16 email marketing terms PR professionals should know

Though many PR professionals are fluent in marketing speak, some terms might be unfamiliar.

Confusion can especially occur when PR pros’ marketing colleagues use terms related to email and digital marketing or employ abbreviations:

“We need to re-think the CTA on that drip campaign because the CTR was abysmal.”

Decipher your marketing department’s lingo with this quick guide to common email marketing terms:

Inbound marketing — A strategy using content marketing, blogs, events, search engine optimization and social media to create brand awareness and attract new business. Content and interactions are designed to be relevant and helpful.

Outbound marketing — A strategy that reaches consumers by spreading messages across channels, including trade shows, seminar series, email blasts to purchased lists, cold calling, telemarketing and advertising.

Touch — A single point of interaction with a consumer contact.

Delivered — The number of emails that made it to your contacts’ email address.

Click-through rate (CTR) — The number of unique clicks divided by the number of unique opens.

Open rate — The number of unique emails opened divided by the number of emails delivered.

Bounce Rate —  The number of emails not delivered divided by the number of emails sent.

Hard bounce — A bounce that failed delivery due to a permanent reason such as a non-existent, invalid or blocked email address.

Soft bounce — A bounce that failed delivery for a non-permanent reason such as an “out of office” setting.

Call to action (CTA) — Content intended to induce a viewer, reader or listener to do a specific activities, typically taking the form of an instruction or directive.

Landing page — A page designed to provide additional information and promote the email’s CTA. Landing pages typically build brand awareness or promote conversions through offers or content.

Drip campaign — A series of automated emails that are sent based on readers’ behavior. These emails are usually sent to sales leads to move readers through the sales cycle.

Lead score — A strategy of assigning prospects or leads a score based on the perceived value that each lead represents to the organization. Leads scores are typically based on the lead’s professional information (title, job responsibility) and behavior (a visit to your website or attendance at your seminar).

CAN-SPAM — The United States law, Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003, that governs the rules of privacy and consumer rights regarding the receipt of promotional email. It establishes requirements for commercial messages, provides email recipients with the right to stop receiving your messages and lays out consequences for violations.

Blacklist — A list that labels IP addresses as spammers, obstructing email delivery. Organizations use blacklists to reject incoming email, either at the server level or before it reaches a recipient’s inbox.

Whitelist — A list that includes IP addresses which have been approved to deliver email to recipients.

What terms would you add to the list, PR Daily readers?

This post was first published on Ragan Communication’s PR Daily.