Email marketing terms A through Z
A/B test:
Also known as split testing, an A/B test is when you test two different campaigns against each other with a portion of your audience. In some scenarios, like split testing your subject line, you can conduct a threeway, or A/B/C spilt test to see which performs better.
Allowlisting:
Formerly known as whitelisting, allowlisting is the practice of explicitly authorizing a specific domain and sending IP to have access to a particular privilege, like delivering emails. Allowlisting is an important authentication step and can be described as a way to ensure internal delivery or as creating a safe sender list.
Alt text:
The text that appears in place of an image before it’s downloaded in the inbox, or if the user has images turned off. While adding alt text to your image file is not required, it is highly recommended because it is the text that visually impaired people will read instead of seeing the image. For this reason, the alt text should simply describe what the image is.
API:
Application programming interface (API) is an interface that allows communication between two different applications via software.
Assets:
In relation to tiered or distributed teams accounts, assets are your collection of templates, campaigns, images, and documents which can be shared to subaccounts of your choosing.
Audience:
All of the contacts in your account are collectively referred to as your audience. Additionally, using some of your contacts to create a group can be referred to as a “target audience” when chosen as recipients for a campaign or automation.
Authentication:
Refer to ‘email authentication’ below.
Automated workflow:
The Automation feature lets you automatically send targeted emails to your audience based on actions that they’re taking (like signing up or clicking links in your emails) and important milestones in their customer journey (such as birthdays, anniversaries, or account updates). A ‘workflow’ is the journey of your contacts through the automated experience, including the initial trigger event and any subsequent mailings. There are multiple trigger types available including: signup, date-based, field change, and two link click options.
Bounce:
An email message that doesn’t get delivered to a recipient’s inbox is referred to as bouncing. A bounced status represents emails that were kicked back as undeliverable by the receiving server. Generally, there are two types of bounces:
- Soft bounce: A soft bounce is a temporary failure due to an outage, full mailbox, or another issue that should resolve itself. Delivery is reattempted every 30 minutes over a 30-hour period before giving up on reaching the receiving server. At this point, the bounce becomes a “hard bounce”.
- Hard bounce: A hard bounce represents a permanent obstruction to email delivery, such as a nonexistent email address, a block due to content, or the server is rejecting your email as junk mail or spam. Hard bounces are deemed invalid, moved to ‘Error’ status, and they won’t be emailed to again unless you reactivate them.
Best practices:
In general, best practices account for professional procedures that are widely accepted as being the most effective or correct for the current time. In email marketing terms, best practices represent the guidelines one should follow that will ensure the most effective results in an inbox.
Branching:
In relation to automated workflows, branching is the ability to split the path of a workflow. Branching can only happen after the first campaign is sent in an automation, it creates an additional action (or non-action) based on whether or not a contact opens or clicks in the previous campaign.
Campaign:
A marketing email sent to multiple recipients at once. A campaign can also be referred to as a mailing, and the two terms are used interchangeably.
CAN-SPAM:
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) is a U.S. law that regulates commercial email. The CAN-SPAM law requires that senders must be a truthful subject using a legitimate email address, senders must also provide a way for all recipients to opt-out of future emails, as well as have a physical mailing address.
Columns:
In the drag and drop campaign editor, the styling of the body of the email (excluding the header and footer), allowing for a single or multiple columns to which you may drag content blocks.
Contact:
A single member of your audience, uniquely identified by an email address.
Contact status:
The receiving status of a given contact. Your account utilizes these three status options: Active = Ready to receive mailings; Error = Unable to receive mailings at this time; Opt-out = Contact has been unsubscribed from receiving any mailings.
Content block:
In the drag and drop campaign editor, a draggable option containing viewable content like text, an image, or a button.
CSV file:
A comma separated values (CSV) file is a delimited text file that uses a comma to separate values. Each line of the file is a data record. Each record consists of one or more fields, separated by commas.
Custom URLs:
A custom URL is created by pairing a privately-owned domain (usually your business) with one of your account landing pages, so that your viewers will see that the landing page URL is associated with your domain/business. Custom URLs are only available to tiered accounts.
CYO:
Code your own (CYO), in reference to email creation, means the capability to build an email from scratch with your own HTML code instead of using a standard or blank template with the drag and drop editor. This type of mailing is fully self-serviced.
Deliverability:
In reference to email deliverability, it represents an ESP’s ability to deliver emails to their subscribers’ inboxes. Maintaining good email deliverability is one of the keys to having a positive sender reputation.
DKIM, DMARC & DNS:
Refer to ‘email authentication’ below.
Drag & Drop Editor:
The built-in software tool that is used in your account to create email campaigns.
