How Treford Built 44% Of Its User Base Through Partnerships
Oluwadotun Adefioye, Treford's Partnerships Manager, shares Treford's partnership framework and growth story.
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✅Week 1: A Funnel Vision issue where I share the growth story of a successful African product or project.
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Today is for Funnel Vision, where I dive into a specific campaign, project, or product by speaking with the marketing professional behind them.
In this issue, I look into Treford’s partnership framework with Dotun Adefioye, Treford’s Partnerships Manager.
What To Expect:
Types of partners at Treford
Pull vs push in partnerships
Partnership green & red flags
Treford’s affiliate program
Partnership during the No-Code Tech Summit
Three years ago, in 2022, I began my product marketing career by taking Treford’s product marketing bootcamp. A year later, I furthered my career by taking their product strategy bootcamp.
I first heard about Treford through a marketing community they had partnered with. Partnerships like that have been the bedrock of Treford’s success.
So, when I decided to do a case study on Treford, I knew I had to focus on their partnership strategy. I spoke with Dotun Adefioye, Partnerships Manager at Treford.
In our ~2-hour long conversation, we discussed what makes a partnership worth it and what red flags Treford looks out for.
Let’s dive in.
Types of Partnerships At Treford
I cannot dive into this article without outlining the types of partnerships that Treford engages in. It’s the foundation of their partnership framework.
Hiring Partners:
Treford considers itself as a resource company. Because of this, they need hiring partners for talent placement. People who take Treford courses likely want to practice the skills they learnt, so they need jobs.“What we do at Treford is to fill skill gaps for non-tech verticals. Once you’ve done that, you want a better life and a better-paying job that suits the skill you’ve learnt.”
For this, Treford has 2 major hiring partners: Propel & Hirefoster. These hiring partners help provide job opportunities for Treford graduates where possible. In some cases, Treford even earns cashback for successful job referrals. A win-win-win.
Community Partners:
Community partners are likely the most popular types of partners Treford has. If you belong to any no-code tech community in Nigeria, you’ve likely heard Treford mentioned.I ask Dotun to name some of Treford’s community partners and the list goes on. Marketing For Geeks is on the list. Dotun tells me that his goal with community partnerships is to create value for the community members, by giving discounted (or even free) access to their courses.
Learning Partners:
Learning partners help Treford deliver more value to its students. These partners are products students might use in their chosen learning paths.For the learning partners, they are introducing their product to the next generation of talents and establishing themselves as a standard tool for that niche.
For Treford, they are teaching their students how to use valuable tools that will aid them in the real world.
For the students, they’re getting free access to a tool they would have had to pay for otherwise.Once again, win-win-win. This is a trend in Treford’s partnership framework. Their most successful partnerships are those that are valuable to all 3 stakeholders: Treford, the students, and the partner.
Brands:
Finally, I ask Dotun about brand partnerships, which is the most vague on the list. There are 2 types of brand partners at Treford.The first are brands looking to use Treford as a CSR initiative. These partners reach out to Treford to sponsor courses for a number of people.
I ask Dotun how Treford chooses who to give these free courses to. It depends, he says. Sometimes, the partners have already selected beneficiaries of this scholarship. In some cases, they leave it to Treford; and Treford gives slots out to their audience.
“Sometimes, we use it to reward community partners. So, we can say ‘a brand has paid for 10 people to join a particular session. Do you have people from your community who can take advantage of these free slots?’ So, those brand partners come from a place of goodwill.”
The second type of brand partners are companies looking to upskill a large chunk of their workforce; in other words, B2B deals.
I ask Dotun which of the partnership types is most impactful for Treford. It depends, he says once again.
“It’s not straightforward, because each of these partnerships has impact in their own way. For example, our learning partners are a value-add for us that boosts our external perception.
If we were solely to judge by direct revenue growth, brand partnerships will be the most impactful. But if we were to judge by reach and awareness, community partners will take the cake. Because those are the people who help amplify our message.”
How Treford Approaches Partnership Discussions
Partnership is in itself a marketing form. This means, just like with other marketing channels, there is a pull and a push.
A push happens when you actively look for your audience and push messaging on them. A pull happens when you allow your audience find you by creating content they’ll look for or by positioning in places where they’d find you.
I ask Dotun about how Treford finds potential partners—do they push or do they pull? It’s a bit of both, as Dotun tells me.
“We have a partnership framework for people we’re trying to get in bed with. This includes hiring departments for startups and scaleups, government institutes, corporate bodies, and large-scale communities. So, we reach out to these people. But a lot of organisations also reach out to us.”
