Glossary

A/B testing is a technique to compare results between two versions of something, which could be website design, app layouts, or marketing emails. In A/B tests, one element is altered between both versions – like a differently placed CTA or new color palette. These tests help designers and developers compare which design will perform better based on real statistics.

An ad network is an online platform that serves as a go-between for publishers and advertisers and maintains an online advertising inventory made of ad posts. Ad network companies compile these available ad supplies from publishers and then offer those to advertisers at a heavily discounted price. This helps small advertisers reach more customers.

Advertising is a form of communication with potential and existing customers that seeks to convince them to purchase a product or service. This could be through print media, television commercials, email marketing, online promotions, and more. While each differs in format, they all aim to persuade consumers to take action.

Affiliate marketing consists of people outside a company promoting that company’s products or services and earning a commission with each sale. Commission is earned through: pay-per-sale, pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-install. Because it pays per transaction, affiliates require less upfront cost, so companies can spend money on other vital projects. Affiliate links compile sales figures from website to website, seamlessly earning money for affiliate marketers.

Business-to-business (B2B) transactions involve one business selling goods or services to another business, enabling it to function smoothly in its day-to-day operations. These include companies that sell software-as-a-service (SaaS), suppliers, and marketing organizations. Although the B2B model only involves businesses working together and doesn’t directly target consumers, consumer relations are still a pivotal part of the transaction, providing incentives for businesses to collaborate.

B2C, which stands for business-to-consumer, describes transactions between businesses and customers (or an individual). This model specifically targets the end consumer. These transactions refer to products sold at retail stores and ecommerce sites or content offered by over-the-top (OTT) platforms.

Every year, Black Friday falls on the day after Thanksgiving, signaling the kickoff of the holiday shopping season and featuring special deals and coupons from various companies. These sales serve as an indicator of consumer confidence and the overall economic condition of the country.

A brand ambassador acts as the face of a brand. Companies hire them to market products or services via word-of-mouth and influencer or online marketing. They’re typically public figures who have a strong network, large following, and reputable public image. Brand ambassadors are often present at product launches and the brand’s events, share reviews to demonstrate a new product, and create engaging content to promote the product.

Brand identity is the overall impression of a company’s personality, values, voice, and USP (unique selling point). A brand identity design uses elements like logos, web pages, packaging, and more to convey a company’s voice and tone. It’s generally confused with brand image, but brand image is the overall impression of a company among its consumers. Brand identity focuses on the attributes a brand seeks to convey.

A branded email communicates your company’s personality and values through logos, design elements, and social media accounts. These emails provide your email list with a chance to connect with your business and make a purchase, boosting sales and building customer loyalty. Consistent content also helps current and potential customers recognize your brand.

CAC (consumer acquisition cost) is the expense a business incurs to gain new customers. The CAC formula is:

CPA (cost per action) is a digital advertising pricing model wherein advertisers are charged based on the actions of prospective consumers, like clicking on a call-to-action (CTA), signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase. It’s calculated by factoring in the total marketing spend in a time period divided by the total number of customers acquired. Here’s how it’s expressed in a formula:

CPM stands for “cost per mile” or, alternatively, cost per 1,000 clicks. It refers to the monetary expense associated with obtaining 1,000 advertising impressions on a web page and helps marketers better understand a campaign’s budget and impact. 

A call-to-action (CTA) seeks to persuade users to take action, whether that’s signing up for a newsletter, receiving information, or buying a product. It uses elements like branding, graphics, and copywriting to entice users to follow through, boosting conversion rates.

A click-to-open rate (CTOR) is the percentage of recipients who open a marketing email and click on a link within the email. It’s derived through the following formula: 

Commercial emails reach subscribers in the form of promotional content like newsletters, new product information, onboarding, and coupons. Since these emails aren’t content that recipients request, the best practice is to seek a double opt-in subscription from them to ensure their consent to extra marketing materials. This ensures recipients aren’t marking emails as spam.

A contact form is a brief questionnaire on a website providing customers with a simple way to contact businesses. When a user submits a contact form, the business receives an email notification, usually to a separate inbox. This allows companies to directly filter through general customer requests from a contact form, freeing up space in customer support’s inbox.

