Glossary of Email Marketing Terms

Above-the-fold

The part of a web page that is visible without scrolling, generally considered desirable because of its visibility. This is the recommended area of a web site for email subscription forms.

Abuse

In the context of email, the sending of unsolicited commercial email, or spam.

Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

A set of rules governing how software or a service may be used. Typically a reputable email service provider has an AUP in place to prevent its service from being used to send unsolicited commercial email or spam.

Acquisition List

See "Rental List".

Affirmative Consent

Explicit consent granted by a recipient for a sender to commence sending email messages to the recipient.

Authentication

The process of verifying the identity of the sender of an email message. Microsoft's "Sender ID" and Yahoo's "Domain Keys" are two evolving methods for sender authentication.

Autoresponder

A program which automatically responds to an incoming email message by sending an email reply. Commonly autoresponders are used to send subscription or removal confirmation emails, or to simply confirm the acceptance of an inbound email to by a company's mail gateway.

Bounce

An email message which is returned to the sender as undeliverable. See also "Hard Bounce" and "Soft Bounce".

Bulk Co-registration (Bulk Co-reg)

Low-quality co-registration in which recipients do not subscribe to specific mailing lists and email addresses are typically sold simultaneously to multiple, poorly-qualified senders. Purchasing and sending to addresses obtained via bulk co-reg typically results in high complaint levels, which can in turn cause blocking and filtering and significantly impact deliverability.

Campaign

An email marketing message or series of messages which share a common purpose or theme.

CAN-SPAM

Federal anti-spam legislation passed in 2003 which superceded a patchwork of previous state laws. The law requires the following in each email: a legitimate header, a valid "From" address, a descriptive "Subject" line, a functional method for a recipient to unsubscribe and the sender's physical address. The full text of the CAN-SPAM law is available here.

Challenge-Response

A spam prevention technique which requires unknown or untrusted senders to perform a manual step in order to send messages to a given recipient. The manual "response" step is designed to be impossible to automatically perform, with the idea is that it is impractical for senders of bulk email to manually gain access to individual mailboxes.

Churn

A measure of the tendency for an email list to shrink. It is the number of gross deletions from an email list divided by the size of the list over a period of time. A high churn rate can be costly over time and can be caused by low-quality list acquisitions, untargetted or undesirable content, or sending too frequently or infrequently.

Complaint

A complaint by a recipient that they received spam from a particular sender. Recipients usually register complaints with their ISPs, who use them to determine blocking and/or filtering strategies. Sophisticated email service providers also process recipient complaints both directly and via complaint channels set up through ISPs in order to monitor their systems for potential abuse, and to ensure that their customers experience the maximum deliverability possible.

Confirmed Opt-In

A method of subscribing to a mailing list in which the recipient email address is actually confirmed to be valid before mailings commence. Confirmed opt-in prevents 3rd party subscriptions either as a result of mis-typed addresses or intentional forging of subscriptions as a method of harassment. "Double opt-in" is one variety of confirmed opt-in.

Conversion rate

The percentage of recipients who take the final desired action for a given email message or campaign. A "conversion" can be a purchase, a registration, the start of an evaluation, etc. depending on the goals of the email message or campaign.

Co-registrstion (Co-reg)

Gathering subscribers to an email mailing list through subscriptions on a third party's web site. For example, a contest site may collect subscriptions on behalf of several mailers during the contest registration process. List owners typically pay a fee to the third party for each subscription that their web site generates. Co-registration can generate subscriptions of various quality depending on the site's registration method and how explicit the disclosure is. See also "Bulk Co-registration".

CPM (Cost per thousand)

The cost to send 1000 emails. CPM is typically used instead of the cost per a single email message due to the fact that the cost per single message is usually only a fraction of a cent.

CTR (Click-through rate)

The percentage of recipients that click on a given link or group of links in an email message.

Deliverability

The ability of a sender to deliver his message to his intended recipients. Deliverability can be impacted by a number of factors, including technical limitations of the sending/receiving systems, network congestion, email blocking by ISPs, and spam filters.

Double Opt-In

A method of confirmed opt-in in which recipients are sent a subscription confirmation which must be acted upon before the subscription is finalized and mailing commences. Typical confirmation actions include replying to the confirmation email, or clicking a link in the confirmation email.

