New to email marketing? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We’ll walk you through the essential email marketing terms you need to succeed.
Here is a curated list of email marketing terms you should know if you are an aspiring or already an email marketing specialist.
A/B Testing
A/B testing, or A/B split testing, is a way to improve your email marketing campaigns. It involves comparing two different versions of an email and seeing which one works best for your target audience.
Acceptance Rate
The acceptance rate is the percentage of email messages that are accepted by the mail server.
AMP Emails (AMP Emails)
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) emails are a new technology that allows you to include interactive and dynamic content within email messages.
Autoresponder (Autoresponder)
An autoresponder is an automated message or series of messages that are sent in response to a specific trigger or action to a particular address. Autoresponders are often used to send out-of-office messages and confirmations.
Behavioral Email
Behavioral email is a powerful marketing tool that allows businesses to send targeted emails based on the recipient’s actions and behavior. By analyzing user interactions across multiple platforms, behavioral email campaigns can be personalized to increase customer engagement and boost sales.
Blacklist
A blacklist refers to a list of email addresses, IP addresses or domains that are identified as sources of spam or malicious activity and are blocked from sending emails.
Body Copy
Body text refers to the main content or text within an email. It is an essential component of the email.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of emails that are not delivered to recipients’ inboxes. Bounces can be classified as hard or soft bounces.
Call-to-Action (CTA)
A call to action (CTA) is a crucial element of email content that prompts subscribers to take a specific action. Focusing on a single CTA can help optimize conversions, from the email template to the landing page.
CAN-SPAM Act
The CAN-SPAM Act sets the rules for commercial emails, gives recipients opt-out rights, and outlines penalties for violations of these regulations.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate (CTR) measures the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your email. It is calculated by dividing the number of unique clicks by the total number of people who opened your email.
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is the percentage of readers who take the desired action after receiving your email. This desired action can be making a purchase, subscribing to a service, downloading a resource, among others.
DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail)
DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is an authentication method that verifies the authenticity of email messages by adding a digital signature to the header of outgoing emails.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance)
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is an email validation protocol that relies on SPF and DKIM to prevent phishing and email impersonation.
Demographics
In email marketing terms, demographics refers to customer data based on common characteristics such as age, gender, location, and interests.
Double Opt-In
Double opt-in is a method where subscribers must confirm their email subscription by replying to a confirmation email in addition to opting in on a website.
Drip Campaign
A drip campaign is a series of pre-written emails sent to a specific group of subscribers over a set period of time.
Drip Marketing
Drip marketing is an essential strategy in email marketing where a series of pre-written emails are sent to recipients based on their behavior and interactions with previous emails. This automated approach allows businesses to nurture leads, build relationships, and guide customers through the sales funnel over time.
Dynamic Content
Dynamic content refers to email content that changes based on the recipient’s behavior, preferences, or demographics and is updated in real time.
Email Analytics
Email analytics is the process of tracking, analyzing and interpreting data related to your email marketing campaigns.
Email Automation
Email automation is the process of automatically sending emails to subscribers based on predefined events or triggers within email marketing automation.
Email Client
An email client is software used by recipients to access and manage their emails. Common examples include Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail.
Email Campaign
An email campaign is a series of emails sent to a group of recipients with the aim of helping them achieve a certain goal.
Email Deliverability
Email deliverability is the ability of your email to reach recipients’ inboxes.
Email List
An email list is a curated list of email addresses to which businesses send marketing emails and updates.
Email Segmentation
In email marketing terms, email segmentation is the practice of dividing your email subscribers or email list into smaller segments based on criteria such as demographics, preferences, activity, or purchase history in order to send more targeted emails.
Email Service Provider (ESP)
In terms of email marketing, an email service provider (ESP) is a company or platform that offers email services to its customers and allows them to create, send and manage marketing emails and email campaigns.
Email Signature
This is an essential component of email marketing terms, usually found at the end of an email and containing important information such as the sender’s name, title, company, and contact information.
Email Template
An email template is a pre-designed email or layout that can be edited and used to create emails with a consistent look.
Engagement
Engagement refers to the interaction, participation and response your emails receive from your recipients. This can mean opening your emails, clicking on links, downloading a resource, etc.
