Cloud email security vendor IRONSCALES has announced the launch of its formal IRONSCALES @SCALE Partner Program to support and drive growth for their most dedicated partners.
Mark Fitzmaurice, SVP of Global Channel Sales at IRONSCALES
Today, cloud email security vendor IRONSCALES is formally announcing the launch of its formal IRONSCALES @SCALE Partner Program. It replaces an earlier program with one that has much more structure, and is focused on providing enablement for dedicated partners, rather than enlisting lots of new ones.
While there are many email security platforms on the market. IRONSCALES believes that theirs is distinct.
“The market we are in was defined by Gartner in late 2021 as integrated cloud email security,” said Mark Fitzmaurice, SVP of Global Channel Sales at IRONSCALES. “The technology is newer, and is behavior and intent based. Legacy email still has a huge phishing problem, particularly around Business Email Compromise issues.”
Fitzmaurice said that the IRONSCALES technology stands out because of its combination of artificial intelligence and human insights in the fight against phishing.
“Everyone now has machine learning, but our competitors don’t have the human element,” he stated. “We have a SOC team, and partners have the ability to review this for their customers. We also don’t compete against partners with this.”
The new partner program is designed to strengthen IRONSCALES’ enterprise presence.
“We have always had phenomenal technology, but we focused more on the SME and MSP markets,” Fitzmaurice stated. “We aren’t giving up on our SME roots, but we see a great opportunity today in the mid- to large-scale enterprise market. We are now fully focused on that mid- to large-scale market, and we need the channel to go after that.”
That being said, the channel is not new to IRONSCALES’ Go-to-Market model.
“We have a rich channel heritage, but we have made a firm stance in the last six months to be channel-centric,” Fitzmaurice said. “it’s not just fulfillment either. Strong channel relationships only exist if we feed the partners leads, and they work with customers they know well on our behalf.”
There was a channel program before this one, but it had a lot less structure.
“We essentially expanded it,” Fitzmaurice stated. “We had a channel presence but there is now a more formalized structure – both to IRONSCALES and partner deals. Some elements of this structure, like deal registration, are admittedly table stakes, but we also provide additional margins. Partners can make healthy margins when they bring the deal to us, and even when we bring the deal to them, they still make good margins.”
The level of margin is contingent on the tier in which the partner falls – Authorized, Gold or Platinum.
“We fund partners who made Gold and Platinum partners with special investments,” Fitzmaurice said. “We also focus on individuals – sales people and SEs who make three or more deals. We make sure they make considerable margin and provide reciprocation, where we give them leads and warm opportunities in other companies.”
Other benefits include incentives like complimentary NFR software licenses, SPIFFs, marketing funds, product demo support, up-to-date collateral and sales tools, joint marketing support and tools like the partner portal and deal registration training and accreditation.
“We have now formalized accreditations and made them easier to consume so the person taking one can get through it in about an hour,” Fitzmaurice said. “There are more videos, and more just-in-time learning, which can be gone through in five or ten minutes on a nuanced topic. There is also more structure now to the discounting. Partner marketing funds remain proposal based, but now whether the partner is Gold or Platinum is considered in approval. There is also a level of dedicated channel attention that wasn’t there before.”
The new program’s primary objective is to make the company’s dedicated partners highly profitable.
“We will recruit new partners, but the main goal is to make our long-term partners very successful,” Fitzmaurice said. “I’ve seen vendors out-recruit, so that everyone winds up trying to register the same opportunity. We won’t make that mistake because it means that there won’t be enough opportunity for those long-term partners.”
