Hello Readers!
Welcome to chapter 11!
This chapter is the continuation of our free email marketing course where we have been sharing the role of email marketing in any business and how you can create lead-nurturing email campaigns.
In the chapter, we have a shared list of email marketing jargon from A to Z that every marketer, as well as the businessman, should know. These are the email marketing terms and definitions that will keep you updated and understand the marketing language while creating online email campaigns.
Marketers do like to use marketing lingo/jargon. Also, there are many common email terms that may sound weird in the first place like another language.
However, with this list of business email terminology, you can become pro and discuss the email marketing strategies without any fear.
Have a look!
A
Acceptance Rate: The percentage of email messages that are accepted by the mail server. Though email is accepted by the server doesn’t mean it will get into the inbox.
A/B Split Test: It is an optimization technique in email marketing also known as the Split technique where a campaign is divided into copies (the main copy is called as Control and the other is Variation (what are you actually testing with changes) with the same agenda to target the audience.
ALT tags: Part of the code that creates/describe an image in the form of text.
Animated Gif: An image that changes and moves, like animation but with only a couple of seconds. Animated Gifs Images can be used in emails.
Attachment: A file that is attached to an email.
Authentication: As in email authentication, it is encoded data that determines where the email came from and which server relayed the information. This is the data encoded into every email message.
Autoresponder: An automated message or series of messages. Sometimes called a “drip campaign”.
Acceptable Spam Report Rate: The rate at which your campaign can be reported as SPAM without harming your sender reputation. Anything over 0.1% (1 report per 1000 emails) will get a warning.
B
Blacklist: A list that denotes email senders (IP addresses) as spammer IPs, impeding email deliverability.
Bounce Rate: The rate at which your emails are not delivered. There are two types of bounces, hard and soft. An acceptable bounce rate is less than 5%.
Bulk Mail: Large-scale email marketing sends in which the same content goes to a large group of people.
Bulk Folder: The polite term for the spam folder.
Behavioral Email: A way to customize which email messages a subscriber get based on how they have behaved in the past.
Broadcast: It’s quite similar to an “email blast”. When you send out the same email message to everyone on your list at a larger scale all at once.
C
CAN-SPAM: Short for ‘Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003’. It’s the American law designed to reduce spam from commercial emails that outlines rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, provides email recipients with the right to make you stop emailing them.
CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Law): The Canadian equivalent of CAN SPAM law. CASL went into effect in June 2014.
Clicks Per Delivered: A percentage measure of the number of clicks divided by the number of emails delivered to the intended inbox.
Clicks Per Open: A percentage measure of the number of clicks divided by the number of opens.
CPM (Cost Per Thousand): CPM in email marketing commonly refers to the cost per 1000 names on a given rental list.
CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage (the number of unique clicks divided by the number that were opened) of recipients that click on a given URL in your email.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of recipients who respond to your call-to-action in an email marketing campaign or promotion. This is one measure of your email campaign’s success.
Cinemagraph: A very short looping movie that can be embedded into emails and on websites.
Complaint Rate: A percentage of how many subscribers marked an email message as spam.
Contact List: Another term for your subscriber list or “mailing list”.
CSS: A markup language used to design emails and web pages. Stands for “Cascading Style Sheets”.
D
Dedicated IP: In email marketing, it refers to an IP address from which only you send an email.
Double Opt-In: The recommended method of building an email list that requires subscribers to confirm they are opt-in by clicking a link in a confirmation email or responding to the confirmation email in some other way.
Dedicated Server: An upgrade from a shared server. Refers to the computer server used to send email campaigns.
Deliverability: The art and science of getting emails from a sender all the way to subscribers’ inboxes.
Delivery Rate: What percentage of emails sent from the sender actually reach subscribers’ inboxes.
Deploy: Another way to say “send”, as in “the email campaign was deployed”.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): An email authentication technique that links a domain name to an email message. Used to verify an email’s authenticity and to increase deliverability rates.
Drip Marketing: Usually refers to automated marketing that sends a series of messages to prospects over time. Autoresponders are a type of drip marketing.
Dynamic Content: A personalization technique that swaps different content into pre-defined parts of an email message based on a subscribers’ preferences, location or past behavior.
E
Email Campaign: An email or series of lead nurturing emails designed to accomplish an overall business marketing goal.
Email Filter: A technique used to block email based on the sender, subject line, or content of an email.
Email Sponsorships: Buying ad space in an email newsletter or sponsoring a specific article or series of articles. Generally, advertisers pay to have their ad inserted into the body of the email.
Email Analytics: All the analytics and metrics used to measure email campaigns.
Email Appending: It is the list enhancement technique also known as a “data overlay” where email names are appended unto a customer data usually by a database company.
