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Useful Information
Useful Information
If you don't know what a META tag is or if you are baffled by MPEGs and HTTP, then consult our handy glossary of terms and list of abbreviations below.
Glossary of Terms
- Application Service Provider (ASP)
- A company that provides the technology to broadcast an email campaign but requires the client company to carry out the broadcast by accessing the technology via the web.
- Bonded Sender
- Anti-Spam system in which legitimate email marketing companies pay a bond to the ISP as a guarantee that they will not breach the ISP's guidelines on Spam, in return for which the ISP guarantees to deliver their emails.
- Bounce
- An email that is unable to be delivered to the intended recipient because of a temporary problem, such as a full mailbox ('soft bounce'), or a permanent error, such as an incorrect email address ('hard bounce').
- Bounce Management
- The process of tracking emails that bounce and identifying why they have bounced in order to attempt to redeliver them.
- Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
- Style sheets that enable website designers to define how different elements of a site will appear on each page.
- Challenge Response
- Anti-Spam authentication process which requires the sender of an email to prove their legitimacy before being added to the recipient's Buddy List for simple delivery of subsequent emails.
- Click through Rate (CTR)
- The number of people who click on a link in a marketing email or on an online advertisement, to take them through to a website, expressed as a percentage of the total number of people the email was sent to.
- Comment tags
- Tags in HTML code which enable designers and programmers to make comments or remarks for later navigation.
- Conversions
- The number of people who, having clicked through to an offer on a website, go on to make a purchase.
- Cookie
- A small piece of code embedded within an email which enables the sender to match recipients of the email with consumers who subsequently click through to a website from the email, or who subsequently visit the website independently of receiving the email.
- Co-registration
- The practice of inviting consumers to register their details with a company while they are in the process of registering their details with another company; for instance when they are opening a web-based email account. Co-registration is popular because it enables the consumer to register their details with multiple companies, while completing personal information only once.
- Customer Lifetime Value
- The predicted value, in monetary terms, to an organisation, of an individual customer over the duration of the customer's relationship with the organisation.
- Customer Profile
- The physical and lifestyle characteristics of a consumer that help an organisation to decide how appropriate it is to target that consumer with its marketing messages.
- Data Profiling/Segmentation
- The process of analysing a database to identify clusters of people who share similar characteristics (age, income, number of children etc.) in order to break the database down into segments that can be targeted with different marketing messages appropriate to each segment of the database.
- Deliverability
- The success with which a company or an email broadcaster is able to deliver emails to the intended recipients.
- DHTML
- Dynamic HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language). A combination of HTML, style sheets and scripts that makes a web page dynamic.
- Domain Keys
- Anti-Spam technology relying on a combination of public and private digital keys to verify the identity of the sender; and to verify that the email has not been altered in transit.
- Domain Name Server (DNS)
- A system for translating easy-to-remember domain names into a numerical IP (Internet Protocol) address.
- Double Opt-in
- Where a consumer gives their explicit consent for a company to send them marketing emails and is then required to confirm that consent by replying to the first email sent to them by the company.
- Dynamically-generated Content
- Email content that is amended in real time according to rules which have been set up relating to the recipient's previously-expressed preferences or past online behaviour. This makes the content of the email more relevant to each individual recipient.
- Email Appending
- The process of adding email address details to offline data files, enabling online marketing activity.
- Email Broadcasting
- The practice of sending an email to multiple (hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands) of recipients, simultaneously or in staggered batches.
- Email Marketing Database
- A collection of names and email addresses residing in an organisation and used for marketing purposes.
- Email parser
- Generic description for a mechanism that processes emails, such as, the campaign software or custom systems like EASe.
- False Positive
- When an ISP arbitrarily junks or "absorbs" a marketing email without sending a bounce notification, leaving you with the impression that an email has been delivered when in fact it hasn't reached its intended destination.
- Frames
- A method of presenting web pages in multiple views, so that one "view" such as a menu bar can remain visible while the others are scrolled or closed.
- Frequency
- The length of time between each of several pre-planned communications, such as a daily, weekly or monthly email newsletter, for example.
- Friend-get-friend/Member-get-member scheme
- Viral marketing campaign by which companies ask registered users or customers to give them the email addresses of their friends so that they can invite them to register their details with the company. Since the introduction of the Privacy in Electronic Communications (Directive) Regulations 2003, such schemes are no longer legal, though a company can still legally ask registered users to invite their friends to visit its website to take advantage of a special offer or other incentive.
- Hard Bounce
- An email which is unable to be delivered to intended recipient because of a permanent error, such as an incorrect email address.
- HTML
- The authoring language used to create web pages and many marketing emails.
- HTML Validation
- The process of checking HTML code for errors which would prevent a web page or an HTML email from rendering correctly on a user's PC.
- Image map
- An image containing multiple links.
- Interstitial
- Meaning 'in between'. An advert that appears in a separate browser window while you wait for a web page to load. Interstitials are more likely to contain large graphics, streaming presentations, and applets than conventional banner ads.