Content marketing uses online materials like videos, blog posts, and infographics to connect with an audience and convince them to buy a product or service. It also builds brand awareness by sending communications to potential customers and turns them into loyal ones by encouraging them to make a purchase. When that happens, brands slowly (but surely) build their customer bases.

A content marketing strategy uses various forms of media – like videos, podcasts, or blogs – to help a company reach sales targets and increase conversions. This content aims to generate curiosity or introduce potential customers to a brand. Companies tailor their content marketing strategies by thoroughly researching and understanding their target audience, but they must first have a framework in place to optimize their strategies and achieve their desired results.

A conversion percentage is the proportion of users taking action on a website. It’s expressed as a percentage and accounts for the total number of users who made a purchase divided by the total number of website visits, multiplied by 100. Here’s how:

A conversion is when the recipient of a marketing communication follows through on a call-to-action (CTA) provided in emails, paid advertisements, or social media posts. Email marketers have the flexibility to choose from a wealth of strategies, like market segmentation and email list hygiene, to convert leads into loyal customers. Not only does this boost sales, but it helps retain customers.

Copywriting is a type of marketing content designed to persuade an audience to take action. To promote products or services, brands hire copywriters who draft fresh, catchy content for product description, marketing channels, and blogs.

A customer data platform is a bundled software that creates a central database of customers. It also creates customer profiles with statistics from many sources, like social media and email participation, ecommerce, web forms, and transactional systems that marketing, sales, and product teams can use to gauge engagement from different audience segments and campaign performance.

A customer journey defines a user’s involvement and interaction with a brand. Its stages include awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy.

A dedicated IP address protects a company’s network from outside threats. It prevents external entities from accessing email marketers’ work and content, acting as an extra layer of security. IP addresses are a series of numbers computers use when connected to a network. These addresses are how computers interact with each other.

Digital marketing is the use of online avenues like social media, email marketing, and search engines to market to a target audience. Marketing campaigns often span all digital channels for maximum reach. This allows companies to reach wider audiences than traditional forms of marketing like print media or physical mail.

Digital media is any electronic media that facilitates content creation, viewing, and distribution. Brands leverage digital media to promote products and services, communicate with potential and existing customers, and more. This includes videos, audio, and static posts, which are easier to appeal to prospects and turn them into buyers than written content.

Direct mail advertising is the process of sending printed materials like flyers, postcards, and catalogs to people’s mailboxes while sharing the benefits of a product or service. While digital marketing is increasingly prevalent, direct mail advertising is an excellent avenue for building brand awareness.

Direct mail marketing seeks to persuade existing and potential customers to make a purchase with mailed materials, like postcards, flyers, and catalogs. When combined with digital marketing strategies, direct mail marketing helps reach a wider audience, appealing to consumers of all demographics. This also creates a lasting impression on consumers, helping the company stay fresh in consumers’ memory and boost its brand awareness.

Direct marketing means advertising to a specific target audience and encouraging them to take one clear action, like signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or visiting a landing page. It allows companies to analyze results using cookies or tracking pixels that compile data like website visits or sign ups. With those statistics, companies can gauge the success of their techniques. Email marketers then optimize their direct marketing strategies to reach a larger target group and potentially expand their customer base.

A drip campaign sends a sequence of automated emails – like welcome, abandoned shopping cart, purchase invoice, or customer service emails – to users who take action on a website.

Dynamic content is a type of web content that varies depending on user actions, interests, or preferences. It’s mostly in the form of video, audio, or text. Whether on websites or in emails, the content changes and adjusts to a user’s profile or the time of their visit, providing them with a personalized experience.

Ecommerce is the buying and selling of products and services online. Because of its growing popularity, many businesses have moved at least some of their operations online, selling products on their website and/or other ecommerce platforms. It’s an excellent first step for businesses looking to reach more customers and expand their presence.

An email campaign markets products and services to subscribers and seeks to provide them with tailored content at the right moment (which is exactly when they need it). Not only does an email marketing campaign inform consumers and persuade them to take action, but it nurtures existing customer relationships and increases their loyalty toward a brand. It lets companies analyze marketing metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, click-to-open rate, and conversion rate to optimize future messages.

