70 Essential Email Marketing Terms – The Ultimate Guide

Do you know your APIs’ from your Customer Life Time Value?  Confused by Click Rates?  I’ve got good news, you’re not alone. Email marketing with its trendy terminology has been dazzling and confusing Business owners, for decades.

To help combat terminology uncertainties, Remarkety has created a comprehensive list of Email Marketing terms, catered to the eCommerce business user. The glossary is multi-functional and serves to build your marketing knowledge and drive your business to the next level.

Are you ready to expand your vocational vocabulary and prove that you are a marketing wizard? Read on…

Without further ado, here are the top 70 Email Marketing Terms (in no particular order).  We hope you find it as helpful as we have!

1. Automated Email Campaigns – An email that is sent automatically when a customer triggers certain pre-set conditions, rules and actions. Examples include: Abandoned Cart Emails, Inactive Customers.
2. API – Application Programming Interface – A set of subroutine definitions, protocols, and tools for building application software. In email marketing, APIs are used to connect the eCommerce website and email marketing system.
3. A/B Testing – A method to test email performance in different variants of the same email. For example, testing of two subject lines to compare open rate results.
4. Bounce Rate – Emails that cannot be delivered. Bounce rate calculates the number of emails bounced against the number of emails sent
5. Browse Abandonment – It is a term utilized to define a situation where a customer browses products on an eCommerce website and leaves the website without purchasing or adding anything to the cart.
6. Email Blacklist – An email blacklist is a real-time database for IP address that are considered to be sending SPAM. This usually happens when an email address triggers Spam filters in email clients such as Gmail, Hotmail
7. Behavioral Email – Email that is triggered by actual shopping behavior of the customer. Eg. Customers with shopping trends in a certain season are sent coupon codes in those seasons.
8. Cart Abandonment – A term utilized to define a situation where a customer adds products to the shopping cart but does not complete the purchase.
9. Customer Life Time Value  (CLTV) – The total amount of money spent by an individual in their entire lifespan as a customer.
10. Conversion Rate for Emails – In eCommerce email marketing, the term “conversion” represents a purchase on the website. The conversation rate is calculated by the number of customers that “convert” per number of emails sent.
11. Click Through Rate – This represents the percentage of recipients that have clicked on a link in the email per number of emails sent.
12. Customer Acquisition Cost – Total marketing and sales cost for a given period of time per total new customers in that time.
13. Customer Segmentation – The process of differentiating customers into groups based on various characteristics such as location, shopping patterns, browsing history. This method facilitates creation of customized email campaigns that help produce targeted marketing content.
14. Bulk Mail – Bulk Mail is the process of sending email marketing with the same content to a large email list. Newsletters are prime examples of Bulk Mail
15. Call to Action (CTA) – Strong command used to grab attention and incite the recipient to perform the required action. Example of CTAs can be “BUY NOW “ with a button or “CALL NOW” with a phone number.
16. Click Bait – Words/Media content that incites customers to open an email or click on items in the email.
17. Customer Engagement – The concept of keeping a customer loyal and actively interacting with your brand. It also includes maintaining the brand’s importance and satisfaction in the customer’s mind.
18. CAN SPAM – It stands for “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003,” This legislature controls commercial emails and gives the right to the consumer to refuse getting a company’s emails.
19. Drip Campaign – It is an email marketing technique where an email campaign is sent out every few hours to warm up the IP and ensure email platforms identify the address as a valid source and not SPAM.
20. Double opt-in – Double opt-in is a two-step process for email subscription. Customers emails cannot be extracted from only one sign-up form on the website. An additional email is required to be sent to the customer to ensure their approval to becoming a subscriber and receiving emails.
21. Dynamic Coupon –Dynamic coupons are individual coupons that are unique to each customer. They are generated by the email marketing system based on real-time data and can be included in any email campaign.
22. Drag & Drop Email Template Editor – The “drag and drop” tool enables marketers to create and optimize their email layout and content by dragging pre-defined features directly into the email. Pre-defined features include; the header, footer, images, product recommendations, and insert tags, embedded links.