Some partners reach out to Treford because their mission or audience aligns with Treford’s. The initial message gives Dotun an initial hint as to whether the partnership is worth pursuing in the first place. If it’s worth entertaining, then Dotun sets up a first call with the potential partner. However, he says, this call isn’t a guarantee that the partnership will hold.
During the call, Dotun asks certain questions to ensure Treford and the potential partner are on the same page. The most important thing to check for, as Dotun tells me, is value. It’s the core of their discussions. Dotun needs to ensure, not just that Treford can provide value to the partner, but that the partner can provide value to Treford.
“We check for value. We don’t want people who just want to leverage the Treford name or who want access to our database of learners. So we ask “what can you offer us?” and “what can we offer you?”
One of the more unconventional approaches that Treford takes is to not sign official contracts or make announcements right away. In fact, Dotun says, there was a partner Treford had for 2 years before ever making an announcement or signing a contract.
“We typically have a probationary period before an official contract is signed. It varies from partner to partner. That period is for us to see how things turn out so we don’t waste each other’s time with the announcement.”
When both parties are satisfied with the viability and success of the partnership, Dotun hands off the partnership to the content team to prepare an official announcement.
“Our content team links up with theirs because the announcement has to be synchronised. The partners may share marketing materials with us and we may share ours with them. My part here is to connect both parties and act as a bridge to ensure they’re clear on everything they need. I sync with the partner to see if they have any dependencies or want us to make any corrections.”
Partnership Green & Red Flags
Dotun mentions that there are certain flags that Treford looks out for during the partnership discussions or probationary period. I ask him to tell me about them.
The biggest red flag, Dotun says, is when a partner only wants to gain value from Treford without having any to offer in return. If a partner only focuses on how Treford can help them without mentioning what they can offer (without being prompted), then it’s likely not a good partnership deal for Treford.
A second red flag is when a partner’s solution isn’t very clear. Dotun tells me a story about a potential partner whose product he could not understand even after 2 calls.
“If I don’t understand your solution or offering, how can I pitch it to stakeholders? For this partner, after 2 calls, I still did not have a grasp on what their product was about. So the conversation died off and we didn’t pick it up.”
A 3rd red flag is when a partner is too hasty to close a deal. That doesn’t give him enough time to do due diligence on the partner, and it can be a sign that the partner has something to hide.
Dotun’s due diligence lets him know if there is enough value for the partnership to be worth it. And the value doesn’t even have to be balanced, as Dotun tells me. As he puts it,
“What we’re getting from you doesn’t have to be equivalent to what we’re giving you. But we have to make it make sense in some way. And if you’re too hasty during this phase, it means you only want to use us.”
But enough about red flags. Let’s talk about the signals that let Dotun know a partnership will likely be great. Treford’s 2 top goals are growth and opportunities for its ecosystem. So, partnership green flags are centered on both goals.
“In terms of growth, will we be able to scale our user base with you? Will we be able to get revenue impact from what we’re dishing out? If we get in bed with you, will our messaging be amplified and by how much?”
For opportunities, Dotun looks out for offers that can create more value for its students and alumni. This is especially true for hiring and learning partners.
“To get opportunities for our ecosystem, we have hiring partners and even workspaces that our students & alumni can take advantage of. Same goes for learning and event partners who can give us free or discounted access to tools and tickets. If those are in place, that’s a green flag for us.”
Managing Partnerships
It is not enough to launch a partnership. Dotun is also in charge of managing relationships with partners and deciding when to invest more in certain partnerships.
Partnerships cost money, so Dotun must infer how much to give and whether it’s a worthy investment.

For example, Treford offers certain discounts to community partners, but some communities get higher discounts than others. Dotun says this is one of the things the probation period advises them on.
“We have a certain percentage discount that we are open to sharing across board with any partners. New partners never get more than that amount. But, depending on the kind of traction we get from the partner, we can increase the amount later on.”
The determining factor in whether a community gets an extended discount is the impact of the partnership on Treford’s numbers. If a partner has provided enough value, then Dotun reaches out to the finance team to see how much higher Treford can go.
“I start the conversation, but I can’t make the decision on my own. Once I’ve deemed that a partner has been beneficial and deserves more, I have a conversation with the community in question. After that, I reach out to finance to see what the financial implications are for us.”
In some cases, the outcome of the conversation isn’t even an increased discount. Treford’s finance team has capped discounts at a certain percentage, so Dotun is not always able to offer a higher discount.
In such instances, rather than a discount, Treford may add a cashback policy for the community partner. In other cases, they give them a one-time full scholarship to bestow on community members of their choosing.
