Top Digital Marketing Terms Every Marketer Should Know

A/B Testing – To determine the most effective webpages, email subject lines, or call-to-action buttons marketers deploy an experiment between two variants. By determining which variant is more effective in engaging contacts, marketers can continually improve results.

Abandoned Cart – When a website visitor adds a product to the shopping cart but doesn’t complete the purchase it is considered an abandoned cart. Digital marketers track cart abandonment so they can make adjustment to increase order percentages. It’s also a best practice to remind users of their unfinished transaction via follow up emails.

ABM – Also known as key account marketing, Account Based Marketing is a method of prospecting that concentrates sales and marketing efforts on specific, pre-defined targets. It requires research to determine appropriate accounts, such as fitting within the Total Addressable Market. Outreach is highly customized and account pursuit is typically more persistent than with non-ABM accounts.

Account Targeting – the act of selecting the individual accounts to be included in an ABM strategy for prospecting.

Algorithm – Without algorithms, search engines would not be possible. An algorithm can be linear or conditional. Linear sequence algorithms outline the steps that follow one after another. A conditional algorithm determines steps between two different courses of action. Sets of algorithms form the basis for artificial intelligence.

Asset – Any collateral or item that marketers can use to educate or inform prospects of products or services is considered an asset. Traditional assets include sales brochures, direct mail letters, business cards or trade show hand-outs. Digital marketing assets include emails, blog posts, websites, online brochures, datasheets, images, and videos.

Authority Ranking – A score based on a 100-point scale ranking a website’s authority relevant to the site’s subject matter or industry. A website’s authority is directly impacted by their authority ranking.

Awareness Stage – As defined by leading marketing automation platform, HubSpot, the Awareness Stage is the first step in the buyer’s journey process. The potential buyer becomes aware of the company, the product, or the service being offered.

BOFU – Bottom of the Funnel is the term used to describe the final stage of a prospect’s journey down the theoretical marketing funnel. Many marketers discuss lead generation in terms of a marketing funnel. However, the funnel concept has several shortcomings and does not take into account the non-linear path prospects often take during their research into potential solutions.

Bounce Rate – in digital marketing, a website’s bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who enter a website only to leave without visiting other pages on the site. Digital marketers monitor bounce rates as an indication of how (ir)relevant the page content is to the visitors of the site.

Buyer’s Journey – The stages or steps taken by a potential buyer as they progress along a path toward a purchase decision. A buyer’s journey typically includes at least three stages, Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. However, a well-defined journey map may include up to a dozen distinct steps. The more understood by marketers, the better they can develop tactics to encourage prospects to take action to continue their journey toward buying. B2B companies should tailor their sales processes to align with the buyer’s journey to ensure they add value at each step in the path toward a purchase.

Buyer’s Persona – Digital marketers develop fictional characters based on common traits or behaviors of individuals being targeted in prospecting efforts. By grouping like contacts by job function, seniority level, and/or influence on purchase decisions content and marketing assets can be customized for maximum impact.

Buying Stages – A pre-defined series of steps that potential customers take enroute to a purchase decision. Unfortunately, most sales organizations fail to recognize the need to align their sales processes with the stages which leads to a large percentage of lead being taken through the entire process when many of them have no intention of buying.

CAC – Used to calculate sales and marketing ROI, the Customer Acquisition Cost is the amount of money spent to acquire a new customer. Associated costs may include salaries, advertising, technology licenses, creative development, tech support, among other things.

Call Script – Similar to a script for a play or movie, a call script is intended to give salespeople structure for directing conversations. Although widely used by appointment setters, a call script has many faults. Typically, scripts assume a rigid, liner path based on the sales rep’s selling method. Critics claim that using a script limits creativity and prevents sales reps from building rapport. It also diverts attention away from listening as reps are focused on sticking to the script. Growth Orbit recommends using a playbook instead.

CAN-SPAM – Enacted in 2003, the Controlling the Assault on Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act set standards for the use of email by commercial entities. The law requires senders to provide instructions for recipient to opt out of future emails. Content must be accurate and subject lines relevant to the message within.

CMS – The software platform used to publish, maintain, and manage digital content is called a Content Management System. Popular platforms, such as WordPress, make it easy for non-technical contributors to write and publish webpages, landing pages, and blog posts.

