Glossary of Digital Marketing Terms

[#1]

What terms should we add to this magical list?

A/B Split – Refers to a test situation in which a list is split into two pieces with every other recipient being sent one of two specific emails, to determine which email is more desirable.

A/B Testing – A method of testing a control sample against other versions in which a single element varies

Above the fold – The part of an email message or web page that is visible without scrolling. Material in this area is considered more valuable because the reader sees it first.

Accelerator Campaigns -- Campaigns that attempt to move prospects along the buying cycle faster by providing relevant “nudges” triggered by specific buyer behaviors or sales updates

Account – Companies or organizations; can be prospects, customers, partners or even competitors

Acquisition Cost – In email marketing, the cost to generate one lead, newsletter subscriber or customer in an individual email campaign; typically, the total campaign expense divided by the number of leads, subscribers or customers it produced.

Alert – An automatic notification in sales and marketing technologies triggered by a lead’s specific behavior, change in status or the reaching of a specific lead score threshold

Apex – A development platform for creating Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications on top of Salesforce.com functionality

Attachment – A file that is sent in addition to the text or html in an email message

Authentication – Technical standards through which ISPs and other mail gateway administrators can establish the true identity of an email sender

Authentication - Technical standards through which ISPs and other mail gateway administrators can establish the true identity of an email sender. Examples of proposed authentication standards include: SPF (PO Box, AOL), Sender-ID (Microsoft), DomainKeys (Yahoo), and DKIM (Cisco and Yahoo).

B2B Blogging – Also known as corporate or organizational blogging; involves the use of a blog or online journal to promote a company’s products or services with the goal of increasing conversions and driving revenue

B2B Social Media - the various channels of the social web (blogs, social networks, wikis, etc.) as they pertain to business-to-business interactions. B2B social media also refers to how prospects, customers and businesses use the social web to research, listen, communicate and engage with each other through the exchange of content.

BANT – The acronym for budget, authority, need, timeline— critical attributes that are used to determine the sales readiness of a lead

Blacklist – A list of IP addresses believed to send spam

Blog – A contraction for “weblog,”; an online diary or journal

Blog – An online journal, with new entries appearing in sequence as they are written

Bounce – A message that is returned to the sender because it was not deliverable.

Buying Committee – Refers to all individuals involved in the B2B buying decision at an organization

Campaign Management - The process of creating, executing, and measuring marketing programs directed at specific audience segments

Campaign – Any marketing program to be tracked in Salesforce.com or Marketo

CAN-SPAM – Federal legislation governing unsolicited commercial email that went into effect on January 1, 2004. This law does not prohibit unsolicited commercial email, but it does regulate how it must be sent.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) – Controls the design and format of a document written in HTML

Closed Loop Marketing -- Campaigns that send communications based on a prospect’s previous actions and their place in the buying cycle

Cloud Computing – A term referring to a development platform in which applications are delivered as services in the “cloud,” requiring no hardware or software to maintain

Company Score – The total score of all leads for a specific company. This may also be calculated by average. Also known as Account Score

Contact – An individual belonging to an account

Conversion Path – A specific online path offered to web visitors after clicking on a landing page

Conversion Rate – The primary success metric for landing pages

Conversion – A specific event that represents the goal of the landing page

Converted Lead – A lead that has been deemed qualified for sales and that converts into a Contact

Custom Field – A field outside of the preconfigured fields provided within Salesforce.com created to fit the specific needs of a business

Custom Object – A custom Salesforce.com database table that enables organizations to store information unique to them

Custom Report – A report outside of the standard set of Salesforce.com reports created to measure and analyze data in a specific way

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – Systems and strategies that seek to drive revenue through an improved understanding of customers and an increase in customer satisfaction and relationship building

Dashboard – A visual display of a company’s performance metrics based on one or more custom reports

De-duplication – The process of finding and consolidating and/or updating duplicate sets of contact information

Deliverability – The ability of an email message or campaign to reach the intended recipient’s inbox, which is affected by spam filters, client-side filters and junk folders

Delivery Status Notification (DSN) – Also known as “bounce message”, a system that informs the sender of a delivery problem

Demand Generation – The act of using marketing to create interest or demand in a company’s products or services

Depreciation – The ability to automatically lower a lead score due to inactivity, status change, or any other attribute that signifies a decrease in the level of interest – sometimes known as Lead Degradation and Score Decay

DNS Records – The database records stored in the domain name system

Domain Name System – A naming system for computers connected to the Internet or private network

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) – A method for email authentication that allows an organization to take responsibility for a message in a way that can be validated by a recipient

Drip Campaign -- A series of scheduled emails that deliver thought leadership to prospects that have opted in to receive marketing communications

Dynamic Content – Email content that changes from one recipient to the next according to a set of predetermined rules or variables, either by preferences the user sets when opting in to messages or based on behavior or demographics of the recipient.

