Austin Burningham on Why Partner Events Need to Be Smaller, More Targeted, and Actually Memorable

Big partner events are fading—and the teams seeing real pipeline impact are doing the opposite. In this episode, Austin Burningham from Atlassian breaks down the shift from high-volume events to smaller, highly targeted experiences that actually move deals forward.

He shares why webinars still play a critical mid-funnel role, how executive roundtables and one-to-one experiences are driving bottom-funnel conversion, and what it takes to get the right customers—and sales teams—into the room. The conversation also gets practical on event strategy: securing customer speakers, aligning partners and sellers, and attributing real pipeline impact across multiple touches.

The takeaway is clear: the best partner marketers aren’t choosing between digital and in-person—they’re designing both to work together, with precision.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, I'm Rick Courier, and this is Never Go to Market Alone. More than a show, it's a community where tech, marketing, and the human connection come together. You're not just a listener, you're a GTM friend. And friends don't let friends go to market alone. Let's go. Hey everyone, thanks for joining me today. I'm excited to sit down with Austin Burningham, a partner marketing leader at Elastian. In this episode, we break down how partner event strategy is evolving. From large volume-driven events pre-COVID to now more high-impact personalized experiences that are actually driving pipelines. Austin shares how Atlastean and their partners are leaning into more targeted, experiential events, as well as how webinars play a critical role in mid-funnel and why executive roundtables are outperforming when it comes to conversion. Before we dive in, a quick shout-out to the never go-to-market alone community, my favorite place to call home. If you're a tech partner marketer looking for a place to connect with peers, where there's no vendors, no sales, just honest, authentic conversations, well, we've got about close to a hundred partner marketers in a private Slack group helping each other figure out this complex world of partner ecosystems. Whether you're ahead of a global large partner marketing organization, just starting out in your career, or maybe you're a partner marketer in between jobs. This is a home for you. Head on over to nevergo to marketalone.com. That's never gtmalone.com. All right, let's get into today's episode. And if you like what you hear, please do us a favor. Give us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform, and let's help spread the message of never go to market alone. Cheers. Hey Austin, good to have you today. Good to see you. Yeah, it's it's great to have you on the show. I'm excited to talk about events with you because I just, as you and I were just talking about, I was at NVIDIA's GTC, which was my first conference of the year, event of the year. So it's kind of the uh the beginning of events season. Next, I have Google Next coming up, and and you've been doing a lot of events yourself. So I'm just excited to get your perspective, what's what's working and not working in the world of partner marketing and events. But first, why don't you uh introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Thanks, Rick. Hey, I'm Austin Birmingham. I am the America's partner marketing manager team lead here at Atlassian. Uh been here at Atlassian for a little over 10 years now. And uh really have seen a lot of growth uh within the partner marketing organization over those last 10 years that I've been able to help grow this side of the business.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

And Austin, did you did you come in with a partner marketing background or was partner marketing new when you came to Atlassian?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

You know, it's uh partner marketing had just been formed uh at here at Atlassian when I had joined. Um I came to work for Atlassian because Atlassian had just adopted uh Elastic Grid as their through partner marketing automation solution. And so it was my job in the early days uh to show these partners how to use the platform and you get them sending out emails to their customers, inviting them to learn more about our solutions and our products.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Very cool. And I'm sure you've seen a lot of changes over the 10 years at Alassian. Um, you know, so let's talk a little bit about what you've seen change and how does that relate to an event strategy?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah, for sure. Um, you know, what's interesting, Rick, is that you starting here, um we had a big focus on uh email automation, like I just mentioned. Um, but at that same time, we also had a really big focus on running just really big events with our partners. And when I say that, like I'm not talking about big trade shows, but we're running large in-person events with our partners where they're trying to fill like a movie theater with a hundred people, um, really like targeting every user at the customer company to try to get them to these events. And um, you know, if we ever had like less than 50 people, we were in panic mode uh because we're you were you're trying to get like uh you know, like I said, 100 people to these events. So it's it's interesting how it that's changed because we just don't really see that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, yeah. So it's it's the old quantity versus quality aspect, right? So and I imagine when when COVID happened, I mean everybody shifted to digital. Did you still try to get those kind of numbers from a digital perspective? Or what was the change like going into the COVID world of event marketing?