Cold Email – An email sent to a contact who may have an interest in a product or service you provide prior to the establishment of a relationship. The intent is to introduce yourself and establish a relationship to verify potential interest. Sending a cold email is not a violation of CAN-SPAM providing compliance with the regulations.

Cold Outreach – A tactic in outbound marketing, cold outreach consists of emails, calls, social media, or direct mail efforts targeting contacts you are not yet aware of your company or solutions.

Consideration Stage – The second of three stages in the buyer’s journey as defined by HubSpot, this is the phase following Awareness. In this stage, buyers have confirmed the existence of a problem and are now contemplating what to do to solve the problem.

Contact List Procurement – The process of finding, sorting, and filtering contacts who fall within a pre-defined set of demographics and/or firmographics. List procurement services sell curated lists. Although buying a list is not illegal, many MAP providers have strict policies against it.

Contact List Segmentation – The process of dividing contacts into smaller groups based on commonalities. Groups may be based on industry, location, job function, role in decision making, and so on. The purpose of segmenting contact lists is to provide members with customized, relevant information. The intended result is to improve your marketing ROI and reduce your CAC.

Contact List Validation – Whether procuring a new contact list or performing routine contact list maintenance, it is important confirm contact details, especially that of email address. List validation services use non-invasive technology to ping email addresses and confirm their existence. These services often offer to enhance, update, or append additional contact information as well.

Content Inventory – A catalog of all informational assets associated with a company website. Content inventories include webpages, images, videos, and files. Your CMS should have a mechanism to store assets to help with website project management and planning.

Content Marketing – A long-term marketing strategy based on publishing and distributing content, such as articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, white papers, or other media. The purpose of the content is to establish credibility, demonstrate expertise, and promote awareness to attract and sustain an audience. A top challenge for organizations using content marketing is to avoid blatantly pitching their products or services. Successful content marketing requires patience, persistence, and a lot of coordination.

Conversion – When a contact completes an action, such as filling out an online form, this is called a conversion. Conversions occur in various points of the buyer’s journey. As a contact progresses toward a purchase decision, actions they take may update their classification. For example, contacts typically convert from suspect to prospect, then prospect to MQL, then MQL to SQL, and so on.

Conversion Rate – The percentage of contacts you completed an action at a given step in the buyer’s journey. For example, the conversion rate of a landing page measures the percentage of people who visited the page and then completed the embedded form.

CPL – Specific to paid advertising, the Cost Per Lead is the pre-determined price for each contact who completes an action in a campaign. For example, an online campaign that cost $500 that generates 40 leads has a CPL of $12.50.

CRM – A Customer Relationship Management platform is a software that gives organizations the ability to record activities, track interactions, store important notes and documents related to target companies and their contacts. A CRM is used by sales organizations to streamline processes and improve sales effectiveness. Many CRMs available have matured and expanded functionality to include marketing, accounting, and customer service modules.

CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization is the act of increasing the percentage of conversion during the buying process via A/B testing and multivariate testing.

CTA – A Call-to-Action is a link or button prominently displayed to entice an action, such as subscribing to a blog, registering for a webinar, or adding a product to an online shopping cart. CTA effectiveness is affected by placement, color, size, and description of the action being encouraged. As a best practice, you should include one and only one CTA per webpage or email.

CTR – A click thru is when a person responds to a link within an email, banner ad, or webpage by clicking on the link. The CTR is the click thru rate, or percentage of users who took the action when presented with it. CTR is an important digital marketing metric. It helps marketers understand the effectiveness of the copy and placement of the link or CTA. A/B testing can help improve CTR over time.

Customer Experience – Customer Experience, or CX, refers to the perceptions and impressions buyers have as they interact with a company throughout the various stages of their buyer’s journey. The customer experience begins the moment they become aware of your organization and includes phases involved with marketing, sales, onboarding, customer service and more.

Data Hygiene – The process of cleaning data by detecting duplicates, discovering errors, and enhancing records that have incomplete data. Keeping your database “clean” also requires a process to purge records that are long-term inactive or no longer considered as part of your TAM. For digital marketers, a poorly kept database negatively affects performance metrics against goals. Bad data can also put a strain on marketing budgets as record counts can increase the license of the CRM or MAP.