23. Deliverability – Deliverability is one of the most important aspects of email strategy. It can be defined as the success of getting an email into a subscriber’s inbox. Various factors affect this delivery process, such as reputation of the email marketer, bounce rate, and spam issues.
24. Event triggered email – An automated email that is immediately sent out as a result of an action taken. An event may include; cart abandonment, browse abandonment or purchase.
25. Email Marketing – It is a branch of marketing that deals with the promotion of products and services via email. It is an interactive space where customized marketing content is generated based on consumer activity on the eCommerce website.
26. Events/Web Hooks – An event is an action that takes place on the website, such as a customer purchase. A WebHook is a back-end program that communicates between the website data, additional applications that are connected to the website and email marketing platform. WebHooks works in real-time ensuring that events that are happening are immediately pushed into the email marketing system.
27. Email Template – A basic design stencil for emails. It usually includes pre-set design blocks programmed to include dynamic, personalized content.
28. Email Client – Email client is a desktop application that enables configuring one or more email addresses to receive, read, compose and send emails from that email address(s) through the desktop interface. It provides a central interface for receiving, composing and sending emails of configured email address(s). Example, Outlook, Gmail etc.
29. ESP (EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER) – Platforms that provide email as a service, eg. GMAIL, Outlook, Yahoo Mail etc
30. Goodbye Message – Email sent to customers that have unsubscribed from receiving any marketing material. Goodbye emails usually incorporate a customer experience feedback form to help understand the reason behind a customer has opted out.
31. Hard Bounce – When a email bounces back because the email address does not exist. The term “bounce” refers to being rejected from the inbox.
32. HTML Rendering – Configures the data to be received on multiple devices, from web to mobile. It’s core focus is to ensure the user experience resembles the experience intended by the documents’ authors
33. Inactive Shoppers – Inactive shoppers are customers that have browsed the website but not completed a purchase yet.
34. Inactive Customers – Inactive customers are those that have previously made a purchase on the eCommerce website, but have not made a new purchase in X amount of days.
35. IP Warm Up – It is the process of creating a good sender reputation for the address that will be sending a high number of promotional emails. The combination of the store’s URL and the system’s IP is new to email clients and for them to not identify this combination as spam, it is required to slowly educate them to identify this combination as a credible source. The IP warm up process takes about two weeks (depending on the size of the contact list of the eCommerce store). The emails are sent out slowly and sporadically, gradually scaling up to the full size of the list.
36. KPI (Key Performance Indicator) – Most important and relevant factors that determine the success of a marketing campaign. KPIs common to email marketing include; click through rate, conversion rate, bounce rate and total revenue .
37. Landing page – A landing page is the page that opens from a click within an email. These pages can be within the website or created as an additional page.
38. Newsletter – A newsletter is a periodic email that is sent to email recipients and is not triggered by customer on-site behaviour. Newsletters usually include branding information and industry and company specific news.
39. Open rate – Number of emails opened / Number of emails sent in total
40. Product Recommendation – Products that are recommended to a customer in the email based on various variables such as purchase history, web browsing patterns, new products , compatible items etc.
41. Promotions Tab – It is a folder in the Gmail inbox that identifies marketing emails, digital content with links and buttons and pushes the emails to be categorized as promotional.
42. Preview Text – Text right above the beginning of the email. This is visible prior to opening the email.
43. Rewards Program – Rewards programs are utilized to reduce churn, provide conversion incentives and gain data for customer segmentation.
44. Responsive email templates – Email designs that convert automatically to the size of the screen they’re being displayed on.
45. Revenue/Email – Revenue generated/total marketing emails sent to the subscribers
46. Customer Retention – The concept of retaining customers, to ensure they stay with the product for a long duration and avoid churn.
47. Sign-up forms – Sign-up forms are generally created using two methods: On-site Form, Pop Up Form
    • Subscription Form – A text box provided on the website to collect email addresses.
    • Subscription Pop Up – A pop up is a new window that shows up on a webpage to provide or collect information.
48. Static Coupon – Single coupon that is sent to all customers subscribed to receiving a specific email marketing campaign. It is not personalized to each customer.
