Internet marketing, like any other industry, has its own vocabulary. Many of the terms and expressions commonly used in marketing are not always clear, especially to outsiders or newcomers to the industry. It's also no secret that the vast majority of these terms are taken from English, which can further complicate matters.
In order to make marketing jargon (often mocked as “corporatese”) easier to understand, we have prepared a glossary of marketing terms that includes all the most important marketing definitions with their simple explanation.
We invite you to read it!
These are actions started by the user/recipient that were not completed. An example of an abandoned process is an abandoned shopping cart, which contains products selected by the customer, but which were ultimately not purchased.
It's about maintaining the address database to high standards and sticking to good practices that affect work efficiency. The contact database needs to be updated from time to time. One of the most important steps in database hygiene is to make sure emails are correct and up-to-date. The database should be suitable for segmentation or already segmented. In the second case, maintaining hygiene is easier. Another important issue is the separation of communication between recipients from the base into transactional and marketing emails. Marketing emails should have appropriate consents.
It's a protocol (set of rules) that allows different programs and platforms to communicate with each other. Often, plug-ins in online stores work precisely on the basis of APIs.
Also referred to as contact attributes, these are information that identify each customer/recipient in a company's database and assign them to specific categories. Examples of attributes include email address, city, phone, company, job position, etc.
A model that determines the contribution of various communication channels to the customer's purchase path, from the appearance of the recipient to the finalization of the purchase.
They are the recipients or group of recipients , i.e. the people to whom the communication is directed. They are also those who get acquainted with the content created and are the target for selling products and services.
Large, variable and diverse data sets, with a high degree of complexity. These data sets are extremely valuable for developing strategies, promotions, setting targets and performing optimization of a company's marketing processes.
These are collections of IP addresses and domains that are suspected of spamming. If a sender's address is on such a list, in most cases email providers will block all messages that come from it. It is possible to remove an address from the blacklist, but the current good reputation of the domain and IP address is crucial for this.
It is a degree that reflects how strongly the brand/company represents what is important to the audience. When the values represented externally coincide with the mindset of the audience, the chance of buying and creating a long-term relationship increases.
This is the basis for estimating the condition of a brand. Brand awareness determines the effectiveness of marketing communications, which is linked to the audience's familiarity with the brand itself (what values it has, what it offers, what it represents, what it engages in) and awareness of its existence. When a specific need arises, the consumer will first think of a particular brand/company as the first option to satisfy it.
This is the limit on the appearance of ads for one user in a certain period of time. Capping applies to ads that go out from the same server. Capping can also apply to pop-up displays.
Activities involving consumers in taking various actions towards the company. Often the purpose of consumer activation is to establish a bond with the customer or to strengthen it. The best examples of consumer activations are all kinds of contests and lotteries.
It is the user's action of doing something desired by the company. An example of a conversion is responding to an advertisement, news content or displayed content and signing up for a newsletter, taking advantage of a promotion, joining a loyalty program or making a purchase.
A customer relationship management system. It is made possible by the presence of specific marketing tools and procedures. CRM is also commonly referred to as customer relationship management software.
It's an approach in marketing that uses mutually integrated communication channels to reach and interact with audiences from different sources.
This is the concept that companies should consider the impact of their activities on social interests, the needs of society, environmental issues and relations with different audiences when building strategies and implementing activities.
It's an element (usually a button or link) in a communication, the purpose of which is to convince/motivate the recipient to perform a specific action, such as registering, signing up for a newsletter, subscribing, etc. Call To Action can appear in both text and graphic form.
Specialized software designed to create and manage a consistent customer database. This database can be used by other programs. CDP takes data from various sources, processes it and, as a result, creates a customer profile. Data processed in this way is then available to other applications, creating a so-called martech stack.
In the most general terms, it is the customer/user experience before, during and after the purchase of a product or service. Everything that directly and indirectly relates to the customer and their relationship with a brand will make up the customer experience (CX).
It is otherwise known as the consumer path or purchase path. It is a buying process that encompasses all of the company's interactions with the consumer before, during and after the purchase of a product or service. Each stage of the journey or touch point in the customer journey is designed to increase the consumer's awareness of the brand/company, provide a positive experience, motivate purchase, build a long-term relationship and increase the chance of a recommendation from the recipient.
This is a graphical representation of the customer's purchase path with the most important stages of interaction with the company marked. The consumer can be on several paths at the same time, which can cross each other. Marked moments of contact are an opportunity to convince the recipient to continue on the path set by the company and not deviate from it (e.g., towards the competition).
Data collector is content automation through activities such as collecting activity, updating contact attributes or adding new contacts. By filling out a simple and intuitive form, you can keep your contact database up-to-date.