Email Blocking

Email blocking is a method ISPs use to protect their recipients from unwanted email. Most major ISPs have blocking strategies, and keeping email marketing messages from being blocked is a major consideration when executing an email marketing campaign.

Email Service Provider

A vendor who provides services for executing email marketing campaigns. Vendors can provide any or all of the services from list building, to campaign planning and message creation, through to message delivery and list management.

E-zine

An electronic magazine sent via email. Often advertisers pay to have their ad (text, HTML or both depending on the publication) inserted into the body of the email. Buying ad space in an e-zine or email newsletter, or sponsoring a specific article or series of articles allow advertisers to reach a targeted audience driving traffic to a website, store or office, signups to a newsletter or sales of a product or service.

False Positive

The incorrect identification of an email message as sspam (i.e., a message tested positive for spam but the results were false). Overly agressive or careless blocking and filtering strategies cause many legitimate permission-based email messages to blocked or filtered and can be a significant problem for email marketers.

From Header or From Line

The header line in an email message which identifies who originated the message, typically consisting of a name and an email address.

Hard Bounce

An email message which is returned with as being permanently undeliverable. An example of a hard bounce would be a message which is returned because the recipient's email address does not exist. See also "Soft Bounce".

Harvested Address

An email address collected ("harvested" or "scraped") from public web sites, such as newsgroups and web pages which contain "mailto" links. Obviously harvested addresses have not opted in to receive mail, and any email sent to such addresses is considered spam. Low-quality email addresses such as those sold on CDs consist mainly of harvested addresses, and lists of addresses sold as bulk co-registration are often laced with harvested addresses. Harvested addresses also have a high likely hood of containing "Trap Addresses".

House List

An email list which has been built and is owned by the email marketer (as opposed to a rented list, which is built and owned by the list rental company). A house list is typically extremely valuable due to the fact that the recipients have already been well qualified by virtue of them granting permission for the marketer to mail to them. See also "Rental List".

HTML E-mail

An e-mail that uses Hypertext Markup Language instead of plain text. The advantages of using HTML for email marketing messages include the ability to use varying formats for text, to design using complex layouts and graphics, and the ability to include links. In addition to the message's appearance, HTML email marketing messages typically generate higher response rates than plain text.

Landing Page

A web page that is linked from an email marketing message for the purpose guiding the recipient to the next step of the offer process for the given email message or campaign, and ultimately (hopefully) to the conversion step.

Open Rate

The percentage of recipients detected to have opened a given email message. Note that due to technological limitations and restrictions of certain email providers, some recipients may not be able to have their opens detected, including those receiving plain text emails and those whose mail programs disable the display of images within HTML messages.

Opt-in

To voluntarily choose to receive email by providing an email address to a given sender. See also "Confirmed Opt-in" and "Double Opt-in".

Opt-out (Unsubscribe)

To choose to stop receiving email from a given sender, i.e., to revoke permission granted for the sender to continue sending email.

Pass-along

The forwarding of an email message by a recipient to individuals not included in the initial mailing by the original sender. Pass-alongs can be counted and tracked as individual occurances or can be measured as a ratio of individual pass-alongs divided by mailing size. See also "Viral Marketing".

Permission-Based E-mail

Email sent only to recipients who have granted permission to be sent to via an opt-in. Unsolicited commercial email or spam does not require permission be granted before sending, and is therefore not considered permission-based email.

Phishing

The act of sending email which attempts to trick a recipient into disclosing important personal information, such as passwords, account numbers, or social security numbers. Phishing emails typically attempt to disguise the sender as a trusted source such as a credit card company, a bank, or an ISP. For more information, visit http://www.anti-phishing.org

Preexisting Business Relationship

Describes a condition in which the sender of email marketing messages can legally send email messages under the CAN-SPAM law without having received explicit permission from a recipient due to the fact that the sender and recipient had previously established a business relationship. Note that sending to a recipient by virtue of a prior business relationship may satisfy the law, it may not be sufficient in order to achieve the desired results of an email marketing campaign. If a marketer sends email to recipients without regard for their expectations and generates complaints, deliverability may be severely impacted over the long term.

