Affiliate partner

Noun

[ak-ti-vay-shin]

The process of enabling and mobilizing the partners you've recruited to perform valuable activities for your business (e.g. sharing a link, making a referral, or closing a deal.) Many programs will define partners as “active” as soon as they’ve made a single successful referral or sale, but this can vary by program, so it’s worth figuring out what determines whether a partner is truly active in your program. Common partner activation signals include first deal registration, first closed deal, or generating revenue for a set number of months.

Partner activation is different from partner onboarding. Activation requires the active participation of the partner in the program, so it normally occurs after a partner has successfully onboarded.

‍Example: The newest partner to join RayCorp's partner program achieved activation three months after they finished onboarding when they successfully closed their first deal.

Noun

[ah-fill-ee-it mar-ket-ing]

Affiliate marketing is an advertising model in which a brand pays third-party content creators to generate traffic and leads for the brand's products or services. Content creators often run a blog or produce video content. They promote the company in their content and are given a unique link to drive their audience to. Then, they are paid a commission for the value of the traffic driven to that link or sales made through it.

Affiliate marketing is a useful tool for businesses who want to reach a wider, established audience through a creator the audience is already familiar with. Affiliate marketing is a billion-dollar industry, and it operates in both B2C and B2B spaces. Return on investment for affiliate marketing can be very high since the company essentially outsources marketing and selling to the affiliate.

Example: Gretchen posted links to a specific software in her blog. For every click that link got, the software company paid her a commission. Gretchen was taking part in affiliate marketing.