Email marketing terms
Affirmative Consent - A demand of the Senate Commerce Committee Report for the CAN-SPAM Act which requires the recipient make some active choice or selection. Remaining passive, such as not un-checking a pre-checked box or other default Web form, is not sufficient.
Ad click rate - The ad clicks/ad views ratio (can be multiplied by 100 to express the result as a percentage)
Auto-responders - An e-mail software called for sending automatic reply to an e-mail message. In email marketing they are also used to immediately provide information to prospective customers: to send confirmation that the message has been received, to confirm subscriptions, unsubscriptions, posts, etc.
A/B split - List division which generates two test groups, targeted on different offers.
Blacklist - Blacklists are lists of known spammers, which contain their IP addresses, and/or their ISP (Internet Service Provider). Such information helps spam filters block all messages coming from known spammers and/or their ISPs.
Bounce message - An automatic notification message indicating that the sent email message could not be delivered. Sometimes such messages include information on what went wrong.
Bounce rate - The number of undeliverable emails/ number of emails sent ratio (can be multiplied by 100 to express the result as a percentage).
Bulk email - Emailing also known as spam or junk-mail presupposing sending nearly identical messages to numerous recipients. Bulk email is also used to determine low cost email marketing service.
Call to action - A statement which represents the final stage of marketing campaign that summons the consumer to act.
Campaign - A coordinated set of individual email marketing messages delivered at intervals that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated e-marketing communication. The success of a particular campaign can be based on preliminary professional actions or previous successful campaign.
US CAN-SPAM Act - A law adopted on January 1st, 2004, that establishes requirements for those who send email with primary purpose of advertising or promoting a commercial product or service.
Click-through - The act of clicking on a banner or other ad, which takes the user through to the advertiser?s Web site.
Click-through rate (CTR) - The percentage of those clicking on a link out of the total number of who sees the link (can be multiplied by 100 to express the result as a percentage).
Commercial email - Any email sent for commercial purpose; for instance, an advertisement of product or service, an order confirmation, or a periodical subscription.
Conversion rate - The percentage of recipients of an email who take the marketer?s desired action whether it is to purchase a product or provide information (can be multiplied by 100 to express the result as a percentage).
CPM (or Cost per thousand) - The term CPM commonly refers to the cost of 1 name out of 1000 names on a given rental list. For example, a rental list priced at $250 CPM would mean that the list owner charges $.25 per e-mail address.
Cross-sell - It is a practice of suggesting related products or services to a customer who is considering buying something.
Demographic - A statistical characteristic of a human population (such as name, age, zip code or income) that is important for creating particular target-groups.
Direct delivery - The ability of an email program to deliver email directly to each recipient without using an intermediate mail server.
Double opt-in - An email subscription practice that presupposes the confirmation of new email subscribers to be added to an email distribution list for promotions, before the subscriber actually receives the information. The double confirmation is the best guarantee of user interest.
Double opt-out - An email subscription practice that presupposes the confirmation of present email subscribers to be removed from email distribution list for promotions. Spam operations frequently make it difficult to unsubscribe from lists, in order to keep their lists large.
Email Client - A program used by the user to read and send email messages.
Email Frequency - The intervals of sending the email newsletter or campaign. For example; monthly, bi-monthly, etc.
Email newsletter - An email sent to subscribers with information on a topic. Such newsletters are often used to keep in touch with existing customers or members.
Email server - A program running on a server that is constantly connected to the Internet. Unlike the email client the email server is responsible for transporting the email from the sender to the recipient?s email server. Email servers also store email data prior to delivery.
False positives - Email that is labeled as spam by a spam filter of the recipient, while not being spam. Note that email marketers may have different opinions of what is ?spam? than email recipients.
Feedback loop (Spam complaint) - The process by which the email client (ISP) of the receiver forwards complaints of emails marked as spam by recipients for removal by the sender.
Format - The way the recipient will see the message: as plain text, as HTML, as text and HTML (MIME) or as Microsoft?s rich text format.
Hard bounce - A returned to sender email message because the recipient?s address is invalid. A hard bounce might occur because the domain name doesn?t exist or because the recipient is unknown.
House list - A permission-based list of email recipients that you built yourself. Use it to market, cross sell and up-sell, and to establish a relationship with customers over time.
HTML Email - An email sent in HTML format, which allows displaying images the same as text.
List broker - Agent who arranges for the rental of lists by a list user on behalf of the list owner in return for a commission on the rental fee.
List building - Process of generating a list of email addresses for use in email campaigns.
List host - A service providing users with tools and facilities for distributing high volumes of e-mail and managing a list of e-mail addresses.
List manager - Owner or operator of opt-in email newsletters or databases. Also software used to maintain a mailing list.