Dynamic content:
The ability to use your audience members’ information to determine the content that is delivered to their inboxes. It’s similar to personalization, but you can use it for whole sections of text, one or more content blocks, or even an entire mailing worth of content. It’s a powerful tool but requires some knowledge of tag syntax.
Email authentication:
The technical process of verifying that an email is truly coming from the sender, and not an entity pretending to be the sender, as in the case of spoofing or phishing scams. There are several best practices for email authentication that can greatly improve your deliverability and overall sender reputation.
Common Email Authentication Terms
- SPF: Your organization’s Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record allows receiving servers to see that the sender is authorized to send emails on behalf of your domain.
- DKIM: DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an authentication method that helps ensure the sender’s email address is legitimate and not being spoofed by a third party.
- DMARC: Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication tool that’s designed to give email domain owners the ability to protect their domain from unauthorized use, like email spoofing.
- DNS: The Domain Name System (DNS) is essentially the phonebook of the Internet. DNS translates domain names to IP addresses so browsers can load Internet resources. In email authentication, your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are organized and made publicly accessible via your DNS record.
Email client:
The software that recipients use to read email. (Examples: Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, Outlook, MacMail, AOL, etc.)
Email marketing:
The act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people that make up an audience, using email.
Engagement:
The general level of positive response from your audience on a given email campaign or over time. This includes information like delivery, open, click, and conversion rates, which are the most common email engagement metrics.
ESP:
An email service provider (ESP) is a paid service that companies use for email marketing, like the one you’re using now. The ESP hosts a server that allows users to manage their contact lists, create and send marketing emails, and then track the results.
Export:
The act of preparing data from one account to be downloaded or saved in a secure location outside of that account.
Filter:
A software tool that categorizes, sorts, or blocks incoming email. Filters may be applied at the recipient level, the email client level, or by the ISP.
Footer:
The area at the bottom of an email marketing communication or campaign that contains information such as company or contact name and an opt-out link. In addition, the footer on all templates contains links to your manage preferences form and signup form, as well as a link to view the email online or in a web browser.
Group:
A user-created list of contacts in your audience that are organized by their assignment. Audience groups are used to organize contacts by anything from unique business markers, like being a donor or a volunteer, to a broader scope of things, like geography, gender, customer type, and subscription preferences.
Header:
The image at the top of an email, usually containing branding. Headers are often referred to as banners and the terms are interchangeable.
HTML:
Hyper text markup language (HTML) is the technical language used to inform web browsers how to display email data and web pages. In email marketing terms, an HTML message is an email that contains any type of formatting other than just text, including images, logos, and colors.
Import:
The act of preparing data from one source to be uploaded or saved in a secure location that is different from the original source.
Insights:
A reporting tool included in your account that tracks the performance of all of your sent mailings over time. The Insights dashboard tracks your open rates, garnered clicks, sign-ups, and opt-outs, then displays them as either aggregate or trending metrics in informative graphs and charts.
Integration:
A connection with a 3rd party or partnered organization to your account, such as MINDBODY, Eventbrite, SurveyMonkey, or any of the other established integrations.
IP address:
An internet protocol (IP) address is a unique numerical identifier assigned to each device connected to a network that uses the IP for communication.
ISP:
An internet service provider (ISP) is a service that offers customers access to the internet. Some examples include Comcast, Charter, Google Fiber, and AT&T.
Landing page:
A single webpage that appears in response to clicking a specified link, generally from a marketing email or communication. Depending on your account type, you can create custom landing pages right from the application.
Layout:
The content area of an email campaign, generally a mix of image placeholders and text boxes that together make up the look and feel of a campaign.
List hygiene:
The process of examining and maintaining a contact list so that it complies with permission standards and stays up-to-date with current email addresses.
Listserv:
A method of communicating with a group of people via email. You send one email message to the “reflector” email address, and the software sends the email to all of the group’s subscribers. Listservs are not compliant with international SPAM regulations related to email marketing, so they aren’t allowed in your account’s audience.
Mailing:
A marketing email sent to multiple recipients at once. A mailing can also be referred to as a campaign, and the two terms are used interchangeably.
Manage preferences:
Options provided by an ESP where audience members can update their personal information, manage their subscriptions, or opt-out of receiving future emails. The manage preferences link is usually found in the footer of a campaign where recipients can click on it to easily update their preferences.
Marketing calendar:
An interactive calendar on your account’s home page that highlights dates of upcoming scheduled sends. The marketing calendar also shows basic details of those campaigns when hovering over a specific date.
Opt-out:
An option provided by an ESP where audience members can opt out of receiving any communications from the sender. It’s often referred to as an ‘opt-out link’ and it is considered a best practice to always include an opt-out link with any marketing email.
