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Marketers love jargon.

And … we have to do it somehow.

Marketing becomes very specific when it comes to promotions, campaigns and funnels. We need to know how many active subscribers we have on a list, what a subscriber's value is, and what the difference is between an open rate and a clear open rate.

The specificity of this jargon helps our teams understand exactly what is going on under the hood of our marketing strategies.

And it helps us get these conversions.

Here are the email terms every marketer needs to know so that they can skyrocket their active subscribers, give something back to their most valuable subscribers, understand how often their emails are actually opened, and much more.

A / B Split Test (noun) – Test variables in your email against each other to determine which ones perform better (e.g. 2 subject lines, 2 preview texts, 2 calls to actions).

Active subscriber (noun) – An email subscriber who opens emails from a sender

ALT tags (noun) – Text that describes an image to help the visually impaired understand the image, and search engine crawlers to correctly index the image

Appendix (noun) – An image, PDF, or other type file added to an email that a user opens for viewing

Appendix Open Rate (noun) – The number of email recipients who opened the attachment in an email, divided by the total number of recipients who opened the email (expressed as a percentage).

Auto Follow-up (noun) – An automated email that is sent to a user after performing a specific action (e.g., after a product is purchased, a user is automatically tracked with their order confirmation and order number).

Autoresponder (noun) – Emails that are sent automatically after users perform certain actions (subscribe, click a link in an email, buy, etc.) can range from one email to 2+

Behavioral email (noun) – Emails that are sent to users based on their history (e.g. if they bought a certain product, visited a certain website, etc.)

Blacklist (noun) – A list of email senders whose emails do not reach the inbox due to bad reputation as spam or fraudulent

Bounce rate (noun) – The number of emails that could not be sent to inboxes (see Soft Bounce Rate and Hard Bounce Rate).

Consignment (noun) – Emails that are sent to your entire email list and are not segment-specific

Call for action (noun) – The action you request from email recipients (e.g., click a link, buy a product, sign up for a tutorial, etc.).

Campaign (noun) – an email or a series of emails sent to customers and prospects

Canadian Anti-Spam Law, CASL (noun) – A Canadian law created in 2014 to protect Canadians from spam emails

CAN SPAM (noun) – An American law from 2003 to reduce spam from commercial email

Cinemagraph (noun) – Videos that are a few seconds long and loop to create continuous motion, also known as GIF

Click on (noun) – The total number of clicks on a link in an email (does not appear as a percentage and does not include the unsubscribe button).

Click Open Rate (noun) – The number of unique clicks divided by the number of unique openings (expressed as a percentage)

Click Rate (Noun) – – The number of email recipients who clicked a link in an email divided by the total number of recipients (in percent).

Cold email (noun) – The email version of a cold call, an email that is sent to a recipient with whom you have never sent or interacted with an email

Complaint rate (noun) – The number of email recipients who marked an email as spam divided by the total number of email recipients (expressed as a percentage).

Conversion Rate (noun) – The number of email recipients who made the call to action divided by the total number of recipients who opened the email (expressed as a percentage).

Deliverability (adjective) – How well can an email sender send emails to recipients' inboxes?

Delivery rate (adjective) – The number of sent emails that reach the recipient's inbox divided by the total number of emails sent (in percent).

Provide (verb) – Send email or email campaign or go live

Drip Marketing (noun) – Automated marketing that sends a series of emails to email subscribers over a set period of time

DomainKeys Identified Mail, DKIM (noun) – Email authentication, which allows an email recipient to see whether the email sender shown in the email has been confirmed as the actual sender of the email to spam and phishing emails avoid

Double opt-in (noun) – An email sent to a subscriber after completing the registration form (first registration) and asking them to confirm that they want to receive emails from this sender (second registration).

Dynamic content (noun) – Specific content in an email that changes depending on the recipient, e.g. B. Location, new customer, previous customer, etc.

Email Domain (noun) – The domain name of the website from which an email is sent is displayed after the @ symbol in an email

Email Marketing (noun) – Use strategic email to advertise products, services, events, brands, etc. to select people who have chosen to receive email from a company

Email service provider, ESP (noun) – The email hosting platform with the subscriber list, flows, campaigns etc. (e.g. Mailchimp, Hubspot, Klaviyo)

Email Templates (Noun) – Predefined templates for use in emails that are either provided by the ESP or created by your company

Email Queue (noun) – The number of people waiting for a live email (see throttling).

Engage Tag (noun) – A day added to the account of someone who has NOT opened an email in the past 90 days

Forward (verb) – The number of times subscribers forwarded your email

Footer (noun) – The end of an email that may include a privacy policy, any legal information required (e.g. for affiliate programs), the company's address, the option to unsubscribe, etc.