Look and feel - Appearance, layout, design, functions, etc. not directly related to the actual message on an email.
ISP (Internet Service Provider) or IAP (Internet Access Provider) - is an organization or business that offers to consumers access to the Internet and related services.
Mail Bomb - The act of sending large numbers of large email messages to the same server or email address in an attempt to cause heavy loads which result in performance loss or server failure.
Mailer-daemon - Software in a mail server responsible for message delivery. When you get a MAILER-DAEMON@whatevercompany.com message in your inbox, the server at that company is informing you that it is returning your message because of some failure.
Mailing List - A set of email addresses (with or without additional information about subscriber) to which specific mailings are sent.
MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) - MIME is a method of encoding binary data into ASCII strings for the purpose of transferring files via email.
Open rate - The number of times that recipients opened the e-mail messages in HTML format (excludes plaintext e-mails)/number of e-mail that were delivered ratio (can be multiplied by 100 to express the result as a percentage).
Opt-in - The action of agreeing to receive emails from a particular company, group of companies or associated companies, confirmed by subscribing to an email list.
Opt-out - A mailing list which transmits emails to people who have not subscribed and lets them ?opt-out? from the list. Sometimes it is used to confirm that such emailing address is valid for further spamming it.
Open Relay - Some services which allow unauthorized users to send email through them.
Percentage - The result of multiplying any ratio by 100.
Personalization - The practice of writing the e-mail to make the recipient feel that it is more personal and was sent with him or her in mind. This might include using the recipient?s name in the salutation or subject line, referring to previous purchases or correspondence, or offering recommendations based on previous buying patterns.
POP/POP3 - (Post Office Protocol) - A mail protocol that leaves the user?s email on the server until he or she connects to the server and downloads it to the local machine. POP describes the method in which the email client communicates with the email server.
Privacy - The quality or condition of being free from unsanctioned intrusion. Person should be sure that the personal information provided will not be used in any other purposes then those the user needs.
Receiver - A device that handles the receipt of the email and delivery to the end recipient, usually identified by the domain at the end of the email address of the recipient in the ?To? line. (ie: aol.com)
Recipient - The user who requested the email from the sender, identified by the email address in the ?To? line.
Relevance - A term which describes the attitude of a particular email marketing message to the particular recipient at the particular time.
Rental list - A mailing list with strict time limits of using it. Such list is cheaper and often there is no permission of the email recipients to be added to such list.
Reputation - A social evaluation of recipients toward sender as sending “good” or “bad” email.
Segmentation - Process of dividing the population into target-groups by household criterion for preparation of mailing lists and direct mail advertising. Market segmentation allows a financial institution to identify the best prospects for new products and services, based on income, life-style, and other characteristics.
Sender - The person or organization responsible for transmitting the email, usually identified by the email address in the ?From? line.
Soft bounce - An email that gets as far as the recipient?s mail server but is returned back as undelivered due to a non-permanent reason
SMTP ( Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) - The most common standard for transferring e-mail across the Internet.
Spam or UBE (Unsolicited Bulk email) - Unsolicited bulk/junk email generally sent for commercial or political purposes, and always sent using an automated email program.
Spam complaint - See ?Feedback loop?
Spam filter - Software that filters emails, with the purpose of avoiding spam email to get into the client?s inbox or at least to be flagged as such.
Subject line - The field at the top of an e-mail template in which the title or subject of the e-mail can be typed. It is important to have a strong subject line, particularly if using e-mail for advertising or promotional purposes, or the recipient may simply delete the e-mail.
Targeting - The process of selecting a portion of the mailing list by a particular criterion or similar demographic values.
Teaser - A message, or part of a message, designed to arouse curiosity and interest and cause the reader to explore further, but without revealing too much detail about the offer being promoted.
Tracking - Collecting and evaluating the statistics with the purpose of measuring the effectiveness of an email or an email campaign.
Transactional or Relationship Email Message (by Commerce Committee Report, CAN-SPAM Act of 2003) - An email message that is primarily intended to facilitate, complete or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter in with the sender.
Trigger based messaging - A message correlated with an event or interaction with a previous message. Popular for customers who request more information
Unique click - The method of counting up the click (or several clicks) of a particular use only once and considered him/her a unique visitor.
Unsolicited commercial email (UCE) - A type of emailing that involves sending identical or nearly identical messages to thousands (or millions) of recipients without their permission on it.
Unsubscribe - An option that allows user not to get further emailings by clicking the ?Unsubscribe? link at the bottom of each email sent or by replying to the email with the word ?Unsubscribe? in the subject line.
Viral Responses - The number of recipients, who received the referral, opened it and clicked on a link.
Monday, September 3rd, 2007 : Email Marketing : No Comments