An email editor helps marketers design appealing emails in less time. It houses features like an intuitive interface, image editing, and a library of templates. These editors also adapt to different email clients like Gmail and Outlook, as some email clients don’t always support elements like large graphics.

Email engagement is when a user interacts with the content a company sends, whether that’s opening an email, reading it, clicking a link, or purchasing a product. Companies can track their email engagement rate to analyze their overall growth and increase brand awareness.

Email fatigue occurs when subscribers no longer interact with your marketing emails, causing reduced open rates, click-throughs, and website visits. That can happen due to irrelevant content, frequent emails, or changes in a subscriber’s interests. To avoid email fatigue, email marketing professionals must maintain email list hygiene.

An email footer is found at the end of an email and  usually contains contact and legal information and summarizes a brand’s identity. Footers aim to create an even stronger impression with graphics positioned below contact information to emphasize topics like offers or events.

Email layout is the overall appearance and theme of a marketing email. It contains a headline, body, call-to-action (CTA), and conclusion or closing statement. In HTML (HyperText Markup Language), it consists of rows, columns, and tables. Email marketers can adjust all these elements to design messages that fit their brand identity, campaign objective, and persuade potential customers to take action. The focus of an email will change, depending on the objective. For example, abandoned cart emails will have different layouts than new product newsletters.

Email lead generation is the process of compiling sales prospects with a signup form in an email. It allows companies to collect data on potential customers, like their contact information and name. These emails feature an appealing subject line, a straightforward message, a compelling call-to-action (CTA), and links to social media channels to generate leads.

Email leads are email addresses who provide their contact information to a brand, typically through an opt-in form. Email marketing professionals with a lengthy email lead list nurture potential customers over a period of time and guide them through each touchpoint of the customer journey. This helps them gain customers and turn them into loyal buyers.

An email list is the directory of contacts companies use to send marketing materials. Companies should seek to grow their respective email lists over time and periodically clean it to remove inactive contacts to improve the reach of their marketing campaigns. With email marketing’s excellent return on investment (ROI), having a solid list is an essential part of the equation. Something to always keep in mind: never buy an email list online, as it neither complies with email best practices nor is supported by inbox service providers (ISPs).

Email marketing uses electronic communications to advertise a company’s products and services and increase brand awareness. These emails target groups of people, usually in the same target audience, to send any type of commercial message. A good email marketing strategy has the potential to drastically increase sales and turn new customers into loyal advocates.

Email personalization works to add a more personal feel to marketing emails. It involves adding user attributes, like name, gender, and location to avoid sending generic messages that may come off as distant. This bolsters open rates and click-throughs while nurturing customer relationships.

Email sender reputation is a score that an inbox service provider (ISP) assigns to brands sending emails to subscribers. These reputations determine whether an email reaches a subscriber’s inbox, as ISPs work to filter out spam. ISPs then route emails to inboxes or spam folders, depending on the sender’s reputation, keeping recipients’ inboxes clean and free of unwanted messages.

The email subject line is the first piece of text recipients view in an email and is visible in the inbox. It determines if recipients open an email or not. Email marketers have many best practices they should follow when writing subject lines, like being concise, asking questions, and announcing something.

An email template simplifies the creation of appealing marketing emails by providing an outline that senders tailor to their specific needs. Rather than spending hours designing a template that loads on multiple devices or has a visual appeal, marketers use an HTML email template with those elements already in place, saving them time, money, and resources.

A featured snippet is a brief piece of text at the top of Google search results page (SERP). Its purpose is to provide users with a quick answer to their search query, and could be in the form of a table, definition box, unordered list, and ordered list.

The four Ps of marketing – product, price, place, and promotion – are the primary factors of product or service promotion. Together, they form the marketing mix. Brands leverage the four Ps to create a marketing plan before launching a product.

A go-to-market strategy is a plan to launch a product that considers factors like target audience, competitors, and timing. An effective strategy involves thorough planning to avoid negative performance and achieve sales goals. It proves to be most effective for start-ups as it helps get them off the ground.

Google My Business allows business owners to manage their Google Business profiles, which can be created with a few clicks and some contact information, like company name, location, contact information, address, and products/services offered. Once the Google Business account is up and running, Google features the business on Google Maps and Google search, making it easy for potential customers to view the business. Brands can customize and fine-tune their profiles by adding a theme, colors, and logo. They can also add specific keywords to boost their SERP (search engine results page) ranking, inviting an increasing number of potential consumers to their website.