Dotun views this as a reward to acknowledge the success of the partnership and the traction it has brought for Treford.
Not all partnerships are successful, though, so I ask Dotun what happens when a partner doesn’t bring the expected numbers. When this happens, Dotun explains, he revisits the conversations with said partner. In some cases, he may change the offer for the partner to find something that better aligns.
“If a partner isn’t bringing the expected value, it might mean what we’re offering them doesn’t really align with their audience. So we sometimes try to find a new offer that will benefit them more. For example, the live sessions might be too expensive for their audience, so we push self-paced courses instead.”
If, after all odds, a partnership proves completely unsuccessful, Treford may cut it off. In fact, after a review this year, Dotun let go of about 8 partners that hadn’t provided any traction and were unresponsive to his outreach.
Tracking Partnership Success
Of course, I can’t write about Treford’s partnership setup without touching on its impact on Treford’s numbers.
To understand Treford’s numbers, you must first understand its verticals. Treford has 2 of them.
The first is its live learning vertical, which includes bootcamps and masterclasses. The bootcamps are intensive 6-week programs that include class assignments, weekend (online) classes, exams, and case studies. These are Treford’s most expensive offering, starting from N200,000. This also means that it is Treford’s cash cow.
Treford’s live verticals are tracked manually and are more of a service than a product.
“The process for our live sessions is manual. We use forms to track the progress. Once you show interest by filling a form, our team approves the application and moves you to the sales department. You finalise payment with the sales department and get registered for the live sessions.”
Because the process is so manual, Dotun tracks success through partner codes and self-attribution. Each partner is given a distinct coupon code, which their members can submit while filling the application form. This lets the sales team apply discounts before payments.
Apart from codes, the forms also include a “How did you hear about Treford?” question, which lets Dotun know which channel a student came through, even if they didn’t use a coupon code.
The 2nd vertical, which Treford launched officially in October last year, is the self-paced vertical. For this, Treford has built a catalogue of courses on various topics, with some courses free and others paid.
Treford’s self-paced vertical is a product, rather than a service. This means that tracking is done through actual analytics tools. However, this tracking is handled by the product team, even though Dotun often creates reports on the numbers.
When Dotun needs to see the impact of partnerships on self-paced courses, he reaches out to the product team to provide the data he needs. When he needs to see the impact on live sessions, he reaches out to the sales team to see how many leads became paying students.
Treford has trained over 20,000 no-code professionals, with most of its revenue coming through live sessions. In 2024, about 44% of attendees at Treford’s live sessions came directly through partnerships. The success of Treford’s partnership framework is not up for debate.
Treford’s Affiliate Program
Early this year, Dotun contacted me (and other partners) to set up one-on-one calls. When I got on the call, he informed me that Treford was launching an automated affiliate program.
But this isn’t the first time Treford has launched an affiliate program. In fact, over the years, Treford has tested different variants of the program 3 times. Each time, they learnt something new that they improved on in the next version.
As Partnerships Manager, Dotun is in charge of managing the affiliate program. At the time of our initial interview, he told me that his goal was to create a stable structure and automate the program. It appears he has now done so.
The biggest problem with Treford’s previous affiliate program was that it was managed manually, in a similar model to Treford’s community partnerships. Dotun would manually assign codes to potential affiliates, referred students would enter the code when applying, and Dotun would check the code against his database. It was a tenuous process.
Apart from the manual effort of assigning and tracking codes, another stressor for Dotun was maintaining relationships with affiliates.
“The whole system wasn’t automated enough and that was the problem. We had affiliates who’d show interest, but they’d fall off along the line because they didn’t get any reminders. In fact, some people forget that they’re members of the program and they refer people without giving their affiliate code.”
Dotun’s last line rings through, especially for me. As a Treford alumnus, I’ve been a member of their affiliate program in the past. But I’ve never remembered to share my code when I recommend Treford to friends and acquaintances. This time around, Dotun wants to stay top-of-mind for affiliates.
All the earlier versions of Treford’s affiliate program were specifically created for alumni. Former participants in Treford’s programs often refer it to others. So, the previous affiliate programs were created to incentivise alumni to keep doing so.
“A lot of leads for our live sessions come from our alumni acting as ambassadors. People who have gone through our programs share it with others, whether we pay them or not. So we wanted to implement a program where they got a percentage commission back for doing this.”

Now, Treford’s latest iteration is expanding outside its alumni network. Dotun is looking to connect with niche influencers whose audience largely contains Treford’s ICP. I ask Dotun what criteria he intends to judge influencers by, and he says numbers are only a 2nd priority.