- IP Address
- A means of identifying the location of a computer on a TCP/IP network. In email broadcasting, the IP address is used by the ISP to identify the sender of the email.
- ISP
- Internet Service Provider. A company which provides access to the Internet.
- Java
- A platform-independent programming language created by Sun Microsystems, and used to create small applications that enhance a web page's functionality.
- JavaScript
- An open scripting language used in the creation of interactive websites.
- Landing Page
- The page on a website to which visitors are automatically taken when they click on a link in a marketing email, inviting them to register their name and email address details.
- Legacy List
- A list of email addresses which was compiled before the introduction of the Privacy in Electronic Communications (Directive) Regulations 2003 and which therefore may not be opted in, since prior to the introduction of this legislation there was no requirement that any such list should be opted in.
- List Hygiene
- The process of checking the names and email addresses on an email marketing database for address accuracy, and correcting any errors, at the same time as suppressing any incorrect addresses that cannot be fixed.
- List Management
- The practice of maintaining, updating and cleansing a mailing list.
- Macro-level measurements
- Top-line results from an email marketing campaign providing statistics on the number of people mailed, the open and click through rates, and ROI.
- META tag
- An HTML tag that provides information about the content and other elements of a web page.
- Microsite
- A small website to which consumers are invited to click through to register their name and email address details by means of an incentive, such as a prize draw or money-off offer, promoted on a website via a marketing email or by other methods.
- Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)
- Software or an application responsible for receiving, routing and delivering email messages.
- Managed Service Provider (MSP)
- A company which provides the technology and bandwidth for broadcasting an email campaign, and carries out the broadcast.
- Micro-level measurements
- Granular measurements from an email campaign, looking at the behaviour of individuals who received the email, in terms of the links they clicked and what they did if they clicked through to the website.
- Numeric & named entities
- Special characters that exist outside of the current "codeset", or characters which require special encoding to avoid confusing HTML clients. For instance, < and > are used in HTML to declare the start and end of HTML tags. To actually include a ">" in the copy of an email, it has to be encoded as ">" (named entity).
- Open Rate
- The number of people who open a marketing email, expressed as a percentage of the total number of people the email was sent to.
- Opt In
- Where a consumer gives their explicit consent for a company to send them marketing emails.
- Opt Out
- Where a consumer receives marketing emails because they did not positively 'opt out' of doing so. Best practice, and new regulations which came into force in December 2003, suggest that all new email addresses should be collected on an 'opt in', rather than an 'opt out', basis.
- PAF Validation
- The process of checking a consumer's postal address for accuracy with reference to the Royal Mail's Postal Address File (PAF), which contains the addresses of over 27 million UK households.
- Parse
- In email marketing terms, to break down an individual's click through activity into small components for detailed analysis.
- Pop-up
- An advertisement which appears on a website over the user's main browser window. For this reason many consumers and ISPs do not like pop-ups.
- Pop-under
- An advertisement which appears on a website beneath the user's main web browsing window. The pop-under is, therefore, not revealed until the user closes their main browser window. Pop-unders are considered less intrusive than pop-ups.
- Post-click Analysis
- The practice of analysing website activity which takes place some time after a consumer received a marketing email.
- Preview
- A simulation and final proofing of the actual email broadcast. This is prepared so that a check that everything is correct before the actual broadcast takes place.
- Privacy Statement
- Copy on a website which explains in detail how the data which a company holds on registered visitors is held and used.
- Radio Buttons
- "Multiple choice" style tick boxes which consumers are invited to tick in order to give answers to an online survey, or to give personal information when registering their details with a company.
- Return on Investment (ROI)
- A measurement of the profit generated by a campaign as a fraction of the cost of planning and executing the campaign.
- Seeding
- The process of including known names and email addresses on a rented list of email addresses in order to check that the renter is not using the list more times than they are entitled to use it.
- Sender ID
- Anti-Spam technology which relies on the sender of the email to identify themselves as a legitimate sender in the message headers of the email.
- SMTP
- Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. A protocol for sending emails from one server to the next, but one with significant drawbacks for use in multi-client, multi-campaign broadcasting.
- Soft Bounce
- An email which is unable to be delivered to intended recipient because of a temporary problem such as a full mailbox, or an overloaded server.
- Spam
Unsolicited bulk email sent out randomly to consumers who have not given the sender permission to communicate with them via email. Incidentally, the generally accepted source of the term is that it comes from the Monty Python song, "Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam..."
Like the song, spam is an endless repetition of worthless text.
Some say however, that it comes from the computer group lab at the University of Southern California who gave it the name because it has many of the same characteristics as the lunchmeat: No one wants it or asks for it, no one ever eats it but sometimes it is actually tasty, like 1% of junk mail that is really useful to some people.
- Spam Filter
- Method used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to identify commercial email that looks like Spam by reference to the content of the email, in terms of specific words or phrases used in the subject line, body copy or graphic images.