Fallback Email
A fallback email is an alternate or backup version of an email message that is displayed when the original email content cannot be displayed or rendered correctly.
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a set of laws in the European Union (EU) that regulates how data is collected and processed. The GDPR applies because it involves the processing of personal data for communication purposes.
Hard Bounce
A hard bounce is when an email is not delivered to the recipient and is returned to the sender due to reasons such as the email address being invalid or the sender being blocked by the recipient.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the coding language used to create and structure web pages and their content.
Interactive Emails
Interactive emails are those that include interactive elements within the email and allow recipients to interact with the content of the email.
IP Warming
IP warming is a process by which marketers gradually increase the volume of emails sent through a new IP address to establish a good sending reputation.
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with potential customers at different stages of the sales funnel by sending them targeted and relevant emails, guiding them towards a purchase.
Lead Magnet (Lead Magnet)
A lead magnet is an incentive or offer provided by a company in exchange for a customer’s information, such as their email address, name, zip code, and other additional information.
List Hygiene
Email list hygiene refers to the process of keeping your email contact list clean and up-to-date by validating email addresses and removing inactive or unwanted subscribers on a regular basis to improve deliverability.
List Segmentation
List segmentation is a vital strategy employed by email marketers to divide their contact lists into separate groups or segments. By organizing the email list based on factors such as demographics, behavior, or preferences, emails specifically tailored to each segment can be sent with relevant content.
Open Rate
The open rate is the percentage of recipients who open an email out of the total number of emails delivered. It is measured by tracking the number of email opens relative to the total number of emails delivered.
Opt-In (Opt-In)
Opt-in refers to the practice whereby recipients voluntarily subscribe or agree to receive emails from a sender. This implies their consent to receive such emails.
Personalization
Personalization is a marketing technique in which senders use subscriber data to personalize their emails and send unique emails to different subscribers on the list.
Phishing (Phishing)
Phishing involves fraudulent attempts to obtain sensitive information such as passwords or credit card numbers by impersonating a trusted entity in an email.
Plain Text Emails
Plain text emails are those that contain only text, without images, links, graphics, HTML code or styles.
Responsive Design
Responsive design customizes the size and layout of the email to fit different screens while maintaining its style and usability. It ensures that the email looks good and works properly on any device or email client.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Return on investment (ROI) is a key performance metric that measures the profitability or success of an email marketing campaign. ROI is calculated by dividing the net revenue generated by the campaign by the total cost of the campaign and expressing it as a percentage.
SMTP
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a communication protocol used to send email messages between servers.
SPF
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is an email authentication method that helps prevent email address spoofing.
Soft Bounce
A soft bounce occurs when an email is rejected due to a temporary difficulty, such as a full mailbox or a server error.
Spam
Spam is an unsolicited commercial email sent to recipients without their consent. Spam emails are often sent in large quantities and may contain false, misleading or fraudulent content.
Spam Filter
Spam filter is a system that automatically identifies and filters unwanted or spam emails, keeping them out of recipients’ inboxes.
Subscriber
A subscriber refers to an individual who has provided their email address or contact information and has consented to receive communications from a company or organization. Contacts who subscribe to receive promotional emails become subscribers.
Subject Line
The subject line is the header of an email that appears in the recipient’s inbox. It’s one of the first things subscribers see and plays a crucial role in determining whether or not they’ll open the email.
Single Opt-In (Single Opt-In)
Single opt-in is a method where users only need to provide their email address to subscribe to a mailing list without having to confirm their subscription, as is the case with double opt-in. This means that they can be subscribed to a list by someone else, which is not recommended for building a healthy email list.
Transactional Email
These are messages sent to individual recipients and are triggered by a specific transaction or action on a website or application.
Trigger Email
This is an automated message sent in response to a specific action taken by a subscriber.
Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of subscribers who opt out or cancel receiving future emails from a sender. Technically, it’s a request to leave your email list.
Whitelist
A whitelist is a list of specific email addresses or domains that are considered safe and can bypass spam filters.
WYSIWYG Editor
A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor allows users to create emails visually without needing to know HTML or other programming languages.