Parent/Owner account:
For customers with distributed teams or tiered accounts, this will be the first thing that the Parent/Owner and Manager level users see when they log in. It includes a dashboard with recent mailings and high-level metrics, as well as access to all tiered account tools.
PDF:
A portable document format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems.
Permissions-based sending:
The act of sending relevant email content to targeted lists of people who have signed up to receive emails from a certain company or brand.
Personalization:
The act of pulling individual contact information into the body of a mailing by the use of personalization tags (e.g. Dear [% member:name_first default=”first name” %]). Using personalization allows the sender to add specific information about the person or company who is receiving the email campaign to the actual content of the mailing.
Plaintext email:
An email message that includes only the text of an email’s content, excluding any type of formatting like images, fonts, or text color. Plaintext emails are generally sent as a multi-part message with any HTML email, consisting of the text-only version of the message.
Preheader:
A few words about the email that appear before the header. Often, the preheader provides a link to the online version of the email and a link to the company site.
Preview pane:
The screen in your email client that allows you to see the beginning of an email message without displaying the whole email.
Response data:
The data that is collected from a campaign being sent out, organized and stored on the Response page in your account.
Segment:
The ability to filter and target specific recipients based on specific contact information. In your account, you can segment your contacts using the segment feature on the Audience page.
Sender details:
The email address and name that your recipients will see as the ‘from’ information in emails you send. Your sender details are important because they help to identify you to your recipients and are a crucial element to building a positive sender reputation.
Signup form:
The online form a person fills out when they want to start receiving emails from a company or brand.
Social sharing:
A function handled by an ESP that allows recipients to forward a mailing to the email inboxes of their friends, colleagues or anyone that might be interested in the mailing’s content, or share the mailing directly on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).
Spam:
Any emails that come to a recipient’s inbox that they didn’t sign up to receive. (Even if they have signed up to receive an email, those emails could end up in the spam folder, until they’ve added the sender’s “from address” to their address book or trusted senders’ list.)
Spambot:
A spambot is a computer program designed to assist in the sending of spam. Spambots usually create accounts and send spam messages with them.
SPF:
Refer to ‘email authentication’ above.
SSO:
Single sign-on (SSO)is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID and password to any of several related, yet independent, software systems. This is not supported beyond the setup instructions; any questions or requests for assistance should be directed to your SSO provider.
Subaccount:
For tiered or distributed teams account customers, a subaccount is how we refer to all of the “child” accounts you’ll be sending mailings from and organizing contacts in. You’ll see access to these under either the Subaccounts tab or by searching in the dropdown on the left side of your dashboard.
Subject line:
Copy that identifies what an email message is about. It is often designed to entice the recipient into opening the message. It’s also the first thing the recipient sees in the inbox, making it an important aspect of email marketing.
Subscribe/opt-in:
The process of joining a mailing list, meaning an individual has agreed to receive emails from a particular company or sender.
Subscriptions:
An organizational method within your account similar to groups with the distinction that your contacts have more control over the type of content they receive from you. When activated, all ‘Manage preferences’ or ‘Opt-out’ links will direct your contacts to the Subscription Center where they can adjust their content subscriptions.
Template:
The design that frames the content of a mailing, including the header, border and footer.
Test group:
An audience group that contains up to 10 email addresses for the purpose of testing mailings before they’re sent. (If you are billed for the number of emails sent, you can send to this group at no additional charge.)
Test mailing:
A copy of a campaign sent from your ‘Drafts’ section to a single email or test group for testing purposes before sending to your target audience.
Trigger event:
The positive action that must be taken in order to begin a contact’s journey through an automated workflow, also known simply as “trigger”. Currently, there are multiple available trigger events: Signup-based, date-based, field-change, and link-click.
Unsubscribe/opt-out:
The process of removing oneself from an email list, meaning the brand is no longer legally allowed to send that contact emails. A person can opt-out at any time by clicking the opt-out link at the bottom of an email campaign.
URL:
A Uniform Resource Locator, colloquially termed a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it.
Webview (private):
The online version of a mailing, which a person can access by clicking the “see it online” link in the mailing in their inbox.
Webview (public):
The online version of the mailing, which can be archived on your website or posted online. As the public version, any identifying information about the recipient as well as the preference panel are stripped out. In your account, the webview URL can be accessed by clicking on the name of any mailing from your main Response page and then clicking on the webview link at the top-right of the next page.
Whitelist:
Known as “allowlist” in your account, it means adding an ESP’s domain to a customer’s server, which allows email messages from that server to be delivered regardless of spam filtering.