49. Subscriber – Individual who has signed up to receive emails from an eCommerce website.
50. Subject Line – Introductory information to an email, mostly used as a preview, situated on the top of the page.
51. SPAM Mail – Also known as Junk Mail, mostly includes emails that pretend to be from familiar email addresses but contain Malware links and phishing scams.
52. Spam Report – Consists of taking action against abusive digital content to an authority. It can be against a blog, email addresses or email content.
53. Single Opt-In – Single opt-in is a one step process for signing up to be an email subscriber. With this setting enabled on a website customers emails can be extracted from only one sign up form on the website.
54. SPF – Acronym for “Sender Policy Framework”. This is method for mailbox providers to make sure that the sending server is authorized to send email on behalf of the sender’s domain. It is a simple, DNS-based method that requires very little configuration.
55. Social Media Links – Social media links refer to URL links to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest in the email.
56. Soft Bounce – A soft bounce occurs when a email does not get delivered because the inbox of the recipient is full.
57. Transactional Emails – These are trigger based emails that are automatically sent when a customer completes a transaction. These emails usually contain information regarding the purchase, product image, order quantity, total bill amount and delivery information.
58. Throttling – Email throttling controls the number of emails sent to an ISP or remote server at a single time. The process helps email marketers to avoid being identified as SPAM by email servers.
59. Triggered Emails – These are subset of automatic email campaigns. These are emails that get sent out automatically to customers immediately after certain actions/behavior on an eCommerce website. Each type of action can have its own unique email being sent out. Example, Welcome email after first visit, Order Confirmation etc.
60. Thank You Page – This is the web page that opens up to thank the customer for an action they have performed.
61. Dynamic Tags/Labels – Tags are used to personalize emails according to first name, last name, city, or any other relevant information of your customers. Dynamic Tags can be inserted into the email at any place. They help make the emails come across as more personal and uniquely made for a customer.
62. Unsubscribe – Unsubscribe is a step a customer can take when he/she does not want to receive any future emails from a website.
63. Unique Clicks – This refers to the total number of clicks by individual users in an email. If a user clicks numerous times, this is not counted towards the number.
64. Unique Opens – Number of individual users that have opened a single email.
65. Unbounce emails – Emails that successfully get delivered into the subscriber’s inbox.
66. Unique/Personalized Coupon – Personalized coupons are distinct coupons created for each customer. Unique coupons are for one-time use only.
67. Dedicated IP vs Shared IP – All email is ultimately sent by some server, connected to the Internet, which has an IP address. Mailbox providers and spam filters will attempt to identify whether a server – identified by its IP address – is known for sending spam or not, and maintain a “reputation” for that IP. When sending through a shared IP, your emails basically share the IP reputation of all the other senders on that IP. This usually works quite well if the ESP takes care to maintain the overall reputation of their mail servers. A dedicated IP means that your company’s email will be the only email sent through that specific IP, and so the reputation – for good or bad – is entirely up to that company, and is not affected by other senders.
68. White label domain – To prevent email spoofing, outgoing emails are automatically “signed” by the mail server using a process called DKIM. Usually, the email will be signed by the ESP’s domain (for example: remarkety.com). Whitelabeling a domain means that the email will be signed by the sender’s domain (for example: mycoolstore.com). This may improve the email provider’s trust of that email, and in addition, will remove the “via ….” link that appears next to the “From” line in gmail and other clients.
69. Welcome Emails – This is the first email that is sent to a subscriber. It is usually includes company information, branding content and product recommendations. Coupon codes can be used as a welcome gift.
70. Web Tracking – Web tracking is the process of tracing visitors on a website. In email marketing, customers visiting eCommerce websites can be tracked in conjunction with a email marketing software tool. Information collected via web tracking include browsing history of customers, shopping patterns, website sales etc.

Final Thought

Email marketing has come a long way since the first campaign went live over 40 years ago. There are new email marketing terms coming into the industry literally on a daily basis, however, with a team like Remarkety behind you, you will never feel alone. Let us accompany you on your journey and you will never feel overwhelmed again.