Dynamic Site Change – Dynamically changing content, images or other elements according to a user’s real-time preference (e.g. search term used)

Email Campaign Management – The process of creating, executing and measuring email marketing programs directed at specific audience segments

Email Marketing – The use of email communication to increase awareness, generate leads and build relationships with prospective and existing customers

Email Service Provider (ESP) – A company that provides email services, including batch email and email marketing

Explicit Data – Information that a prospect provides that is unambiguous such as title, industry, company, etc.

Force.com – A cloud computing development platform that allows for the building of SaaS applications and enables them to be run on Salesforce.com servers

Groundswell – A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations

Hashtag – A community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to tweets

Heuristics – Quick methods often involved in problem solving, such as gut instinct, educated guesses or “common sense”

Implicit Data – Information that is revealed by a prospect’s online behavior such as pages visited, and recency or frequency of visits

Inbound Marketing – A type of marketing characterized by prospects and customers seeking out and finding companies rather than vice versa

Incoming Lead Processing Campaigns -- What you do and how you act when you first meet someone will affect how he or she perceives you from there on out

Influencer – A person who is highly recognized in an online community and has the ability to sway others’ thoughts or opinions

Internet Protocol Address (IP Address) – A number assigned to each computer or network in order to distinguish each network interface and networked device

Internet Service Provider (ISP) – Sometimes referred to as Internet access provider (IAP), gives customers access to the Internet

Interruption Marketing – A type of outbound marketing that seeks to capture a prospect’s attention by forcing marketing communications in front of them; opposite of permission marketing

ISP Feedback – When the ISP forwards complaints of recipients to the organization that sent the email

Landing Page Optimization – The process of obtaining the greatest number of conversions from a landing page by continuously testing and revising various landing page elements

Landing Page – A web page that a user encounters after clicking on a link from a search engine, advertisement, email or other marketing vehicle

Lead Database – A system used to collect information on a company’s leads, such as demographic; budget, authority, need, timeline (BANT); and behavioral data

Lead Handoff -- The process of passing a lead from marketing to sales

Lead Lifecycle Campaigns -- Campaigns that ensure movement and interaction with prospects, even if they are not ready to buy or sales does not engage

Lead Nurturing – The process of building relationships with qualified prospects regardless of their timing to buy, with the goal of earning their business when they are ready

Lead Recycling -- The process of passing a lead from sales back to marketing because a lead was not yet ready to buy

Lead Scoring – The process of determining the sales readiness of leads using a pre-determined scoring methodology and ranking them accordingly

Lead – An individual or company that has the potential of doing business with your organization

LinkedIn – A business-oriented social networking site

List Fatigue – A condition producing diminishing returns from a mailing list whose members are sent too many offers, or too many of the same offers, in too short a period of time.

List Hygiene – Process of cleaning and de-duplicating email files to ensure all addresses are accurate, unique, current, opt-in and deliverable.

Marketing Asset – A piece of marketing content (e.g. whitepapers, videos, newsletters, webinars, etc.) used to educate and generate interest for a company’s products or services

Marketing Automation – The use of technology to manage and automate the process of converting prospective customers into actual buyers

Marketing Lead -- A lead generated by marketing, which has not yet being qualified as a sales prospect

Meme – A catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet

Microblogging – A type of blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia, such as photos or audio clips, and publish them. The most popular microblogging platform is Twitter

Microsite – A small website consisting of a few related pages that is part of a larger website

Multiple Scoring – The ability to assign multiple scores to a lead, which can be useful for companies with multiple products or campaigns that need to be managed separately

Multivariate Testing – A method of testing a control sample against other versions in which multiple elements may vary

Opportunities – Deals that constitute a sales pipeline and contribute to forecast

Opt-in – The agreement to receive email from a business source. Confirmed or Double opt-in refers to a double-check procedure in which a decision to be included on a mailing list is confirmed.

Parent-child Campaign – A campaign that involves an umbrella “parent” campaign record (e.g. “2010>Q1>Email”) that is comprised of numerous “child” campaigns (e.g., “2010-Q1-Email-Introduction,” “2010-Q1-Email-First Follow-up,” etc.)

Permission Marketing – A type of marketing that seeks to first gain permission from prospects before marketing to them

Persona – A fictional person used to represent a specific target segment for a company; personas aid in marketing, product development, usability and other areas

Personalization – A targeting method in which an email message appears to have been created only for a single recipient. Personalization may include any known demographic or behavioral information including recipient name, company name, website page visited and more.