Email Campaign: Each time you send a promotional message to your subscribers as per your marketing strategy, is called an email campaign.
Email Client: Generally a subscriber earned through email campaign is termed as an email client.
Email Domain: The company’s domain name, website or URL from which an email is sent from is termed as an email domain.
Email Harvesting: This is a spammer technique to find or steal people email addresses through online and adding it to a list without email holder’s permission.
Email Phishing: Email phishing is a fraud way to ask the recipient to give their bank account login or other sensitive information by saying something has gone wrong with their accounts. This is a spam way to collect sensitive information given by the unknown email recipient.
Email Queue: The cluster of email messages that are all set to go and waiting for email service provider to actually deploy them.
Email Shares: This is the number of email counts to determine how many times of emails have been shared or posted on social media.
Engagement: This is an umbrella term used in marketing strategies that cover every possible interaction an email subscriber can have with messages, like opens, clicks, shares and more.
ESP (Email Service Provider): The company that provides software and hardware to manage your list and deploy and track your email messages.
F
False positive: A false positive is a situation occurs when a legitimate permission-based email is incorrectly filtered or blocked as spam.
Forwards: It is a count of how many times your subscribers forwarded your email to their contacts.
G
Gif (Graphic Interchange Format): An image format commonly used online.
Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a free and most-widely used tracking software provided by Google; to track interactions with an email campaign and how many have arrived at your landing page/website through the campaign.
Gravestoning: An action taken by major ISPs like AOL, Gmail, and Comcast where an inactive email is changed into a spam trap.
Grey Mail: A technical term refers to email messages subscribers that are no longer interested in your product or services, but have not unsubscribed from and would not mark as spam.
H
Hard Bounce: It is the failed delivery of an email due to a permanent reason like a non-existent, invalid, or blocked email address.
Honey Pot: It is a planted email address by the organization to combat spam whenever they identify the sender as a spammer.
House List (or Retention List): One of your most valuable marketing assets, it’s a permission-based list that you built yourself with opt-in subscribers.
HTML Email: Sending HTML email makes it possible to get creative with the design of your emails.
Header: The top section of an email message.
HTML5: A markups language that allows email coders and designers to do cool things like email carousels, video embeds, and more.
I
IP Warmup: This is a reputation building technique by sending a progressively increasing number of emails out of an IP address.
Image Blocking: The default setting in many email clients that blocks images from being shown.
Inactives: This is the list of subscribers who have not opened or clicked your emails in a month or more.
Inbox Placement Rate: It is a percentage that expresses how often the emails of your email marketing campaign you send actually reach subscribers’ inboxes.
J
Jpeg (Joint Photographic Experts Group): A common file format of images.
L
Landing Page: Its a page of the website linked in your email where subscribers land after the clicking the link.
Levels of Authentication: A method for building up a sender’s character, and guarantee the sender is permitted to send from a given domain.
List Segmentation: Selecting a target audience or group of individuals for whom your email message is relevant. A segmented list means a more targeted and relevant email campaign, thus a higher response rate and less unsubscribes and spam reports.
List Broker: A professional who networks and makes deals with list owners and email marketers. List brokers typically take a percentage of however much the email marketer is paying to buy or rent a list.
List Churn: It is an umbrella term for all the ways people such as changing their email address, not opening emails anymore, or any other cause of inactivity; that can disengage from a list.
List Fatigue: Declining engagement that occurs over time after an email list has been mailed to too frequently.
List Growth: It is the list of the mailing list that grows after adding new subscribers from the email campaign.
List Hygiene: This is the way to keep mailing list information is up to date including removing unsubscribes and inactive.
List Rental: It is an arrangement between email marketer and companies owning mailing list where marketer rent the same list from owners for their own benefit.
M
Marketing Automation: This is the simplest form of marketing setting where the email campaigns are operated send automatically. Autoresponders are an example of marketing automation.
MIME (Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions): This is an extension of the original email protocol that allows people to send different file formats back and forth.
O
Open Rate: It is the percentage of emails opened sent an email campaign.
Opt-In (or Subscribe): It is a form of trigger to choose or subscribe the email list where you can receive email communications from a particular company, website or individual. In short form, it is the way to give them a permission to send you emails or newsletter.
Opt-Out (or Unsubscribe): When a subscriber chooses not to receive email communications from the sender anymore, and requests removal from your email list.
Onboarding: It is part of email campaigns where subscribers (especially new clients) are educated or thanked to choose services; for example welcome emails.
Opt-in Box: The set-off areas on your website where people can opt-in to your list. Note that the opt-in form itself is embedded into the web page for opt-in boxes.
P
Personalization: It is the way to add the personal touch while directing emails to the subscribers. It can be in many forms, such as addressing the recipient by name, referencing past purchases, or other content unique to each recipient.