Google Search Console is a free tool that allows website owners to view traffic statistics and optimize their sites accordingly. It provides vital data like the highest traffic queries and pages, mobile site performance, referring domains, and rich search results.

A hero image (sometimes referred to as a hero header) is a large banner image at the top of the website. It acts as an introduction to both the website and the company.

IP warming is the practice of sending emails from a new IP address to gain the trust of mailbox providers and avoid an inbox service provider (ISP) blocklist. An IP warming campaign starts at an easy pace and increases at certain intervals, demonstrating a sender’s validity and good reputation among ISPs.

Image blocking is when email clients or recipients disable an image’s ability to load in an email. Email clients often do this for security reasons, while subscribers use it to conserve bandwidth.

Inbound marketing uses audience-specific content like social media posts, blog articles, and website pages to persuade potential customers to take action. Since these content materials are designed with the target audience in mind, companies place more emphasis on what the subscribers want than promoting their brand.

The inbox is where users view, open, and store emails they’ve received. Email clients like Gmail and Outlook offer helpful features like the ability to mute conversations, archive important messages, and snooze emails until later times. Users leverage these features to clean their inboxes and sort messages.

Integrated marketing seeks to merge a company’s promotions and ads across multiple channels so customers can easily identify a brand through consistent messaging.

An integrated marketing plan conveys brand identity to consumers through email, social media, packaging (logo or colors), and print media, enabling them to recognize a brand. It involves defining the company goals, setting key performance indicators (KPIs), citing buyer persona, and selecting marketing channels.

A key performance indicator (KPI) measures a company’s progress toward reaching specific targets, like revenue, profit margin, job satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and others. While some of these metrics only consider business performance, others analyze individual and departmental statistics.

A keyword is an individual word or a phrase in a web page matching with the word(s) entered into search engines. Conducting keyword research is an essential part of an SEO strategy. By performing a keyword search and discovering popular terms, brands identify relevant keywords that align with brand identity, allowing them to optimize their performance on search engine results pages (SERPs) and gain new subscribers through organic traffic.

LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and allows users to find information about people, companies, devices, and files, whether on a public network or private intranet. Companies use directories to store information like email addresses, usernames, and passwords and LDAP helps access and maintain that data.

A landing page is an individual web page designed as a part of a marketing campaign, and is where visitors arrive after clicking on a link in an email, a social media post, or search engine results. It has a narrow focus and a call-to-action (CTA) button to drive conversions. The CTA button usually directs a recipient to subscribe to a newsletter, purchase a product, or learn more about a brand.

Lead scoring is the practice of determining the value of leads or potential customers by assessing behaviors associated with their interest in certain products or services. It lets companies create more effective marketing campaigns by only targeting interested recipients, increasing overall revenue and conversions.

Lifecycle marketing involves tailoring messages to interact with customers at each touchpoint in the customer journey. It has six stages: awareness, engagement, evaluation, purchase, support, and loyalty. During each stage, brands seek to nurture the customer relationship and provide them with what they need, improving their return on investment (ROI).

A list broker is an individual or a company that maintains a list of prospective customers, including their names and contact details. Brokers sell lists to brands launching marketing campaigns, enabling brands to reach and acquire the maximum number of recipients.

List building seeks to create a list of email subscribers who receive marketing communications by collecting the email addresses of website visitors and users. This allows brands to interact with subscribers no matter where they are on the customer journey and keep them informed.

List segmentation is the process of dividing email lists into sections according to user interests and demographics and seeks to provide recipients with more relevant content. It tailors email marketing to different target audiences, instead of using a one-size-fits-all approach. The purpose of segmented campaigns is to send people content that interests them at the optimum time.

MJML, or Mailjet Markup Language, is an open-source method for coding responsive emails. With its easy-to-understand syntax, MJML makes it easy to code emails that appear on any type of device, whether a laptop, tablet, or phone. This allows email marketers to rest assured that recipients are loading and viewing the marketing messages without obstacles.