A term used in email marketing. It is an IP address assigned exclusively to one user. The owner of such an address collects positive (or negative) feedback on his account and works independently on the reputation of his mailing domain. A dedicated IP allows you to have a greater impact on the deliverability of your emails and the positive results of your email campaigns. The type of IP address needs to be determined with the Internet service provider.
An indicator of the number of sent emails ultimately delivered to recipients. Deliverability Rate is commonly used in the field of email marketing.
The Domain Key Identified Mail protocol is designed so that the recipient can be sure that the owner of a domain address is really him and not someone impersonating him. Using DKIM, the sender uses an encryption key to leave special information in the headers. The recipient retrieves the decryption key from the DNS of the sender's domain and reads the message. The entire decryption process occurs automatically.
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance is an option used by the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon, among others, that combines SPF and DKIM while providing additional security. With DMARC, domain owners can give email service providers that participate in the initiative (and there are more and more of them) specific instructions on how to act and relate to messages that are sent from their domains.
It is a platform for managing data for marketing purposes. Data that is processed in DMP:
- 1st party data - data obtained from your own sources, such as your website, online store or CRM system.
- 2nd party data - data obtained directly from partners, such as an advertising agency or publisher.
- 3rd party data - data obtained from external suppliers.
It is simply trading online. Most often it is carried out with the help of modern technological and telecommunications tools. The main representatives of the e-commerce industry are: online stores, auction portals, classifieds sites, etc.
A service provided by the world's largest email service providers. It allows you to find out if and when recipients have marked a received message as spam. Many email providers add their customers to this service automatically.
GDPR Manager is where all iPresso's functions related to managing personal data and marketing consents are gathered, so that system users will be able to run their campaigns even more efficiently in compliance with GDPR (RODO). Consent from a customer is confirmation that a person allows their personal data to be processed or marketing communications to be conducted. To a contact who enters the iPresso database with a marked marketing consent, it is possible to realize the sending of information, e.g. via emails, text messages or voice messages.
The geographic location of the audience is the basis for matching the displayed content of ads. Information that affects geotargeting includes zip code, area code, city, region, country.
Determining the geographic location of people or objects in real time as geographic coordinates. This method allows you to match ads to people who have been, are, or will be in an area (such as a concert).
This is a message from the mail server, saying that the sent message cannot be delivered and will fail even despite repeated attempts. Mostly the reason is an error in the recipient's address or deactivation of the email account by the recipient.
A connection between different platforms and services (e.g., an online store and an online payment service) that enables two-way data exchange and cooperation between both systems.
A factor that affects email deliverability. Reputation is affected by both quality and domain/IP history. Messages coming from an email address with a negative reputation may not be delivered to the recipient. They are also often treated as spam.
It relies on sending an increasing number of emails to make the address credible and gather positive feedback from various email clients. Positive passage through spam filters and separately secured mailboxes on company domains builds up the positive reputation of the IP address. Through such an address that has been “warmed up” for several weeks, you can start sending large volumes of content.
Key performance indicator is a necessary parameter in the work of any marketer. It shows how effective a given marketing specialist, and often more broadly, the entire team of which he or she is a part, is. Achieving the set KPIs indicates the high effectiveness of a given team or individual.
It is a website dedicated to an initiative or a single service/product containing a so-called CTA (Call To Action). Web traffic can be directed to a landing page through various communication channels. Landing Page is most often used for consumer activations and to expand the contact/potential customer base.
A contact to a potential buyer, customer. A lead expresses interest in a brand, product or service, being a priority in communication efforts on the part of the company/brand. Depending on the degree of readiness to buy, leads are divided into: hot (sales leads), warm (marketing leads) and cold (customer contact).
These are activities aimed at generating interest in an offer or specific questions about it. Lead generation is also understood as building a list of potential customers or users with whom to engage.
These are the methods and practices of managing potential clients or customers acquired through marketing campaigns.
Running marketing activities that are aimed at acquiring valuable leads and preparing potential buyers for purchase. An example of such activities could be marketing automation scenarios with sending a series of emails to the recipient base.
These are activities aimed at increasing the number of high-quality external links that direct to a company's website. Link building is one of the elements of so-called search engine optimization (SEO).
These are activities aimed at building long-term and positive relationships with selected customers who are the most loyal or important to the company. Loyalty programs also aim to motivate recipients to order regularly.
This is the assignment of conversion share to each channel used. It is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing techniques used.
Marketing automation scenarios allow you to design a customer path (customer journey) of advanced and unique communication using many different channels at the same time.
It is a set of activities and processes that take place in communication channels (such as social media) to achieve the intended marketing targets. These activities are tailored to target groups. The objectives of the campaigns themselves can be defined differently (e.g., higher conversion, increased sales, placement of a new product, etc.).
These are emails that contain information about the company's offerings and promotions, and their aspect is strictly sales-related. Legally sending such emails requires prior consent from recipients.