Privacy Policy

The policy an organization has in place regarding their use of personally identifiable information. Such a policy is typically published on an organization's web site. Adopting and abiding by a clearly-stated and fair policy with reasonable protections against unwanted sharing of private data builds trust with recipients, increasing subscriptions and minimizing list churn over the long term.

Rental List

A list of recipients owned by a third party which sells the right for an email marketer to send messages to their list. A quality rental list is typically well-segmented by demographic and/or interest category, and has recipients whose expectations have been appropriately set regarding the type of mail they will be receiving as a result of their subscription. Sending to a quality rental list usually costs between 10 cents and 40 cents per recipient (between $100 and $400 CPM). Sending to a list built by dubious practices (such as by email harvesting or bulk co-registration) is essentially spamming and generally will yield poor results and a negative impact on the sender's brand and reputation. See also "House List".

Retention List

See "House List".

Scraped Address

See "Harvested Address".

Segmentation

Associating characteristics with each recipient on an email list and then using those characteristics to divide the list into groups or "segments" for sending and reporting. Lists are typically segmented by interest category, demographics, and/or response and/or purchase behavior. Using segmentation allows for the customization of messages within a list, to increase relevance and reduce churn and improve conversion rates. See also "Churn" and "Targeting".

Single Opt-in

A method of subscribing to an email list in which a recipient need only provide an email address to grant permission for an email marketer to start sending email messages. This is the most common method of subscription. When used in conjunction with an informative "welcome" message containing details of the subscription and a working unsubscribe function, many senders see this as a reasonable compromise to prevent the vast majority of unwanted email while minimizing complications during the signup process.

Soft Bounce

An email message which is returned with as being temporarily undeliverable. An example of a soft bounce would be a message which is returned because the recipient's email box is full. See also "Hard Bounce".

Spam

Often defined as email which was sent without having been requested, its practical definition includes any email that is annoying, off-topic, or unwanted. See also "UBE" and "UCE".

Spoofing

Sending email messages which have been created to appear that they were sent by a (typically trustworthy) third party. Spoofing is commonly used to commit fraud using "Phishing" schemes, and to evade responsibility for large unsolicited email compaigns. See also "Authentication" and "Phishing".

Stop List

See "Suppression List".

Suppression List

A list of email addresses to whom delivery of email should not occur. A suppression list is often used by senders using multiple email marketing platforms and/or multiple email marketing channels to maintain consistency between removal requests from different systems. A suppression list can also be used to inhibit delivery to problematic addresses or domains which may be causing complaints or other undesirable effects by sendint to them. Sophisticated email service providers automate the specification of suppression lists and often offer multiple levels of suppression lists to provide the highest level protection.

Targeting

The practice of sending specific messages and/or offers only to the subset of an email list which is likely to respond favorably to those messages/offers. Effective targeting increases overall response rates and lower churn over time by maximizing recipients' interest with only highly-relevant content. Targeting is especially important when dealing with a diverse list and different mailings dealing with different subject matter. See also "Segmentation" and "Churn".

Trap Address

a phony email address which an ISP intentionally publishes in locations likely to be "harvested" by spammers or people who sell email addresses to spammers. It is common practice for ISPs to use trap addresses to identify unsolicited email messages and senders in their email filtering and blocking strategy. See also "Harvested Address".

UBE (Unsolicited Bulk Email)

Email which the recipient has not requested and which is sent in large (bulk) volumes. While not technically equivalent, UBE is sometimes used synonymously with UCE. See also "Spam".

UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email)

Email which the recipient has not requested and which is of a commercial nature. While not technically equivalent, UCE is sometimes used synonymously with UBE. See also "Spam".

URL (Universal Resource Locator)

The internet address of an individual file or web page. The URL for this page is "http://www.emarketingjournal.com/glossary.html".

Viral Marketing

Marketing which occurs solely by virtue of customers informing other prospective customers about a business' offering. It is extremely desirable as it is typically inexpensive or free and establishes a strong foundation for long-term customer loyalty. Using a "send to a friend" function withing an email message is a good way to enable "pass-along" viral marketing within an email marketing campaign. See also "Pass-along".

WIIFM ("What's In It For Me?")

The value proposition of subscribing to an email list. Recipients evaluate the potential value of the content they receive and compare that with perceived potential cost in terms of privacy concerns and additional email overhead when making a subscription decision.

Word of Mouth Marketing

see "Viral Marketing".