Starting an email marketing campaign can be beneficial to your business in several ways! While you may know a little, a lot, or nothing at all, we’re sure there are some new words that will be added to your vocabulary. That’s why we want to share the most important email marketing terms you should know!
A/B Testing – A randomized experiment to see which version of an email performs better. During these tests, a portion of your audience receives one version while the other portion receives another. You may use A/B testing to optimize send times, subject lines, email copy, or other elements of your campaign.
Bounce Rate – The percentage of emails that have not been accepted by the recipient’s server. Bounced emails should be kept to a minimum and, once an email to a particular address bounces, that address should be removed from your list to preserve list health. An acceptable bounce rate is roughly 2% per email campaign.
Bulk Emails – Marketing emails that are sent to a large group of people all at once, typically a specific group of people.
Buyer Persona – A fictionalized version of your ideal customer, including age, interests, occupation, relationship status, income, etc.
CAN-SPAM – The acronym for “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003.” This act provides guidelines businesses must follow when they send commercial emails and outlines the rights of the email recipients.
Conversion Rate – The percentage of people who engaged with the CTA in your email. It is a key performance indicator (KPI) most marketers use to measure the performance of the campaign.
CTA – Stands for “call to action.” This action can be anything that supports your campaign’s goal, i.e.: submitting a contact form, requesting a quote, or completing a purchase. Every email campaign should include at least one call to action encouraging readers to engage in the sender’s desired behavior.
CTR – Stands for “click through rate.” It is the number of people that click on a link in your email. CTR is determined by dividing the number of unique clicks by the number of emails opened.
Deliverability / Delivery Rate – The process of getting emails from a sender to a subscriber’s inbox. The campaign’s delivery rate is the number of emails that actually reach subscribers’ inbox from the sender compared to the total number of emails sent.
Double Opt-in – A two-step process during which a subscriber is required to confirm their email address in order to subscribe to an email list (for example, submitting your email address on a website and confirming via an emailed link).
Drip Campaign – A series of automated emails set to be sent in sequence to a subscriber based on a specific behavior or interaction (for example, a Welcome Series introducing your brand to new subscribers).
Engagement Rate – Engagement is deemed as any possible interaction a subscriber can take with your emails. By extension, the campaign’s engagement rate is the percentage of recipients who interact out of all recipients.
Email Campaign – A single email or series of emails that are sent out with a specific marketing goal in mind.
Email Client / Email Service Provider (ESP) – The computer application used by the recipient to view emails. Some of the most popular email clients are Outlook and Gmail.
Email Marketing Software – This is the company you choose to work with that provides software and hardware in order for you to manage your email marketing campaigns. Some of the most popular software options include Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and Constant Contact.
Hard Bounce – An email cannot be delivered because the address no longer exists or the email server is down.
HTML – A markup language that allows code to be used to design and format emails exactly the way you want.
IP Warming – Gradually increasing the number of emails sent to establish the relevancy of your IP address.
Landing Page – The page a subscriber is taken to once they click on a link in your email. For the best user experience, landing pages should be optimized for the goal you’re hoping to achieve with your email’s CTA.
Lead – When someone clicks on the link in your email and then takes a desirable action, like booking a call.
List Segmentation – Separating your email list into specific groups so you have a higher response rate and less unsubscribes. You may choose to segment your audience by interests, demographics, or behaviors. A technique of breaking up your email list into different groups based on either interests, demographics, or behavior.
Open Rate – The percentage of sent emails that were opened.
Opt-in – Another way to say someone subscribed to your email list. As an incentive, you might offer a discount or freebie when someone opts in on your website.
Opt-out – Another way to say someone unsubscribed from your email list.
Personalization – The practice of tailoring your email to a specific person or group of people, like adding their name or referencing past purchases.
Referral – When a customer recommends your business to friends and family, and those people respond to a CTA or offer.
Sender Score / Sender Reputation – A rating of your IP address’s reputation on a scale of 0-100. The higher the score, the more reputable the IP address is.
Single Opt-in – A way for people to subscribe to your email list without having to confirm their email address.
Soft Bounce – When an email can’t be sent because the inbox is full or the server is temporarily unavailable.
Spam – Any email messages subscribers don’t want.
Unique Clicks – The number of individual people who click on a link in your email. Some people click multiple times, but only the first time counts as a unique click.
Unique Opens – The number of times your email was first opened by a single subscriber. Multiple opens by the same person are not counted in this metric.
Unsubscribe Rate – The number of recipients who unsubscribe from your email list out of the total number of recipients. Ideally, this rate should be as close to 0 as possible, meaning that very few recipients are unsubscribing. An unsubscribe rate of 0.5% is considered acceptable.
WYSIWYG – Stands for “what you see is what you get.” An alternative to using HTML, most email marketing softwares offer a drag-and-drop templated design option for creating email campaigns. These builders allow you to visualize the body of the email as you’re designing it.
Hopefully you’re a little more prepared to take on your campaign with these email marketing terms! Still not sure where to start? Learn more about email marketing now!
