Whatchamacallit?! : A survival guide to online marketing terminology

So you’ve had it up to the ceiling with listening to your friendly neighborhood email marketing guru witter on brutishly with metric tons of mystical vernacular and pseudo-lingo, often resulting in stunning the digitally-agnostic average Joe into silence and dressing the speaker in a holy aura of apparent expertise.

It can in fact be surprisingly easy and exceptionally helpful to study up on the talk of the trade before committing yourself to an email marketing service provider. Most people wouldn’t buy a car, a new computer or even rent a DVD at random without making any effort in inspecting the criteria that eventually translate into value for money - so why should email marketing be any different?

Here then is a quick A-Z to spur you on your way in getting onto the same page and give you the edge to know when you are being intentionally jargon-bombed into submission.


Affiliate Marketing - An advertising scheme in which a website directs visitor traffic to its sponsor and earns commission based on related sales. 

Above the Fold - When viewing a webpage, this is the area that is the most visible at the top, without having to scroll down. Since this is what the reader will see first, it is used for the most important information and is considered more valuable.

B2B - Business to business. Material aimed at promoting trade between enterprises. 

B2C - Business to client. Material aimed at promoting trade between an enterprise and its clientele.

Bounce Rate - The percentage of messages that did not arrive at the intended recipients. Soft bounces indicate a temporary problem in reaching your audience, whereas hard bounces are email accounts that are for some reason permanently unreachable. 

Call to action - The part of your messages that prompts the reader to take action based on the information you are providing.

Click-through rate - The percentage of recipients in email campaigns that follow the links that you have provided to the desired webpage.

CRM - Customer Relationship Management. The ability to keep track of all your interactions with all prospects, tabulating trends and helping you identify, appeal to and retain more customers.

Conversion Rate - This is ultimately how you measure success of an email marketing campaign. It refers to the amount of people who followed through on your call to action, be it sales, appointments, attendants or just sharing of information.

Full Service Provider - An email marketing vendor that also caters for other aspects of digital marketing. Compare various vendors and swap notes with your industry peers to ensure that the FSP you are opting for is indeed offering you a complete repertoire of services. 
Permission Marketing - Communications sent to recipients that are characterised by opt-in agreements, authenticating their interest.

ROI - Return on investment. The measure of the profits made and the expenditures tolled during your campaign. It’s a way to indicate how much you are getting back in return for what you have given out.

Spoofing - Has nothing to do with television from the 70’s and everything to do with dubious email providers that forge sender addresses, to blind-side recipients into reading deceptive mail.

Whitelists - Lists of dependable sites that have established relationships with internet service providers, which are allowed to freely practice bulk email marketing through the ISP’s gates, regardless of spam filters.