Physical Address: The physical, street address of the company sending the email, usually found in the footer of an email. Its inclusion is a legal requirement for all email marketing.
Plain Text Email: An email sent without HTML. It’s a plain text for better readability.
Privacy Policy: A clear description of a website or company’s policy on the use of information do’s and don’ts with the data.
Pre-Header Text: Part of an email message that is always text and appears right below the subject line when viewed in an inbox.
Png (Portable Network Graphics): A file format commonly used in email messages.
Preview Panel: It is the top section of an email that is visible from the inbox dashboard view.
Promotional Emails: The emails send to promote the product or services.
R
Read or Open Length: Its a measurement or length of time a person from opening to closing it.
Rental List (or Acquisition List): It is a mailing list of prospects or a targeted group of recipients who have opted for your email service.
Re-engagement Campaign: An email campaign sent to try to turn inactive subscribers into active and re-engage.
Rendering: How an email message appears in each subscriber’s inbox.
Responsive Design: Generally the mobile-friendly email template design that will appear properly on mobile devices, or any other device.
Retention: A type of marketing that is focused on getting existing customers or clients to do more business with you, rather than finding new customers or clients.
Revenue Per Email Sent: A metric that shows how much you’ve earned per each email you sent out.
S
Sender Score: A free service of Return Path where a reputation rating from 0-100 for every outgoing mail server IP address is provided. The Sender Score helps mail servers to check and decide what to do with your emails. A score of over 90 is good.
Shared IP: It a less costly IP address than dedicated IP addresses from which people can send emails from the server.
Signature File: It’s a short tagline of text at the end of emails that identifies the sender’s information such as company name, physical address, and contact information.
Single Opt-In: A single opt-in list is created when users sign up for email communications but don’t confirm the action. This means they can be signed up for a list by someone else, and as such is not a recommended way to build a healthy email marketing list.
Soft Bounce: A soft bounce is the failed delivery of an email due to a temporary issue, like a full mailbox or an unavailable server.
Spam or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email): The emails sent to someone who is not in subscriber mailing list or has not given permission to send emails.
Spammer: Anyone who sends unwanted emails.
Spam Cop: It’s a paid service owned by companies to identify as well as monitor the spam addresses.
Spam Trap: An email address used by anti-spam entities to trap spammers.
SPF: Short for ‘Sender Policy Framework’, it’s a DNS record that says on whose behalf an IP or domain sends the email.
Scraping: A spamming technique to find any email address on the internet by misguiding mentioning different addresses.
Signature File: A short default file at the end of email messages. Signature files usually include contact information.
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol): The language or “protocol” servers use to talk to each other as they send emails around the world.
Statistical Relevance: A term used in A/B split-testing to identify the winner of the testing.
Subject Line: An email message’s equivalent of a headline, or title.
Subscriber: The people who have signed up to receive your email messages.
Subscriber Value: How much a subscriber is worth to you financially like subscriber is just a visitor or purchase from your company as well.
T
Targeting: Similar to segmenting an email list. A “targeted list” usually means a list of email subscribers who have very similar interests or behaviors.
Thank You Page: It is a kind of welcome page where the campaign greets on the arrival of new subscribers when they opt the services or when they made any purchase (especially in e-commerce).
Throttling: An email deployment technique that sends email messages out in multiple batches, instead of all at once. This improves deliverability rates and server load management.
Transactional Emails: Transactional emails are emails sent to confirm orders, reservations, and anything else. They have higher engagement rates than promotional emails.
Triggered Emails: A form of marketing automation that are pre-scheduled by the marketer. They are sent whenever a specific event happens or a specific period of time has passed for example birthday emails, new product launches, new blog updates, etc.
U
UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email): A fancy term for spam.
Unique Clicks: It is the percentage of individual unique subscribers who have clicked on the links mentioned in the emails. These are the visitors who have landed or clicked on your website for the first time.
Unique Opens: Some subscribers will open an email more than once. Unique opens shows how many individuals have opened your emails, not just how many times your emails were opened.
Unsubscribe Rate: A percentage that shows how often people are opting out of your email campaigns. Unsubscribe rate is usually (but not always) calculated on a campaign by campaign basis.
W
Whitelist: It is kind of approval provided to IP addresses to convey email to a recipient.
Wearables: The following stage after cell phones. Wearables would incorporate Apple’s iWatch, Google glass and different items.
Welcome Emails/Welcome Series: An email message or a progression of email messages sent to new supporters.
There are “n” number of terms or glossary that marketers should know. We have tried to pin down the necessary business terms that can help you to understand the functioning of email marketing campaign. Please let us know if we have missed any important term in the list. We would be happy to add them in the chapter.
In the next and last chapter of email marketing course, we will be sharing about Most frequently email marketing questions asked by marketers.