A mail merge is a feature that stores names and addresses of recipients in a database and allows senders to create various labels, letters, name tags, and envelopes using this stored information. To generate a mail merge letter, the sender first needs a Microsoft Word document and an index of addressees, normally from an Excel file. Microsoft includes a Mail Merge Wizard in Word, simplifying the process and guiding senders through each step. Users begin by adding recipients from an Excel Workbook or typing in their own list, then writing the letter. Each addressee receives a copy. For external copies, many third-party apps facilitate mail merge with attachments.

A market share is the percent of total sales in an industry generated by a specific company. It’s calculated by factoring in the company's sales over a particular period, dividing it by the industry's total sales over the same time frame, and multiplying it by 100. Here’s how it’s expressed in a formula:

Marketing analytics are metrics and data derived by examining the performance of a marketing strategy. It consists of unified marketing measurement (UMM), media mix models (MMM), and multi-touch attribution (MTA), which are techniques used by companies to measure their metrics and make data-driven decisions to increase market share and grow their brand.

A marketing automation platform (MAP) is a centralized platform that facilitates content creation, designing, and scheduling. This software lets marketers save time on monotonous tasks to increase productivity. It helps with drip campaigns, email actions, CRM updates, SMS, and more. Email marketers conducting a MAP comparison should consider the potential expenses and their unique requirements.

A marketing budget is the total amount of money a company allocates to marketing activities over a set period. It generally involves the amount spent on marketing team members, domain registration, automation tools, web content sponsorship, and relevant software or resources.

Marketing collateral is any material created and used to promote a campaign. Most campaigns use various media channels to advertise a company’s products and services. Using different methods expands a brand’s marketing efforts by reaching as many target audience members as possible. Brands should have a marketing collateral checklist in place to ensure their campaign will somehow appeal to every target audience member. This can include social media, email marketing, print media, a landing page, or a blog.

A marketing email uses electronic communications to promote a company’s products and services. Besides providing an excellent platform to gain customers and drive sales, marketing emails are an exceptional way to manage customer relationships. A customer relationship management (CRM) software and marketing emails work hand-in-hand. The software collects data about potential and existing customers, which professionals use to automate or create marketing emails to turn these customers into buyers.

A marketing mix is an amalgamation of strategies companies use to stand out among the competition, which are the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. These strategies help companies determine how to market the right product at the right time to earn the maximum profit.

Multichannel marketing uses various channels like direct mail, social media, and email to connect with customers and describe the benefits of a product or service. Companies use a mixed approach to reach more people, increase their brand awareness, and boost conversions.

Email newsletters market a company’s products and services, driving sales and building brand awareness. They’re also an excellent way to maintain customer relationships.

Nonprofit marketing involves tactics like email marketing, content marketing, and social media to appeal to people to make donations. Nonprofit organizations use this marketing technique to urge people to become a member or volunteer. Through this, they build up on their cause and work toward a brighter future.

A nurture email is sent to recipients based on their behavior toward a product. It informs them about the product’s particular benefits and directs them along their unique brand journey, encouraging them to buy the product. It also works to maintain and improve customer relationships and their loyalty toward a brand by periodically reminding them of the brand and its products.

Omnichannel marketing involves reaching out to potential and existing customers through all the channels a brand has presence on. This helps create additional leads and conversions, allowing companies to convey a consistent message.

Onboarding emails greet new subscribers, often as a series, to create a positive rapport and market a company’s products and services. They’re great for teaching potential customers more about your brand.

PPC (or pay-per-click) is a form of advertising where companies pay a fee to appear on a search engine results page (SERP) when a user types a keyword. PPC advertising helps companies stand out on SERPs, increase web traffic, and gain new customers.

A buyer persona is a detailed chart that includes the characteristics of individuals representing a target market. Companies research to learn the details of types of buyer personas to better tailor products and marketing materials, from social media posts to email marketing campaigns, to meet their customers’ needs. While one buyer persona may prefer a product with all the bells and whistles and doesn’t mind paying more, another could seek something that costs less and delivers basic functionality.

Personalized marketing taps into a recipient’s unique attributes like name, gender, age, location, or interests to optimize communications. Personalized emails create a rapport with recipients and maintain a long-lasting customer relationship, increasing their loyalty toward brands. This boosts brands’ return on investment (ROI).