Phishing – Sending email that claims to be from a legitimate organization to trick recipients into providing personal information

Plain Text – Text in an email message that includes no formatting code

Point Cap – A limit placed on a lead score to prevent scores from being inflated by repeated actions or triggers (e.g. multiple downloads of the same white paper)

Post-Click Marketing – Everything that happens once someone clicks on an organization’s website, but before they are a known lead. This includes the site itself, but also all landing pages that work to drive conversions for a company

Post-Conversion Marketing – Includes all activities and communications from marketing after a prospect shares their information with a company until they become a customer. This includes email marketing, lead nurturing and lead scoring, all of which are critical for B2B companies to get the most of their pre- and post-click marketing

Pre-Click Marketing – Everything that happens prior to someone getting to a company website. It’s the area of marketing that focuses on driving a prospect to an organization’s website and can be just as important as the website itself, since without pre-click optimization, the website may never be seen

Product Score – The score for a lead that indicates their interest in a specific product. An organization may capture multiple product scores

Qualified – The lead characteristic of being ready to engage with sales—a definition that is agreed upon by marketing and sales according to the profile of an “ideal” customer and a scoring methodology

Revenue Cycle – A new way of looking at the traditional sales cycle, the revenue cycle starts from the day the organization first meets a prospect and continues through the sale and beyond to the customer relationship

Role Accounts – An email account that is associated with a department, office, position or task

RSS – (Really Simple Syndication) A web standard for the delivery of content — blog entries, news stories, headlines, images, video — enabling readers to stay current with publications without having to browse to their content.

Sales 2.0 – Also referred to as social selling, the merging of Web 2.0 technologies with traditional sales strategies, enabling salespeople to better prioritize their time and serve as experts—not just negotiators— in the product selection process

Sales Ready Lead -- A lead that has been qualified by marketing based upon criteria agreed upon by both sales and marketing

Scoring methodology – The framework by which leads are scored (e.g. points, letter grades, etc.)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Also known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising; the process of paying a search engine to advertise a product or service

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The process of employing different tactics to improve a business’s ranking in organic or unpaid search results to ultimately increase conversions

Seed Email Accounts – Accounts created by a monitoring service with each of the ISPs

Seed Nurturing -- The process of building relationships with qualified prospects before you have their contact information

Segment – A portion of an audience that is targeted to receive a specific marketing campaign

Segment – The ability to slice a list into specific pieces determined by various attributes, such as open history or name source.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) – An email vailidation system that is used to prevent spam

Sender Score – An indication of the trustworthiness of an email source

Sentiment – A level of assessment that determines the tone of an article, blog post, a company, etc.; usually positive, negative or neutral

Short URL – An alias short URL used for redirection of long URLs

Social Media Monitoring – The use of search engine technology to ‘listen’ for specific keywords as defined by your organization

Social Media – Any strategy, software system or media outlet that relies on social interaction and the participation of individuals or communities to create and publish content

Social News – Websites where users submit and vote on news stories or other links, thus determining which links are presented

Social Proof – The determination of what is right by finding out what other people think is right

Social Selling – Also referred to as Sales 2.0, the merging of Web 2.0 technologies with traditional sales strategies, enabling salespeople to better prioritize their time and serve as experts—not just negotiators— in the product selection process

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – A way of deploying software so that users access the software “on-demand” as a web-based service, and the software vendor hosts the application on its own web servers

Spam Traps – Old inboxes that ISPs reactivate specifically to trap spammers. Because these addresses have never been registered to receive email, any mail that lands in the trap inbox is labeled as spam

Spoofing – A fraudulent email activity in which the sender address and email header are changed to look as though the email originated from a different source

Statistical Significance – In the case of online testing, the probability that an event did not occur by chance

Stay in Touch Campaigns -- Campaigns that “drip” out relevant content to prospects over time, helping to educate them and build trust and credibility for your company

Suppression File – A list of email addresses you have removed from your regular mailing lists, either because they have opted out of your lists or because you do not wish to email them (competitors, etc...)_

Threshold – A score used to determine whether or not a specific action should be taken on a lead

Trigger – An event based on a change or update in status, demographic information, or user behavior that causes a lead to proceed along a specific workflow branch or new path

Twebinar - A mashup between a live podcast/audio broadcast and Twitter as the backchannel for discussion

Twitter -- A social networking and microblogging service in which users send and read other users' updates known as tweets that are 140 characters or less

Unsubscribe - To remove oneself from an email list, either via an emailed command to the list server or by filling in a web form.

Web 2.0 – A term used to describe the second generation of web tools and software that encourage users to become more active participants, creating content and interacting with each other within web-based, social communities

Website Monitoring – The ability to monitor page visits, click-throughs, form submissions, and other online activities from either known or anonymous visitors

Widget – A mini application that performs a specific function and connects to the Internet

YouTube – A video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos

What terms should we add to this magical list?