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah, you know, we had some partners who had built some muscle around live webinars, but not everyone. And so one interesting thing that we did is um we were able to use the Atlassian Zoom account uh to set up uh child accounts for our partners. So a lot of our partners for a little while there got free Zoom accounts so that we could kind of help them transition into the digital world. And um a lot of our partners became really successful at those webinars. And um we we've seen a few webinars where we've had hundreds of people attend. Um not so much anymore. I would say it's interesting because as time has gone on, we've really kind of dialed in on the target titles that we want. Uh, you're really going after decision makers. And uh you know, now we have some partners that are targeting specific industries that they want to go after. So you're we're really narrowing down our ideal customer profile for a lot of these partners. And you know, events and webinars are getting a lot smaller, but a lot targeted. And I I love to see that because as we're doing these more executive roundtable type events now, uh, if we're doing something focused on, say, insurance, um, you the partner can invite an existing customer that uh they've been working with for a long time and have that customer tell these prospective customers their story of what it's been like working with the partner and adopting the Elassian solution that they're discussing that day uh into their ecosystem. And that's what's really gonna resonate with these customers like when they can hear it from another customer that's lived through it and had the experience, and they share the same um challenges, that's really gonna resonate.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

So there was a shift more towards the ideal person you wanted to be talking to. What was behind the shift towards the executive dinners if if webinars were working well? Was it we want to try something different, or did were you seeing uh a reason for going more in person coming out of the webinars?

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Well, really, I think it's been the most successful partners are able to do both. Um, because um you know we're in a remote work environment now where um you may have Microsoft headquartered in Seattle, but they have employees all over the country. So the webinars are a fantastic way to find those people where wherever they may be. Um, and an interesting stat that we've seen is that uh 80% of customers are attending a webinar before they decide to make purchase. Um, so it really is a platform where people are able to casually come in, ask some fact-finding questions to really see if this is a solution that they want to pursue. So I would consider webinars to be like a middle-of-funnel tool for us. Uh, and then we see these executive roundtables as a bottom-of-funnel activity, where if we have maybe a customer or a handful of customers that we really want to convert, you know, we're gonna find out where they are and go to them and host the round table there and do this event specifically for them and the sales team that is trying to close the deal.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

No, I love that. I think that's really helpful for the audience and thinking that the most successful partners are the one taking a hybrid approach. It's not one or the other. And then thinking through mid-funnel versus bottom funnel and how we're going to market with these. So I imagine from a content strategy, you're you're approaching the content you're delivering on the webinars a little differently than the events, knowing it's it's kind of at different stages in the funnel. Anything you can share around best practices or or what you see work well, or any challenges you're seeing from a content perspective related to webinars or in person?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Um, you know, I mentioned getting those customer speakers into the round tables is so important. Um, it's interesting. Like you think it would be easier to get a customer to come on a webinar and participate in a presentation than it would be to get them to a live event. But it we actually find it to be a little bit of the opposite. And some of the red tape is that customers are not able to have something recorded that can be in existence forever. Um because then legal teams have to worry about how that content is maybe going to age over time. Um, but we find it to be a little bit easier to get those customers on site and have them speak to the customers live if it's not recorded. So that's kind of an interesting nuance that we found in doing this. Um I I mean, but on the reverse, in terms of like the ease of getting a webinar together, I mean you can get it put together and recorded ahead of time and maybe do like a live QA at the end, allowing you to do edits um to the session before it gets produced and shared with customers. So that there's certainly some advantages there. Um and uh the webinars we're doing with our partners are such extremely low cost. I mean, really, it's just an investment of time on the partner side to make those happen. And with enough promotional runway, we're finding them to be really successful still.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

It's funny you say that it's easier to get customers to come speak at the live events and the webinars, because I think just naturally you would almost think the opposite. Any any theory why is it like a premium experience? Is that is that's what's getting them there?