It is a combination of marketing, technology and management, most often in the form of a service, platform or application. MarTech uses a variety of tools to automate marketing processes and tasks to achieve set targets, identify and meet current and actual audience needs.
A set of marketing technologies and applications to help professionals in their daily operations and support ongoing campaigns.
Convert generated traffic (e.g., on a website) into revenue.
It is used to transfer data from the website to the company's system. With the help of the monitoring code, it is possible to track the activity of users on the visited site, which leads to a more complete use of the potential of the company's system, more refined action strategies and optimized processes.
Like cross-channel, it is a model that uses different channels to communicate with audiences, except that they are not integrated with each other.
Net Promoter Score is a form of survey that shows the audience's current level of loyalty to a company, product, content or service and readiness to recommend the company to others. NPS is based on one short question: how likely are you to recommend our company to others? Answers are given on a scale of 0 to 10.
A model in which communication, interaction and sales channels are integrated, can be used simultaneously and work toward one common target (e.g., more sales).
A persona is a model that represents an ideal customer along with his or her essential characteristics, preferences and needs (both his or her and the company's). Depending on the needs, such a persona can be assigned interests, skills, experiences and many other characteristics. A Persona often forms the basis of marketing efforts. You can use the Persona Creator to create a Persona.
It involves customizing any marketing element that the recipient interacts with to his/her individual needs. To conduct accurate personalization, data collected about recipients from various sources (e.g., purchase history, social media activities, personas designs, previous campaigns) is used.
A file in .xml, .gz, .zip, .bz2, .txt, or .xls format containing product information from the online store's offerings for use in the feed manager for personalized promotions and product recommendations.
Push notifications are short messages that appear in a user's browser or mobile application. They provide an opportunity to reach people using the Internet or mobile applications in real time. Designing and triggering notifications according to user behavior is not only a variety of the Customer Journey, but more importantly a complement to it, making it easier to maintain customer attention and engagement.
Recommend products and services to both customers and potential buyers based on their past activity on the site or history of activity related to the company. Recommendations can be about services, products, content and use various MarTech tools that provide more effective communication. They are also known as recommendation frames.
Activities designed to reach users who have already visited the company's website and encourage them with customized advertising to take a specific action.
The so-called real-time marketing. These are advertising actions taken in relation to current events or information. These are ad hoc actions that are aimed at taking advantage of the popularity of a particular topic, quickly reaching new audiences and getting them interested in the company's offerings.
It is an assessment of customer characteristics and behaviors that makes it easier to target the right people for the right marketing automation scenario. With scoring, you can quickly see who in your database is actually a valuable contact suitable for promotional activities.
Contact segmentation makes it possible to assign individual customers to specific groups (e.g., created according to products previously purchased, interests, location or other parameters). Segmentation is used in marketing automation. For process automation to work, you need not only the right tools, but most importantly, clearly defined and isolated recipients to whom personalized communication will be delivered.
It's a score between 0 and 100, which illustrates the reputation of an email send. Mail is run through various mailboxes and anti-spam programs to create a picture of good and bad practices. Sender Score is calculated based on 30-day mailings. If the score is too low, there is a high probability that email campaigns will bounce frequently, and as a result, the sender is likely to be blocked.
A solution for sharing an IP address with another entity. This is a cheaper option than a dedicated IP, but it can lead to problems that negatively affect reputation. Most of the time, senders are unable to verify with whom they are sharing IP data. Because of the other side's bad practices in creating campaigns and the emails themselves, anything that brings negativity to the partner because of their actions will also reflect on the reputation of the company that shares the IP.
A so-called soft bounce is, in practice, the failure to deliver an e-mail message to the recipient. Soft bounces are caused, for example, by a full inbox, server problems or exceeding the sending limit from a given IP address. Re-sending at a later date usually solves the soft bounce problem.
Sender Policy Framework is a server security feature designed to limit the amount of incoming spam to mailboxes. Servers covered by this protocol check with the DNS system to ensure that incoming messages come from a domain authorized to do so. The SPF protocol is the primary means of protection, but on its own it does not guarantee full mailbox security.
These are messages that go to recipients in connection with a particular transaction or customer account. They are sent automatically and, due to their specificity, they let the recipient know that the relationship, cooperation and course of communication with the company remains uninterrupted. Examples of transactional emails are: registration message, welcome email, password reset, order confirmation, reactivation emails.
That's the number of emails sent. Senders who send large numbers of messages all the time are under the magnifying glass of Internet service providers. If messages are sent at irregular intervals, scrutiny increases because spammers operate in a similar way. Therefore, carefully establishing a plan and schedule for sending messages is one good practice that should be made effective from the very beginning.
The list includes trusted providers from whom messages will always arrive in the inbox. Sometimes messages from companies may be considered spam by the security system, but the recipient can deselect them and add an exception to the filters. This increases deliverability.