A plain text email consists of only text, without the use of stylized fonts or graphics. Although it doesn’t have the visual appeal of an HTML email, it still plays an essential role in an email marketing strategy. When a company sends an HTML marketing email, a plain text version is often sent simultaneously by the multipurpose internet mail extensions (MIME) protocol to help avoid spam filters.

A preference center is a page on a website that provides recipients options to select what type and frequency of notifications and messages they wish to receive from a brand. Some companies also add links to their preference centers in the email’s footer to make it easily accessible for subscribers. These selected notifications enable recipients to avoid a constant stream of spam emails.

A press release is an official document that companies and corporations use to inform the public and media about newsworthy events such as product and service launches. It’s generally rolled out by a company’s Public Relations department.

The product lifecycle refers to the period between a product’s introduction and when it exits the market. It has four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Companies analyze these stages when deciding on price adjustments, refinements, and advertising budgets.

Product positioning is a marketing technique that shares a product’s benefits and advantages with a specific audience via social media and email marketing campaigns. Companies focus on unique customer groups by performing market research and gauging responses. Brands also leverage a step-by-step product positioning framework – including identifying the target audience, studying the market and competitors, and designing a positioning strategy – to reach their desired audience.

As the name suggests, progressive profiling is a technique used by companies to gradually build specific consumer profiles based on the products they interact with to create stronger relationships with consumers.

A promotional mix is an amalgamation of promotional variables, which are: direct marketing, personal selling, sales promotion, advertising, and public relations. It helps companies expand and optimize marketing efforts and reach more customers by improving communication and creating compelling marketing campaigns. It sets a company apart from the competition, boosting conversions.

A promotional plan involves the strategies companies use to achieve their short and long-term marketing goals. When a business identifies these goals, it outlines a plan including target audience, strategies, and budget and most importantly, what promotional strategies will help them achieve desired outcomes. The plan also maps out a timeline defining revenue and sales goals. Promotional strategies include offering discounts, digital marketing, and online advertisements.

A promotional strategy seeks to increase company sales through specific marketing tactics that build brand awareness and create loyal customers.

Psychographics are a customer's unique cognitive and psychological qualities like ideals, goals, and attitude that paint a comprehensive picture of their personality. This helps email marketers gain a deeper understanding of customers’ unique identities, points of view, and needs to better personalize content and calls-to-action (CTAs). This helps them trigger the feeling of exclusivity in recipients, encouraging them to make a purchase and become loyal customers.

A Really Simple Syndication (RSS) campaign is a feature that enables brands to send automated newsletters to consumers that contain links to recently published content like blogs or articles and important business updates. When a new post or article is published, it’s automatically sent at the frequency a marketer chooses. Businesses send these company updates via a list from their RSS feed subscribers.

A Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed is a web feed that stores details of all the content a user has subscribed to, like content summary, date, and author. It’s an inventory that allows visitors to click and view new and old content, usually for blog and news feeds, like the New York Times’ podcast “The Daily.”

Real-time collaboration enables people to work together through the use of software apps. It streamlines projects and facilitates more significant input from team members by allowing them to view and edit projects simultaneously, wherever they may be. They can share updates in real-time through video-conferencing or file sharing for faster problem-solving and decision-making.

Referral marketing seeks to boost sales through customer recommendations and conversations, spreading the word about a company’s products and services. It’s a cost-effective way to drive conversions, increase brand awareness, and reach sales targets.

A remarketing tag is a technique that allows a company’s Google Ads to follow potential customers browsing the internet. This small code snippet on a website adds these consumers to a “remarketing list” to show them the same advertisement again. Consumers are served the same ads when visiting websites using a Google Ad network.

A responsive email template is an email layout that loads on all types of devices, including laptops, cell phones, and tablets. It ensures recipients can view marketing emails without any obstacles by automatically adjusting to various screen sizes and devices. Some companies provide free templates that already have elements built-in like text fields and a clear call-to-action (CTA).

SMART goals provide a detailed description of how to achieve targets. The acronym SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

SMS promotions send marketing communications to potential customers via text messages, like welcome texts, status updates, verification codes, and booking confirmations. These can be particularly effective marketing tools, as recipients mostly have their cell phones with them most of the time.