- Subject Line
- Copy used in the "Subject" field of an email to identify the subject of the email.
- The "fold"
- Borrowed from the fold in newspapers, this is the bottom of the PC screen, so everything "above the fold" means everything the user can see on screen without scrolling.
- Timing
- The day and date on which a marketing email is delivered. There are many theories as to what represents the best and worst days of the week and times of the day to send a marketing email.
- Tracking and Analysis
- The practice of monitoring the performance of an email campaign to see if open and click through rates are at the expected level.
- Unicode
- Coding system that provides a unique number for every character, irrespective of platform, programme, or language.
- Unsubscribe
- The means by which a consumer can ask to be removed from a company's email marketing list. By law in the UK, every marketing email sent to a consumer must carry clear, easy-to-follow instructions explaining how the consumer can unsubscribe from the mailing list.
- URL - Uniform Resource Locator
- Standard way of representing the location of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web.
Useful Abbreviations
- ADSL
- Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line
- AOL
- America Online
- ASP
- Application Service Provider
- ATM
- Asynchronous Transfer Mode or Adobe Type Manager
- BBS
- Bulletin Board System
- BCC
- Blind Carbon Copy
- BPS
- Bits Per Second
- BRI
- Basic Rate Interface
- CAD
- Computer Aided Design
- CC
- Carbon Copy
- CSS
- Cascading Style Sheet
- CDA
- Communications Decency Act
- CDF
- Channel Definition Format
- CGI
- Common Gateway Interface
- COM
- Component Object Model
- CORBA
- Common Object Request Broker Architecture
- DCOM
- Distributed Component Object Model
- DES
- Data Encryption Standard
- DHCP
- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
- DHTML
- Dynamic Hypertext Mark-up Language
- DOM
- Document Object Model
- DNS
- Domain Name System
- DSL
- Digital Subscriber Line (or Loop)
- EDI
- Electronic Data Interchange
- EFF
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- FAQ
- Frequently Asked Question
- FDM
- Frequency-Division Multiplexing
- FSF
- Free Software Foundation
- FTP
- File Transfer Protocol
- GIF
- Graphics Interchange Format
- GPRS
- General Packet Radio Service
- GSM
- Global System for Mobile Communications
- GUI
- Graphical User Interface
- HDML
- Handheld Devices Mark-up Language
- HICPCP
- Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol
- HTML
- Hypertext Mark-up Language
- HTTP
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol
- IAB
- Internet Architecture Board
- IANA
- Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
- ICQ
- I Seek You
- IETF
- Internet Engineering Task Force
- IM
- Instant Messaging
- IMAP
- Internet M
- IOTP
- Internet Open Trading Protocol
- IP
- Internet Protocol
- ISDN
- Integrated Services Digital Network
- ISP
- Internet Service Provider
- JANET
- Joint Academic Network
- JIT
- Just In Time
- JPEG
- Joint Picture Experts Group (or JPG)
- KBPS
- Kilobits per second
- LAN
- Local Area Network
- LDAP
- Lightweight Directory Access Point
- LINX
- London Internet Exchange
- MANAP
- Manchester Network Access Point
- MBPS
- Million of bits per second
- MBONE
- Multicast Backbone
- MIME
- Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
- MOO
- MUD Object Oriented
- MSN
- Microsoft Network
- MPEG
- Motion Picture Experts Group
- NAP
- Network Access Point
- NNTP
- Network News Transport Protocol
- OPS
- Open Profiling Standard
- ORB
- Object Request Broker
- OS
- Operating System
- OSI
- Open Source Initiative
- Portable Document Format
- PICS
- Platform for Internet Content Selection
- POP
- Point of Presence
- POP3
- Post Office Protocol (latest version)
- POTS
- Plain Old Telephone Service
- PPP
- Point-to-Point Protocol
- PRI
- Primary Rate Interface
- PVC
- Permanent Virtual Circuit
- QOS
- Quality of Service
- SDMI
- Secure Digital Music Initiative
- SET
- Secure Electronic Transactions
- SMS
- Short Messaging Service
- SMTP
- Simple Mail Transport Protocol
- SOAP
- Simple Object Access Protocol
- SQL
- Structured Query Language
- SSL
- Secure Sockets Layer
- TCP
- Transmission Control Protocol
- TCP/IP
- Transmission Control Protocol/ Internal Protocol
- TDM
- Time-Division Multiplexing
- TLA
- Three-Letter Acronym
- TLD
- Top-level domain
- URL
- Uniform Resource Locator
- vBNS
- Very High Speed Backbone Network Service
- VM
- Virtual Machine
- VOIP
- Voice Over IP
- VPN
- Virtual Private Network
- VRML
- Virtual Reality Modelling Language
- W3C
- World Wide Web Connection
- WASP
- Wireless Application Service Provider
- WML
- Wireless Mark-up Language
- XHTML
- Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language
- XML
- Extensible Mark-up Language
- XSL
- Extensible Stylesheet Language