Decision Process – Most buying decision processes follow a common pattern. First, a problem is identified. Next, research is conducted on how to solve the problem. With options identified, next comes time to evaluate and compare alternatives. The purchase decision phase can be the most challenging as the average number of committee members for B2B buying decisions has risen on 11 people. Many sales organizations focus so much effort on the purchase decision phase that they fail to participate in earlier stages of the process. Competitors who engage with prospects in all phases stand a better chance of being selected.

Delight Stage – As part of many inbound marketing philosophies, this stage in the process is all about helping contacts find answers and supporting their efforts as an advisor. In HubSpot’s flywheel model, it is the third stage, following Attracting and Engaging prospects. The purpose of strategies deployed during this stage is to develop customers into promoters.

Deliverability Rating – Analogous to credit ratings, your email deliverability rating is determined by ISPs using proprietary scoring systems. Although the algorithms are not divulged, your deliverability rating is based on bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, and SPAM reports. Having a poor deliverability rating will have a negative impact on email marketing efforts because your sent emails may never arrive at the intended recipient’s inbox. See Also: Sender Reputation Score.

Domain Authority – A metric developed by Moz, it predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engines. Based on a scale of 0 to 100, it is meant to indicate how a website compares against competitors. However, the domain authority score is NOT a factor in how Google ranks a website.

Drip Campaign – A pre-scheduled series of pre-written emails that are sent to potential customers with the intention of keeping a company “top of mind.” Drip emails can also be sent to existing customers to assist sales teams with upselling or cross-selling products or services. Typically, drip campaign emails follow an action taken by a contact, such as a attending an event or abandoning a shopping cart. The name of “drip” is due to the slow and steady pace of the emails being sent.

Dynamic Content – Online content that automatically adapts to visitors based on pre-defined conditions. With dynamic content visitors to the same webpage will see different content based on their unique demographics or previous interactions. The dynamic content may be limited to one section of a webpage or the entire page. The intent is to provide a customized experience with the most relevant, meaningful information for individual visitors.

Email Bounce Rate – The percentage of sent emails that do not reach their intended recipient. Bounces can occur for a variety of reasons. See also: soft bounce, hard bounce.

Email Campaign – As perfectly described by SendPulse, an email campaign is a sequence of marketing efforts that contacts multiple recipients at once. Email campaigns are designed to reach out to subscribers at the best time and provide valuable content and relevant offers. Using email campaigns allows you to build deep and trusting relationships with your customers.

Email Domain Reputation – Mail servers judge your email domain’s overall health based on your bounce rates, spam complaints, open rates, click rates, and spam trap triggers. If your email domain reputation is poor your mailbox provider may throttle or even block your ability to send emails. See also: Sender Reputation Score.

Email Marketing – Using email to communicate with prospects, customers, and partners to educate them or promote available products and services.

Email Marketing Dashboard – An email marketing dashboard displays various email performance data against key metrics or industry benchmarks in a unified, visually appealing display. The data often comes from different sources and can be displayed as raw counts or percentages. Email marketing dashboards include data from standard reports provided in email marketing platform and/or fully customized reports created by the platform administrator. Common metrics include deliveries, opens, and clicks. More matured dashboards include analytics that provide trend data and insights allowing for adjustments over time.

Email Personalization – The act of including known personal information about a recipient within emails sent is called personalization. In a concerted effort to improve email marketing effectiveness, personalization makes the message more relevant and meaningful to the recipient. In email marketing platforms, or MAPs, personalization tokens allow marketers to add data pulled from fields associated with contact records. Personalization examples include name, company, and job function or title. As follow up communication to actions taken, personalization can also include a reference to documents downloaded, interest shown in specific products, or a mention of their attendance at a trade show.

Email Preheader – Gaining importance in recent years, an email preheader is the text that is displayed below the subject line in the recipient’s inbox. Email marketers can increase open rates by using the preheader text to describe an action that can be taken and the value it provides to the recipient should they open the email.

Email Prospecting – The process of finding, researching, and verifying prospects for a cold email outreach campaign. The typical style and tone of prospecting emails is a brief introduction and a direct request to schedule a meeting to discuss the features and benefits of a solution offered. HubSpot recommends including three elements in prospecting emails. First, the reason for the outreach. Second, the reason for the timing of the request. Third, a specific call-to-action outlining the next step to be taken, such as “schedule a meeting.”