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Um, you you know, I it always seems to be like legal and PR seem to be the roadblocks when it comes to doing a a webinar. Um, but it seems like hey, if we're just like inviting them out to this event, and um we are in most cases offering to pay for their travel, which uh helps grease the wheels to make things happen. And then and then I think that the person can be a little bit more motivated to get their company to approve it if we're doing that. And um that's yeah, some of the hurdles that we've been able to overcome. And what's interesting is our partners are typically more successful at getting customers to come speak uh over Atlassian. Uh, and and I think it's because our partners have really invested the time to build these relationships with the customers and uh they're able to lean on them and say, like, hey, like we could really use your help here. Can you please come tell your story?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Now that's super helpful because I know a lot of partner marketers I talk to struggle to get customers, especially to digital events, and and maybe you know, some of them haven't been thinking through the opportunity with face-to-face. And I think the the legal PR makes a lot of sense, right? I mean, you you record something digitally, it's there forever. Whereas a lot of these events, you get the Chatham House rules kind of environment. It's it's kind of a more of a safer place to share if things aren't being recorded. And so, yeah, if you have legal PR kind of hurdles, maybe you can cross those with a face-to-face that you can't digitally. So I think that's an awesome takeaway. Austin, Austin, I want to ask you from an like event format perspective. I mean, we always know the the happy hours or the executive dinners. Like, what are you seeing work well currently for for Lassian or for your peers out there?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Um unique experiences, Rick. Um, we've been doing really a wide variety of things. Um, one coming up here in a couple of weeks that I'm really excited about. We've got a partner who has rented the Porsche racetrack in Atlanta. Um, they have 17 cars ready for us, um, where we're gonna be doing like a uh a lunch uh with a customer presentation, and then the customers are gonna go out and drive Porsches around the racetrack for a couple hours. Um I wish I was gonna be there because that's gonna be just a really unforgettable event on a Friday afternoon. Um, but that's not the only one. Um I mean we just funded a uh San Francisco Giants game. We funded uh some NFL suites recently. Um we've got uh an event coming up uh in about a week um for the um US Open tournament uh tennis tournament happening in Miami. Um so like we've been getting pretty creative to think like, okay, like what is something that people would just love to go to? Um, and and how can we like weave in um a customer story and and like a small presentation around um what is Atlassian or like what's the next um iteration of one of our products uh that's been released that we want our customers to know about um and and leveraging these unique events to get customers there. Um one thing that I didn't mention that's um not exactly at the partner level, but at the company level, Atlassian is on our second year of sponsoring the uh Atlassian Williams Formula One team. And with that, gives us a great opportunity for uh most of the races to invite customers to join us in the paddock club and really have a VIP experience where they get to have uh great food, behind the scenes um experiences, um, being in the F1 garage, um, sometimes meeting the drivers. And um it's like a very unique experience that most people will never get to see. And luckily, um, we have uh those races typically are Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and we've been able to secure Friday as like our partner customer race day, and partners can invite their customers, uh, typically C-level executives to participate in these races with us uh and have a you know a day and a half of you know living the F1 lifestyle.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

That is super cool. I gotta figure out how to get myself to one of those, and I'll I'll take you. Um, but uh so many questions in terms of like how you execute something like this. So obviously with the F1, it sounds like that's probably more corporate driven, but like the Porsche event or some of these other events, are you aligned with your uh events team from a production standpoint? Are you aligned with the field sales team from a, you know, getting prospects there? What does it take to put on something like this? And, you know, through the lens of somebody listening who's like, yeah, I'm a partner marketer. I want to do something really expensive experiential. That sounds like a lot to put together as opposed to a dinner somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yeah, that's true. But I don't think that a dinner anymore is going to pull people in. Um, you're you're gonna have to go bigger than that, something more unique, because um there's just so many companies offering a dinner that that's too easy to come by. So when you're thinking about you got to pull people away from their jobs and their responsibilities or maybe their families, um, you're you're gonna have to offer something more. And um, so in planning these, um, I would say like we've really leaned into our partners to say, like, hey, like what are some unique ideas that you have? And our partner marketing team also um tries to come to the table, hey, these are some things that we've seen that have been really unique, or what are some of the things that Atlassian has done um that we think would be a pull for customers and sharing those ideas with with partners. Um so, like as the ideas start to come together, um, and we have like confirmation that it's gonna happen in terms of we've got the venue, we've got the budget, um, we've got the customer speaker. You know, then we start taking it out to the sales teams on the Atlassian side to say, hey, we've got this partner who's planning this super cool event. Here are the details, here's how you can get involved. If you can get your customers there, I'm certain that you can come along as an account executive and participate in this event with them. And, you know, there's typically a lot of excitement on the AE side because they also want to be there because uh A, there's gonna be good uh attendance from customers and B, they want to participate in the event itself as well. So um they have motivation to want to be there. Um, so I I kind of find it it has to be more than just a dinner to get both the customers and the Atlassian account executives excited.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

It's interesting. So it if I heard correctly, is it more the partner that's running logistics? And then um, you know, from your side, how how involved is the partner marketing manager in terms of organizing the event and you know, pulling all this together?