General data protection regulation, GDPR – A European legal regulation from 2016 on data protection and the protection of the privacy of email recipients

GIF (noun) – Videos that are a few seconds long and loop to create continuous motion, also known as cinemagraph

Gray email (noun) – Emails that an email recipient originally subscribed to no longer opens, but also does not mark as spam

Hard bounce (verb) – An email that bounces off because the recipient's email address no longer exists

Header (noun) – The content of an email at the top, usually a company logo

Honey pot (noun) – An email address that is used to induce spam senders to send spam so that they can be tagged and blacklisted

Image blocking (verb) – A setting to turn images on or off in received email that is set by individual email recipients

Inactive subscribers (adjective) – Subscribers who have not opened an email from a company within a period of time set by the company are also considered not activated

List (noun) – A group of contacts that meet certain criteria related to their lead status, purchase status or membership status

List Broker (noun) – An email expert who connects companies with large lists of email marketers who want to market this list

Emigration list (verb) – The number of unsubscribed email recipients divided by the total number of email recipients (in percent), also known as the unsubscribe rate

List fatigue (adjective) – An email list with a declining engagement rate due to too many promotional emails or too many emails in general

List growth (adjective) – How many new subscribers were added to a list over a period of time, taking into account the churn / unsubscribe rate of the list?

List hygiene (noun) – Clean up an email list by removing recipients with unsubscribed, inactive subscribers and updating the required list information

Marketing Automation (noun) – Automate email series and funnels that are sent to subscribers based on previous behavior

Mobile Open Rate (noun) – The number of email recipients who opened an email on their mobile phone divided by the total number of email recipients (expressed as a percentage).

Multivariate testing (noun) – Testing more than one variable at the same time (e.g. subject line and prompt for action) in contrast to the same variables (e.g. subject line vs. subject line in an A / B test)

Newsletter (noun) – An email that is scheduled to be sent daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.

Open rate (noun) – The number of email recipients who opened an email divided by the total number of email recipients (expressed as a percentage).

Opt-in box (noun) – The form on a website where visitors enter their email address to become subscribers

Opt-out (noun) – The option for subscribers to stop receiving email from a recipient is usually displayed as "opt-out" or "unsubscribe" at the end of emails.

Personalized email (noun) – An email that changes for each recipient based on name, interests, locations, transaction history, etc.

Plaintext (adjective) – An email that does not use a template and only writes text with outgoing links to a selected website

Preview text (noun) – The text of an email that appears below the subject line, showing users what content is in the email

Data protection declaration (noun) – The policy, which tells website visitors and new email subscribers how their information is used

Promotional email (noun) – Emails sent to promote new content, products, services, collaborations, etc.

Response rate (noun) – The number of email recipients who replied to an email divided by the total number of email recipients (expressed as a percentage).

Reintegration (verb) – Make an inactive subscriber an active subscriber

Responsive design (adjective) – Email design that changes depending on the device on which the email is opened (mobile, desktop, tablet, etc.)

Revenue per email sent (noun) – How much money did you make per email you sent?

Cockroaches (noun) – Used by spam bots to get new email addresses from websites, social profiles, etc.

Segmentation (noun) – A portion of an email list that is defined by a rule (or set of rules) that narrows a subscriber base into more significant groups called segments

Single opt-in (noun) – Unlike double opt-in, new subscribers only have to confirm once when filling out the registration form that they want to be added to a list

Soft bounce (verb) – An email that bounces off because the recipient's email address has a full inbox, the server didn't work, or the email or its contents were too large

Spam folder (noun) – The folder in a recipient's inbox where emails that are believed to be spam from their email service provider are automatically sent

Subject line (noun) – The text of an email that users see under the name of the sender who tells them what content is in the email

Subscriber (noun) – A person who chooses to be on an email list to receive email from a company

Subscriber value (adjective) – How much a single subscriber is worth depends on how active he is, what buying behavior he has, whether he is referring new subscribers, etc.

Targeting (verb) – Segments of an email list that target a specific product, action, service, campaign, etc.

Thank you page (noun) – The website page to which a new subscriber is directed after signing up as a subscriber

Throttling (verb) – Send emails to a large list in batches to improve deliverability

Transactional email (noun) – Emails from customers who have just purchased a product, service, etc.

Triggered emails (noun) – Emails sent to subscribers based on certain actions or behaviors that are automated and scheduled in a sequence

Total opening rate – (noun) The number of email recipients who opened an email divided by the total number of recipients who received an email (expressed as a percentage).

Not connected (verb) – Subscribers who have not opened an email from a company for a period specified by the company, also known as inactive subscribers

Unique clicks (noun) – The number of unique subscribers who clicked links in your email, excluding the number of subscribers who clicked links multiple times

Uniquely open Rate (noun) – The number of individual email recipients who open an email, divided by the total number of recipients, not taking into account how often the recipients opened the email more than once

Cancellation rate (noun) – The number of unsubscribed email recipients divided by the total number of email recipients (in percent), also known as the list churn

Welcome email (noun) – The first email a new subscriber receives after being added to a list (this is an automated email).

Whitelist (verb) – When a recipient places an email from the spam folder in their inbox or moves it to another folder, they show their email provider that these emails should be moved to their inbox

Would you like to attend an email marketing meeting and know everything that is going on? We are sure that you could.

As experts in digital marketing, we know that there is a lot of jargon in this industry, but for a good reason.

These terms help us to be hyper-specific in our strategies and to get a really good overview of what works and what doesn't. Ultimately, that's pretty much the name of the digital marketing game.

Would you like to find out what works and what doesn't work in digital marketing?