Email Subject Line – The single line of text seen when an email arrives in an inbox. The subject line is the second most important factor in determining whether the email should be opened. The top reason being that the recipient knows the sender.

Email Subscription – When a contact agrees to receive future email communication from an organization. Subscriptions can be categorized by types, which allows subscribers to control the specific content and frequency of emails being sent to their email address. With multiple subscription types defined in an email marketing platform, contacts can choose their preferences in compliance with GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and other government regulations.

Email Validation – The process of confirming that an email address exists, is valid, and can receive emails if sent. Validating an email address does not guarantee that an email sent will ultimately end up in the inbox. By validating emails, it is easier to maintain clean contact lists and protects you from suffering with a low deliverability score. Some email validation services provide information on the level of validity or riskiness of tested email addresses based on a score or scale.

Engaged Contact – A contact in your CRM that has recently interacted with your emails via opens or clicks is considered to be engaged. In HubSpot, for example, a contact is considered engaged if they have opened any of the 10 previously sent emails. Overall email marketing statistics can be improved by focusing email efforts only on those contacts who are engaged.

Exclusion List – Contacts who you do not want to receive automated emails become members of an exclusion list. The list can be used to exclude contacts from specific emails or as a condition of different types of emails based on communication preference settings.

Firmographics – Analogous to what demographics are to people, data points that are specific to organizations are called firmographics. Firmographic examples include geographic location, industry, ownership type, employee count, and annual revenue.

Gated Content – Content that is only accessible after providing contact information is called gated content. The “gate” refers to the unlocking access upon completion of a form. Gated content is typically of higher value than what can be accessed freely, known as ungated content. Examples include, white papers, training videos, live webinars, and research findings. Marketers use gated content as a tool to identify potential buyers who can then be communicated with via drip or nurture campaigns.

GDPR – The General Data Protection Regulation is a privacy law for residents of the European Union countries. The law’s intent is to enhance individuals’ control and rights over their private data collected by and for commercial use. Email marketing platforms offer GDPR compliance functionality to assist marketers with compliance.

Hard Bounce – In email marketing, a bounce occurs when a sent email is returned to the sender without being delivered. A hard bounce happens when the reason for the failed delivery is permanent. This may be due to the email address being invalid, deactivated, or an unknown error occurred. See also: soft bounce.

ICP – An Ideal Customer Profile is the description of the type of company that is most likely to be interested in buying your products or services. Defining the ICP is important for shaping your marketing strategy because it will guide you to who you need to target and why.

Inbound Marketing – The term originates from the founders of leading MAP, HubSpot, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. The methodology proports to attract customers by creating content and provide experiences that connect with people who are looking to solve a problem. Inbound marketing is considered a “pull” rather than a “push” for promoting products and services.

Inclusion List – To manage which contacts in email marketing platforms are approved to receive emails, or sync data with other systems they must be members of an inclusion list. The inclusion list is important for keeping licensing costs in check as well as keeping data accurate according to which system is named the system of record.

Infographic – A visual representation of information or data, such as a chart, graph, diagram, or tables designed to highlight information for quick review. Combining visuals with data and expert knowledge an infographic’s information is more easily remembered as human brains are eager to detect images, patterns, and trends.

Interactive Content – Online content that requires input from a visitor is called interactive content. Forms of interactive content include quizzes, surveys, calculators, games, and animated pages or infographics. Clever marketers can leverage interactive content to boost engagement and gather intelligence on contacts which can be used in future interactions.

Keyword Optimization – The process of investigating, analyzing, and choosing the best keywords to target for a website. Identifying keywords that are relevant to your audience, but also easy to rank for in search engine results is a key element in implementing an SEO strategy.

Keywords – Also referred to as search terms, keywords are the words used by people in search engines to find an answer to a question, a service, or a product. Keywords are important for B2B companies to identify so they can publish content leveraging phrases that are commonly used by potential buyers.

Landing page – A standalone or “orphan” webpage that is dedicated to encouraging visitors to take a specific action, such as completing a form to download a whitepaper. Landing pages are primarily used for capturing leads and should not include more than one navigation option or more than one action to take.