“Of course, numbers are important. But because of our niche, we’re more concerned with the topics you speak on and the audience you have. I plan to look for people who are recognised as voices in certain niches—people who would recommend something and their audience trusts them enough to check it out. So I won’t look for people with audiences of 100k people where only about 600 are actually active. I’ll look for people who have 2k followers, but those 2k followers actually trust them and fit our audience.”
No-Code Tech Summit
Treford’s longest-term community partner is the Non-Tech In Tech community, a Slack community of professionals working in no-code verticals in tech startups. In 2022, Treford partnered with Non-Tech In Tech (NTIT) to create a first-of-its-kind summit for no-code professionals in Nigeria. The 2-day event includes a full-day seminar as well as an awards ceremony.
The summit was a hit and has since become an annual hallmark event, holding almost every year since then. I ask Dotun what Treford’s goal is with the event, and he tells me it’s a long-term game.
“The tech industry is very big. And over 60% of the tech industry is made up of no-code tech professionals. But somehow all the flowers of the industry go to the developers. So, we’re trying to get non-technical people their accolades. That’s the idea of the summit; to create a gathering of individuals in these niches and give them recognition.”
But that is not to say that Treford is completely selfless in organising the event. A nice side benefit for them is that they can “preach the gospel of Treford,” as Dotun puts it. During the event, Treford sets up a booth and gives discounted access to attendees. After the event, Treford often records higher website visits. But as Partnerships Manager, that isn’t Dotun’s high point. For him, it’s the new partnerships that appear after the summit.
Events of this size often require a village to organise. So it’s certainly great luck (or strategy) that the summit has joint hosts. Since the summit is jointly hosted, its partnership team is a marriage of sorts, made up of members of both Treford’s and NTIT’s partnership teams.
This joint partnership team is split into 3. There’s a team in charge of identifying potential partners, another in charge of handling conversations and managing relationships with partners, and the last in charge of closing deals and ensuring the partners receive all the terms of their agreement.
Dotun belongs to the sub-team that handles conversations with partners. Because of this, he doesn’t have as much insight into how the team finds event partners. However, he tells me that the No-Code Tech Summit has about a 60% retention rate for sponsors. This means they often have repeat sponsors because they’ve maintained good relationships with them.
Dotun tells me that the biggest issue when finding new partners is finding the details of key individuals to have conversations with. It’s one thing to have a list of potential partners, he says. It’s another to know who to talk to in those organisations. But once they get past that obstacle, the rest of the process feels like Dotun’s day-to-day at Treford.
The Culture at Treford
Because Treford’s live sessions hold during the weekends, a lot of their employees have to give up weekends to manage sessions. Program managers often use their personal phone lines to manage communications with attendees and partners. It’s the kind of environment that one would expect to see described as toxic or overwhelming.
So, while doing preliminary research for this article, it was a shock to me that most of Treford’s employees had been there for years. Treford has a small team that, by all indicators, is closely knit and strangely motivated.
Dotun has spent almost 2 years at Treford, a short term compared to colleagues who have been with Treford for 3-4 years. I already suspect the reason for Treford’s employee retention rate, but I ask Dotun regardless. He confirms my suspicions.
I’ll let Dotun tell it in his own words.
“I’d say it starts from the business model. The company is very people-centered. We put the people first before the business. Of course, the business is a business. Growth is important. Revenue is important. But at the core of it, it’s the people. Treford wants to impact people; including its own employees. Making money is just a side benefit.
There’s this startup mentality you expect, where startups have this immense pressure to deliver in tight deadlines. But at Treford, you’re able to grow into your role and actually learn. We’re supposed to be a resource partner, so even employees are learning while on the job. We’re getting the kind of experience that people pay to get. That learning culture shows in everything that we do.”
Throughout the conversation, it is immensely clear to me that Dotun (and the rest of the Treford team) truly believe in what they’re doing. It’s rare to see a team so aligned in its mission and it’s likely the reason for their success so far.
That alignment extends beyond the team, and it’s embedded in how Treford builds partnerships. Treford’s partnerships are an extension of their core philosophy — people first, numbers second.
And that’s it. A look into how Treford has built the careers of over 20,000 professionals by leveraging strategic partnerships, proving that when partnerships are rooted in shared values, their impact goes far beyond the bottom line.
You can see more of Dotun on LinkedIn.
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Coming Up
In the next Funnel Vision issue, I’ll dive into Cenoa’s controversial competitor marketing strategies. I’m looking forward to writing this; I had an enlightening conversation with Feranmi Ajetomobi, Cenoa’s Country Manager, last weekend.
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