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Noun

[ah-ly-ince]

In business, an alliance occurs between two companies that work together on mutually beneficial projects. These agreements are also called strategic alliances, and they usually involve cooperation in the development, creation, marketing, and sale of products or services or other objectives.

Alliances can either be joint ventures, equity strategic alliances, or non-equity strategic alliances. Joint ventures occur when two parent companies launch a child company together. Equity strategic alliances are created when a company purchases equity in the other. Non-equity strategic alliances are when two companies combine their resources and capabilities to reach set goals together.

Example: The well-known partnership between Starbucks and Barnes&Noble is an example of a strategic alliance. By placing Starbucks stores inside Barnes&Noble stores, each company shares the cost of the space while providing complementary services to customers.

Noun

[ack-ti-vay-shun ray-t]

An activation rate is a metric used by companies to determine when their users are achieving value. Your partner program’s activation rate is the percentage of partners that sign up for your program that gain or add value in the program. What is defined as activation can differ between programs, but it's often a first sale, first referral, or revenue achieved over a set number of months — something that indicates the partner is likely to stay profitable or engaged.

To determine your activation rate, you can take the number of partners who successfully met your activation metric, divide it by the total number of partners who joined your program, and multiply that result by 100.

Also see: Activation

Example: Soltech measured their activation rate to be 30%, which was lower than their target of 60%. They decided to revamp their partner onboarding process to better prepare their partners to sell.