most part we do no co-marketing with these partners, though this may change. This spreadsheet doesn't list all VC partnerships via GetProven, as these are best tracked directly through that tool.
Co-sponsored events
Events are a great place to co-market and vary from intimate gatherings to large scale meetups. These are higher effort and don’t usually sit under product marketing alone. Tag Daniel early – he’s the best judge of what events and co-sponsorships will actually land.
Examples:
- We buy AI YC pitch event with Chroma, Mintlify (and others)
- MCP Builder breakfast with Fiberplane
- Building with (and for) AI event with Vercel and Profound
Virtual events can also work for co-marketing, we just try to avoid boring ones. For example, we participated in ElevenLab’s Worldwide Hackathon, which was rad.
Co-branded merch
Merch collaborations are cool, but should be rare. They require real work from the design team and need a clear purpose beyond “we’re partners now.”
A good example is the limited edition t-shirts we did with Supabase, which was way more fun than a press release.
If you think a merch collab makes sense for a co-sponsored event, use the art request template. Please give thought to distribution and lead-times and add this to the request.
What if the partner wants more?
Not every co-marketing play warrants maximum effort. If someone's pushing for more but the product overlap is thin, it's okay to suggest starting smaller. A changelog mention and social post can always expand into more later if there's real traction.