Lead Capture Form – A lead capture form on a website or landing page act as the gate to premium content. Visitors unlock the content by completing the form, which captures basic contact information, such as name, company, email, and phone. We at Growth Orbit believe in the philosophy of providing “content before contact.” This means delivering something of value to a person before asking them to provide contact details.

Lead Nurturing – The process of engaging prospects to reinforce and develop a relationship as they advance through the stages of their buyer’s journey. Email nurture campaigns are designed to provide suggestions for next steps based on a contact’s role, industry, interest, and previous actions taken.

Lead Scoring – A method for ranking prospect value and/or readiness to help sales and marketing prioritize efforts around those prospects who are most likely to buy. Scoring functionality is built into most MAPs and can be customized by users as they identify buyer’s journey steps and the value they place on specific activities that trigger an increase or decrease in a score.

Lifecycle Stage – As a contact in your MAP advanced toward a buying decision, you can assign a value in their lifecycle stage field. In HubSpot, the default lifecycle stages are subscriber, lead, MQL, SQL, Opportunity, Customer, and Evangelist. By knowing the lifecycle stage of a contact, marketers can assign them to specific lists, deliver dynamic content, alert sales of their need to engage, or extend pre-defined offers.

Link Building – As a tactic to improve search engine rankings, link building is the practice of earning “backlinks” to your website from external sources. Links can be created in social media posts, ratings and reviews websites, through partner company websites, or as a reference to your content by a blog post. Search engines attempt to identify organic backlinks and give preference to sites with more of those, while penalizing websites that hire a service to simply create backlinks via unethical means.

List Building – See Contact List Procurement.

MAP – Software platforms, called Marketing Automation Platforms, automate routine marketing tasks enabling marketers to communicate more effectively with contacts using multiple channels. Leading platforms, such as HubSpot, integrate with email, social media, websites, chatbots, and CRMs. Functionality includes lead scoring, lifecycle stage management, email outreach, email drip campaigns, email nurture campaigns, GDPR compliance, intelligence, and analysis.

Marketing Asset – See: Asset

Marketing Funnel – A visual representation of stages that buyers pass through on their journey toward a purchase. There are various models of the funnel concept with some being based on only three stages, while more complex models can define as many as nine. Critics point out the flaws of assuming a buying process is linear. More modern takes on the concept recognize that contacts may enter the funnel at different points or even reverse course and move further away from a purchase. See also: TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU.

Marketing Operations – A term used to describe the confluence of people, processes, and technology required to deliver the overall marketing strategy. Marketing Operations professionals have a hand in strategy development, tactical execution, and continuous improvement. Key objectives for marketing operations are to be efficient, scalable, and systematic.

Marketing Pipeline – Used to track progress of potential buyers, a pipeline defines all the steps in the sales cycle, from marketing to lead generation to sales and account management. Unlike a funnel, the pipeline includes contract value data to aid leadership in forecasting. Pipelines typically give sales teams more emphasis and resources to focus on the closing stages.

Martech – Marketing Technology, or MarTech, refers to software used by marketers to promote awareness, generate interest, capture leads, nurture leads, and qualify leads for sales.

Martec Landscape – Starting in 2011 with 150 identified technologies, it’s an annually published infographic that lists and categorizes all marketing related technology solutions available. In 2020, the martec landscape surpassed 8000 solutions. The catalog is maintained by chiemartec.com.

MOFU – Middle of the Funnel, refers to those stages approximately half-way through the total stages of a marketing funnel.

MQL – A contact that has been identified by marketing as someone who meets pre-defined criteria as well as shown a level of interest indicating they have potential for eventually becoming a customer. Generally, MQLs are not yet ready to interact with sales as they may require further qualification or express more of an interest through their actions. At which point, the MQL converts to an SQL, or Sales Qualified Lead, and passed along for sales to engage.

Multivariate Testing – While A/B testing methods rely on changing only one variable at a time, multivariate testing is a technique for seeing which combination of variables are ideal for optimizing results. For example, on a website, digital marketers may test 4 different pages who all have different layouts, colors schemes, images, fonts, and CTA locations to determine which one renders the best results.

Nurture Campaign – Following an action taken by a contact, a series of automated emails are sent to encourage further actions and advancement through the buying process. Emails in the series are customized, personalized, and delivered based on details known or assumed, such as industry, persona, job function, or expressed needs.

