Smokeball, founded in Australia and operating in the U.S. since 2012, and the UK since 2023, is a practice management software company that empowers small to mid-sized law firms (between 1–50 lawyers) with intuitive tools and resources.
Unlike many traditional legal tech providers, Smokeball is designed to be an all-in-one solution that empowers law firms to manage every aspect of their practice seamlessly. However, they also recognize that certain areas of law or unique workflows require specialized tools, and strongly believe in giving law firms the freedom to choose and integrate a variety of solutions to best fit their needs.
Over the past few years, Smokeball has shifted its strategy to focus on open integrations, accessible APIs, and a robust partner program. This new approach sets them apart from competitors in a rapidly evolving legal tech market.
The challenge
In its early years, Smokeball listed integration partners on a single “Integrations” page on its website. With this system, it was extremely difficult to:
- Keep partner listings updated
- Present clear value to prospective and existing partners
- Scale the integrations program to meet the needs of a global user base (Australia, US, and the UK)
- Promote partners to customers who spend their time logged into Smokeball’s platform
Furthermore, despite receiving constant inbound requests to integrate with Smokeball, the manual upkeep of the integrations webpage hampered growth. Smokeball was looking for a partner marketplace solution that would fit seamlessly into their marketing and technical workflows and enable scalable growth with their program.
Why Partner Fleet?
When Smokeball began building out its open APIs, the team recognized it would be impossible to scale the partner ecosystem through manual updates alone.
After surveying several marketplace vendors — including those with complex technical implementations and expensive solutions — Smokeball discovered Partner Fleet: an out-of-the-box, SaaS-focused marketplace solution.
They appreciated that Partner Fleet offered:
- Ease of use: a simple, no-code setup for partner listing pages drastically reduces the time it takes to onboard and showcase new partners.
- In-app marketplace: partner content that could be pulled from a single source for Smokeball’s public website and logged in environments.
- Brand fetch: automated partner content population that eliminates the need to build each listing from scratch, saving significant time and effort.
- Analytics & lead tracking: real-time visibility into visitor traffic and lead submissions that helps measure partner performance and return on investment.
- Multi-region capability: one centralized back end that offers solutions to multiple regions worldwide (US, UK, and Australia), with localized experiences.
“It’s so easy to set up partners with a new listing page. I’ve been able to pass the buck internally, and I love the real-time analytics.”
—Chelsey Lambert, VP of Partnerships at Smokeball
Implementation & key features
Smokeball launched its dedicated Smokeball Marketplace on Partner Fleet, quickly populating it with existing and new partners.
These key elements of Partner Fleet help Smokeball’s partner team drive the results they’re looking for:
- Public marketplace: Smokeball was able to quickly modify their existing integrations page to a high-quality public marketplace.
- In-app marketplace: They launched their first ever in-app marketplace, offering partner details to customers while logged into the platform (which now drives as much partner engagement as the public site).
- Live data & analytics: Smokeball’s team can see real-time metrics like pageviews and conversion rates.
- Lead generation & conversion: With strong conversion rates from the public marketplace, Smokeball now delivers a steady stream of inbound leads to partners.
- Seamless partner onboarding: Through Partner Fleet’s user-friendly interface, Smokeball’s team and their partners can quickly build out new listings, update content, and highlight integrations in different geographic regions.
Smokeball’s incredible successes using Partner Fleet
Not only was the Smokeball partner team able to grow their listings and optimize the marketplace experience, but they’re driving exponential increase in use and real ROI to partners.
Here are some of the highlights:
1. Rapid expansion of integrations
- Over 3X partner footprint growth: Smokeball surged from 15–20 U.S. integrations and 12 Australian integrations to 90+ listings worldwide—with a goal of 200 by June 2025.
2. Massive increase in engagement
- 4X higher public marketplace traffic: Smokeball’s public-facing marketplace has grown 400% since launching on Partner Fleet.
- 8X total traffic growth (including their public + in-app marketplaces): In-app listings now generate as much traffic as the public site—doubling overall engagement and yielding a 8-fold increase in total traffic compared to their previous solution.
3. Revenue impact for partners
- 119% of target partner revenue: Smokeball’s partners receive steady, passive leads, culminating in 119% of their partner revenue goals.
- 87% growth for one key partner: VXT (a lawyer-focused VOIP system) boosted revenue by 87% with minimal co-marketing—just fun video content and lead exchanges.
4. Operational efficiency
- Hands-free partner management: Partner Fleet’s built-in lead flow means Smokeball’s team can “set and forget,” freeing them to focus on strategic growth rather than manual updates.
“I just took a 7-week holiday to Europe. I can see that whilst I was away, the leads continued to roll in for our partners without my assistance and in turn our partner-generated revenue is 119% to target for this financial period. Without our Marketplace, it would take a lot more human intervention to generate leads for our Partners. I keep joking that this surely means I can take a 7-week holiday every year…!”
—Emma Erlach, Head of Strategic Product & Partnerships at Smokeball Australia
Smokeball closed out at 119% of its partner revenue target for the financial period with very little hands-on partner management. The marketplace’s “set-and-forget” functionality dramatically reduces administrative overhead and helps scale partnerships without constant manual intervention.
Future plans
Smokeball’s next phase is to deepen marketplace functionality and further align with product development. Key areas include:
- Developer experience: Streamlining how partner developers interact with Smokeball’s APIs and share product updates through a potential portal.
- Global localization: Continuously refining marketplace listings so partners and users in different regions (Australia, US, and the UK) see relevant integrations, categories, and pricing.
- Revenue attribution: Building advanced tracking to measure and attribute revenue to specific partners and lead sources.
Start building your marketplace on Partner Fleet today!
By leveraging Partner Fleet, Smokeball has transformed an outdated integrations page into a global partner ecosystem. In doing so, the company has driven new revenue streams, boosted partner satisfaction, and freed up valuable time for its partnership team.
If you want to replicate Smokeball’s success, Partner Fleet is your go-to solution for building a scalable, high-impact marketplace that drives revenue, fuels innovation, and delivers real value to customers. In 2025, Smokeball is poised to continue expanding and giving law firms greater choice, all while showcasing the limitless opportunities unlocked by Partner Fleet.