A search engine is software that enables users to access information about search queries. It works when a user enters a keyword (or keywords) in the search bar. This keyword helps the search engine provide relevant results about the topic, making it easier for the user to find the desired piece of information.

Search engine marketing (SEM) uses paid advertisements to reach more customers on search engine results pages (SERPs). It helps company websites appear on SERP even if the companies don’t have the best organic search results.

A search query is a sequence of words typed by a user into a search engine. It aims to find information for users who research specific topics or keywords, like “current four-door sedan prices'' instead of “four-door sedan.” Sometimes, it might contain misspellings or grammatical errors, be in mixed order, or have extra words.

Segmentation involves dividing the target audience or leads into groups with specific attributes like age, location, gender, and interests, so email marketers reach only interested recipients to increase conversion rates. It’s an excellent way to improve brand image and demonstrate unique personality and products. Market segmentation can be broken down into five broad categories: demographic, geographic, psychographic, firmographic, and behavioral.

A shared IP (internet protocol) address is a series of numbers assigned to multiple domains. For example, “mailjet.com” can have a single IP address (commonly called dedicated IP), but “mailjet.ca,” mailjet.uk,” and “mailjet.com” can have a shared IP address, which is shared among themselves.

A target audience is the group of consumers most likely to buy a product or service. Companies determine target audiences by thoroughly researching customers and segment them based on demographics, geographic location, and peculiar attributes. While one group may prefer healthy food at a reduced price, the other could ask for flavorful meals without worrying about the cost. This helps marketers personalize and tailor marketing materials and newsletters to meet recipients’ needs and expectations.

A target market is a particular segment of consumers who are most likely to purchase a product or service because of their individual qualities, like interests, attitudes, and behavior. Companies segment target markets based on the demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral criteria, allowing them to better understand potential customers and personalize marketing messages.

A tracking pixel is a 1x1 pixel graphic that records user actions, website visits, conversions, and more on a webpage. This data allows companies to optimize their upcoming email marketing campaigns, improve conversion rates, and build an extensive customer base. Although it’s similar in functionality to a cookie, a tracking pixel has unique attributes like the ability to move from device to device. The different types of tracking pixels are conversion, retargeting, and Facebook. Each category provides vital information on user behaviors.

A unique selling point (USP), also called a unique selling proposition, is the essence of what makes a company’s product or service better than its competitors. In online marketing, communicating USPs clearly and quickly is one of the key elements to drive conversions, as an appealing USP concisely describes a brand’s exclusive qualities and is the purchase-making factor for many customers. If the USP isn’t as captivating, they’ll skip, resulting in the brand losing out on a sale.

An unsubscribe link in a marketing email allows users to conveniently opt out of further communications. Unsubscribe links are essential to maintain your sender reputation, increase deliverability, and ensure your company follows applicable regulations.

A VIP marketing strategy rewards long-term customers with special discounts and perks, increases brand awareness, and helps build customer loyalty. While the abbreviation VIP means very important person, it depends on the context. In the world of email marketing, VIPs are repeat customers who constantly buy from and engage with a brand.

Variables (for personalization) are fields email marketers can adjust based on user data like name, website, contact details, email address, location, and unique attributes, like their interests, buying history, and preferences. Companies use these in marketing emails to add a personal touch and enhance the user experience.

A What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor, is an editing software that allows users to edit content on a website and check the preview simultaneously. This eliminates the need to experiment with different HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) codes.

Welcome emails are sent immediately after recipients subscribe to a new list or make their first purchase from a company. These emails have a high open rate, making them essential for a positive first impression and long-lasting customer relationship. And because they’re automatically sent, they save email marketers precious time.

A white paper is a document that publishes accurate information about pressing issues with opinions of the issuing body and research data in the form of graphs and numbers. Brands also publish to provide benefits of their products or services that have been already launched or are soon-to-be launched. Through this, they persuade potential or existing customers or investors. It often shows research data with charts and graphs, emphasizes why a company or organization’s solution is superior to others on the market, and usually takes place between companies and wholesalers or wholesalers and retailers. The different types of white papers include problem/solution, backgrounders, and numbered lists.