Offer – Typically considered to have high value, an offer is a piece of content, free trial, discount, or upgrade provided to a contact in exchange for some information about them or as a reward for completing a specific action.

Open Rate – An email marketing metric that indicates the percentage of recipient who open emails delivered. Open rates can sometimes be misleading as false positives can occur when email servers are configured to inspect incoming emails prior to delivering them to the recipient’s inbox. Apple implemented a Mail Privacy Protection system that essentially hides information on if and when recipients open emails.

Opt-in / Opt-out – This refers to the permission granted (or denied) by contacts regarding email communication from a commercial entity. Also referred to as subscriptions, regulations are in place to ensure that email recipients have control over what emails they receive. Single opt-in refers to a one-step sign up process, while double opt-in means the subscriber has confirmed acceptance of email communications by taking a second action and agreeing to future emails.

Passion Statement – A succinct sentence that clearly outlines what a company does, for whom, and why it’s important. Important for setting the tone of your messaging, a simple formula for writing a passion statement would be “We do X for Y customers, so they can accomplish Z.” For example, “Growth Orbit provides high quality sales leads for B2B clients, so they can increase revenues and grow their business.”

Personalization Token – Pioneered by Marketo, a personalization token is a specified field included within the subject line or body of an outgoing email. The tokens permit field values to populate unique data associated with each recipient allowing for one mass email to appear tailored to each contact.

Pillar Page – A web page that thoroughly covers a topic in great detail that acts as a centerpiece or hub for several other related pages. Subsequently, subtopics are featured in other pages that then link back to the pillar content page forming a topic cluster. The pillar page is intended to improve SEO ranking by demonstrating authority. Pillars are typically one of three types: comprehensive guides, “what is”, or “how to” pages.

PPC – Pay-Per-Click refers to online advertising campaigns in which a fee is paid for each time a visitor clicks on their ad leading to their chosen website or web page.

Progressive Forms – In lead capturing, online forms gather basic contact details of potential customers in exchange for offers. As a best practice, it’s recommended that marketers use progressive forms to gradually gather intelligence on contacts over time. Each time a contact makes a request, a progressive form will ask only for information that has not yet been provided. Studies show that as the number of data points per form increases the number of contacts who complete the form decreases. Therefor, deploying progressive forms increases conversion rates.

Re-Engagement Campaign – Intended to revive inactive contacts, a re-engagement email campaign targets contacts who have not opened a specified number of consecutive emails sent, or who have not opened emails in a pre-defined length of time. By inviting inactive contacts to interact, marketers can increase open rates, conversion rates, and subscribers. Another benefit of re-engagement campaigns is data hygiene. If inactive contacts remain inactive they may be purged from the platform.

Remarketing – Also called retargeting, a digital marketing strategy that involves ad placements to prospects who have already shown interest in a subject matter that relates directly to a product or service you provide. Remarketing employs a pay-per-click cost method and is accomplished via browser cookies and pixels in web pages or emails. Campaigns can be defined by personas, social activities, email activities, or other known behaviors.

Responsive Design – With an ever-increasing variety of devices available it is important to have websites that render well regardless of device, browser, or resolution settings. Responsive websites automatically adjust content and imagery to fit correctly, which improves overall user experience. With smart phones being the top device used to browse the internet, experts recommend designing your business website for mobile first, then make adjustments for other, larger devices.

ROI – To evaluate the effectiveness of marketing activities, Return on Investment is a percentage-based metric calculated by subtracting the costs from the revenue generated, then dividing it by that cost. For example: (Revenue – Cost) / Cost = ROI.

Sales Cadence – Used in outbound sales, a pre-defined series of touchpoints by sales reps to connect with a prospect to secure a scheduled call or meeting. The touchpoints are a mix of different outreach methods, such as phone, email, voicemail, and social media. There are several available Sales Engagement Platforms that focus on automating cadences. Many MAPs also offer cadence functionality as an add-on.

Sales Enablement Platform – A tool designed for sales reps providing cadence capabilities, prospect scoring, and automation. Mature platforms provide sales with end-to-end pipeline visibility and continuous improvement feedback loops with marketing.