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Yeah, I mean, a fair bit of weight is on the partners to make sure that they're bought in and they are pulling their own weight to drive registration for these types of events. Um, on the Atlassian side, like I'm helping them secure the budget, helping them um drive registration through our sellers, and um like also like helping put things together like the agenda and just kind of like being a sounding board for it, like is everything that the partner wants to do um in logical order and making sense for the best experience, uh, and making sure that timelines uh align to best practices to make sure that we have enough time to plan and promote and execute, uh, and then ensure that the partner is doing everything possible to do follow-up after the event and pulling in Elassian sellers post-event as well to talk about how did the conversations go at the event, what are the next steps for follow-up from here, and and who owns the follow-up. You know, is it gonna be the partner? Is it going to be the account executive? Um, and and making sure that you they're copying each other in or inviting each other to any of those calls that are going to be happening with each of the customers afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

I'd love to dig into that a little bit more. I just had a community call yesterday with a bunch of partner marketers, and the topic was proving partner marketing value, and it very quickly became a conversation around event lead attribution. And, you know, because you have the events marketing team, you have the partner marketing team, you have field sales, you have partner sales, you have partners. And it was just like this how do we, how do we measure success? So, you know, I'd love to know from your perspective, just you know, how are you, what are the best practices around attributing ROI and success to these partner events?

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Um, well, I would love to know how everyone else does it too, but I'll I can share what we're doing. Um for every event that we run, um, we have a record in Salesforce for that activity where it tracks what it was, when it happened, where it happened. And uh after it ends, we upload a list of domains of all the leads uh that we collected from that activity. Um and then for the next nine months after that activity, uh, anytime a partner opens up a deal registration, we're able to track and basically match if that deal registration matches one of those domains that we've collected from a recent event or marketing activity. And if so, then uh we have some reporting in Tableau that says, Oh, I see a match here. Uh, we've got this deal registration for say a million dollars, and there was this event that took place on this date, uh, and it matches them together. And it says, uh, this marketing activity influenced this deal registration. Um and uh we know as marketers that typically it's gonna take several touches to convert any one of these leads. Um, so let's say for that same example of uh deal registration for a million dollars, let's say it actually touched um that account five times over the last nine months. Um, then we basically split up that million dollars by in five ways, so $200,000 apiece, and we would say um you each one of these five marketing activities attributed um $200,000 of pipeline um from this deal registration. So we're tracking um pipeline, which is the deal registrations, but then we're also cl tracking closed bookings to see um what actually closed.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Very cool. Awesome. That that's super helpful. And we we got a lot of different answers on the call. And the the takeaway was it took it took a village, right? And and I think that was the key. What you just talked about is just making sure you're signing attribution correctly based on who's influencing where it's coming from and so forth. So, you know, that's that's the basis to a lot of this, is just proving success on what it is we're doing. How do you see this moving forward? I mean, I feel like you know, Atlastan's at the cutting edge of of digital technology, yet face to face is kind of a premium when it comes to the marketing services side of things. Is this continued? Is this grow? Does it scale? Where do you see it going next?

SPEAKER_00 22:03

I can only assume, Ricky, that it's going to continue to grow and continue down this direction of um smaller groups. In fact, like one thing that we're starting to see more recently is um partners doing like one-to-one customer site visits and saying, like, hey, customer, like we're we're gonna come to you, you know, we're gonna bring you uh, you know, a presentation that we want to share to give you an update on what we've been trying to talk to them about, um, or you know, trying to sell them, in other words. Uh, and then you know, after we do this event in your office, um, you'll come with us to a baseball game that night or something like that. So like there's like still that experience available, um, but it's going one-to-one to these customers because the deal is so important uh that the partner is going to go to them directly and try to uh give them the information that they need to make a decision on the product or solution that that they're offering. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, that's kind of an interesting trend that I've been seeing just over the past couple of quarters.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

I love it. You guys are doubling down on the high quality individual experiences. Now I'm thinking through my own. Maybe I should be doing like, you know, partner Vista will show up and we'll do a portion presentation one-on-one. So that's that's super cool. Justin, I I really appreciate you sharing all this. This is a really great inside look into what's working, working at the event side of Atlassian. Certainly, if you're an Atlassian partner, there's a lot to be excited there to get, you know, very senior sea level people in the room and drive some meaningful pipeline and experiences for customers.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Yeah, no, it's a great time to be here. Like um there's a reason why I've been in the seat now for just over 10 years because um, you know, some people say, like, oh, like I couldn't ever do the same thing at the same company for that long. Um, but it evolves so quickly and changes that it doesn't really ever feel like the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

No, that's great. It's great. Well, Austin, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it and thanks for sharing with everybody.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Yeah, for sure, Rick.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Anytime. That's it for this episode of Never Go to Market Alone. If you liked what you heard, subscribe, leave a review, and share with another GTM friend. For new episodes or to see how we're helping partner marketers succeed, visit partnervista.co because friends don't let friends go to market alone.