Sales Opportunity – A highly qualified lead that has been accepted by sales and included in forecasts as a likely future sale. An opportunity should have a product or service being offered, the price, and the percentage probability of becoming a closed won sale.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving a website to achieve high rankings in organic search results. Rankings are influenced by several factors including domain authority, keyword relevance, backlinks, page load times, content readability, and other factors.

SERP – The Search Engine Results Page is the unique page displayed to a user following a search. SERPs include organic results, knowledge boxes, paid results, shopping tiles, maps, and more. Google also provides answers within the SERP without requiring the user to click through to another page.

Sender Reputation Score –A score between 0 and 100 that an Internet Service Provider assigns to an organization that sends commercial emails. Emails are more likely to get delivered with a higher score. Reputation scores are lowered when recipients report spam, high bounce rates occur, or spam traps are triggered. See also: Deliverability Rating.

Smarketing – When sales and marketing teams have a shared mission, shared goals, and combined meetings they are said to be practicing “smarketing.” It signifies the close collaboration and alignment between the disciplines, which can often be adversarial.

Soft Bounce – In email marketing, a soft bounce occurs when a sent email is unable to be delivered for a temporary reason. Future emails may be deliverable. Examples of soft bounces are when a recipient’s inbox is full, an out of office function is turned on, the mail server spam filter judged the email to be a risk, or other unknown errors such as an outage.

Spam Trap – An email address that is set up by IT administrators to act as a collection point for unsolicited emails. The email address is never used by an actual account holder, so when an email is delivered to it, the IT administrator knows that the email address was obtained using sketchy methods. This gives them the ability to investigate and determine whether to block or quarantine emails being sent.

Suppression List – A list of contacts in your MAP that have either unsubscribed, hard bounced or otherwise opted out of email communications. These contacts are unable to receive emails through your MAP.

SQL – When a prospect has been qualified and vetted by marketing and expresses an interest in talking with a salesperson, they are considered a Sales Qualified Lead.

Thank You Page – A thank you page is a landing page that visitors see after completing an online form. Its purpose is to deliver the gated content that was promised before the form was submitted. It’s important to note that a thank you page should not be indexed by search engines, nor should they include anything other than the offer that was promised.

TOFU – An acronym for Top-Of-FUnnel, TOFU is the initial phase of a contact’s path down the theoretical marketing funnel. Content appropriate for this phase include blog posts, eBooks, infographics and other ungated pieces.

Trigger Event – In marketing, a trigger event describes the event that takes place which leads to new or renewed interest in your product or service. In other words, a trigger can occur when your primary contact gets a bigger budget or receives a promotion affording them more decision-making autonomy. In a sales conversation, you can ask the prospect “what changed for you recently causing your need to solve this issue?”

UX – User eXperience. How a person considers the use of a website, phone app, or other technology solution based on its ease of use or how pleasing it is to use it.

Ungated Content – Any valuable content that can be accessed via your business website or landing page without necessitating the completion of a contact form. Typically, ungated content are blogs, infographics, explainer videos, how to guides, and checklists.

Unsubscribe – When a contact wishes to no longer receive emails or other digital communications from you, they cancel their subscription, or unsubscribe. Sophisticated platforms allow users to select which types of email communications they accept rather than unsubscribing from any/all emails. Regulations, such as CAN-SPAM, require commercial email senders provide recipients with the capability to control their communications preferences.

Virtual Sales – When the entire sales process takes place without ever meeting in person. Virtual selling includes phone conversations, emails, video conferences, and social media interactions.

Webinar – An amalgamation of the words “seminar” and “web,” a webinar is an online event that may be a class, a workshop, a sales pitch, software demonstration, or roundtable discussion. Webinars are often the most effective form of digital media for both buyers and sellers. Effective webinars are those that educate and inform without pitching products or services. As an important part of building trust through thought leadership, webinars are often the highest converting action taken by prospects during their buyer’s journey.

Workflow – In the simplest form, a workflow is a series of steps in a process with pre-determined start and end points. In digital marketing, workflows enable marketers to automate several repeatable steps or tasks. Workflows can be very linear with a starting point, the steps, and an end point in which all contacts take the same steps in the same time period. They can also be interdependent, built on cascading logic, set or reset contact field values, and allow contacts to skip steps or complete goals to be removed from the workflow before the final step.