Glossary

A/B testing (split testing) compares two versions of a marketing asset—emails, ads, landing pages—to see which drives higher conversion, click-through and engagement rates, enabling data-driven optimizations.

ABM is a B2B strategy that targets high-value accounts with personalized, cross-channel campaigns. By aligning sales and marketing around key accounts, ABM maximizes pipeline efficiency, conversion rates and customer lifetime value.

Activation rate measures the percentage of new users or leads who complete a key “first success” action—such as account setup or first purchase—indicating initial product adoption and engagement momentum.

Ad retargeting (remarketing) delivers targeted ads to users who’ve previously visited your site or app, reminding them of products or offers to re-engage, reduce cart abandonment and improve conversion rates.

Analytics involves collecting, processing and visualizing customer data—traffic, behavior, campaigns—to generate insights that inform marketing decisions, optimize funnels, and track KPIs like engagement, conversion and retention.

API integration connects disparate systems—CRM, CMS, email, analytics—via standardized interfaces, enabling real-time data flow, unified customer profiles, automated workflows and cohesive omnichannel experiences.

Attribution modeling assigns credit for conversions across multiple touchpoints—paid ads, email, social—to understand which channels and campaigns drive the most impact and optimize budget allocation.

Audience segmentation divides your contact database into meaningful groups—demographics, behavior, purchase history—for targeted messaging, personalization, and campaign efficiency that drives higher engagement and conversion.

An automation workflow is a series of triggered, rule-based actions—emails, SMS, score updates—designed to nurture leads, onboard customers, or re-engage inactive users without manual intervention.

Behavioral segmentation sorts contacts by on-site actions—page views, clicks, purchases—or email engagement, allowing hyper-targeted campaigns and personalized experiences based on actual user behavior.

Benchmarking compares your marketing metrics—open rates, conversion, churn—against industry standards or competitors to identify performance gaps and opportunities for improvement.

Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions in which a user leaves after viewing only one page. High bounce rates often signal poor UX, irrelevant content or targeting issues.

Campaign management encompasses planning, executing, tracking and optimizing integrated marketing campaigns across email, social, paid and search to achieve defined goals and KPIs.

Churn prediction uses machine learning to identify customers at high risk of cancellation by analyzing behavioral, demographic and transaction data, enabling targeted retention campaigns.

Churn rate measures the percentage of customers who stop using your product or service over a given period. Lower churn signals stronger loyalty and customer satisfaction.

CLV estimates the total net profit attributed to a customer over their entire relationship. It helps prioritize high-value segments, optimize acquisition costs and tailor loyalty programs.

A CMS is a platform (e.g., WordPress, Drupal) for creating, editing and organizing website content. Integration with CRM and automation enables dynamic personalization and consistency across digital channels.

Cohort analysis groups users by shared attributes (signup date, campaign) and tracks behavior over time, revealing retention patterns and the impact of onboarding or promotions.

The conversion funnel maps each stage of the buyer’s journey—from awareness and consideration to decision—allowing you to diagnose drop-off points and optimize conversion paths.

CRO is the systematic process of improving website or campaign elements—copy, design, CTAs—to increase the percentage of visitors who complete desired actions like signups or purchases.

Cookie tracking uses browser cookies to monitor user behavior across sessions, enabling personalization, retargeting and measurement of campaign effectiveness while respecting privacy regulations.

A CRM platform (Salesforce, HubSpot) centralizes customer data—contacts, interactions, transactions—to streamline sales, marketing and service processes and deliver consistent experiences.

CAC calculates the average marketing and sales spend required to acquire a new customer. Lower CAC indicates more efficient campaigns; it’s compared to CLV to ensure profitability.

Journey mapping visualizes every touchpoint a prospect or customer has with your brand—from discovery to post-purchase—highlighting opportunities for engagement and friction points to fix.

Customer onboarding is the process of guiding new users through initial setup, training and first successes—via emails, in-app tours and resources—to accelerate time to value and reduce churn.

Data enrichment appends external data—firmographics, demographics, behavioral—to your CRM records, delivering fuller profiles for smarter segmentation, personalization and lead scoring.

Data hygiene involves cleaning and standardizing your database—removing duplicates, correcting errors, filling gaps—to ensure accurate targeting, reporting and campaign effectiveness.

Data privacy encompasses policies and practices that safeguard personal information—compliance with GDPR, CCPA—ensuring transparent data collection, user consent and secure storage.

Data segmentation slices your audience into subsets based on attributes—behavior, demographics, lifecycle stage—so you can deliver targeted messages that drive higher engagement and conversion.

A data warehouse centralizes and structures large volumes of historical data—CRM, web analytics, sales—enabling cross-platform reporting, BI dashboards and predictive analytics.

Demand generation creates interest and awareness through content marketing, webinars, ads and events. Its goal is to fill the top of funnel with qualified leads for nurturing and conversion.

A drip campaign sends a sequence of automated, timed messages—emails or SMS—based on user actions or lifecycle stage to nurture leads and guide them through the funnel.

Drip emails are pre-written messages sent at scheduled intervals or triggered by user behavior, designed to educate, nurture and convert leads over time without manual intervention.

Dynamic content adapts on-page or in emails based on user data—location, behavior, lifecycle stage—to deliver personalized experiences that boost relevance and engagement.

Email deliverability measures the rate at which your emails land in inboxes rather than spam folders. It’s improved by list hygiene, authentication (SPF, DKIM), content quality and engagement.

List hygiene is the practice of regularly cleaning your email database—removing invalid, inactive or unengaged addresses—to maintain high deliverability and engagement rates.

Engagement rate tracks how users interact with content—likes, shares, comments, clicks—relative to impressions or audience size, indicating content relevance and impact.

An engagement score aggregates multiple engagement metrics—email opens, page visits, social interactions—into a single value to rank leads by interest and prioritize follow-up.

Event-triggered messages fire automatically when users take specific actions—cart abandonment, form submit—delivering timely, context-relevant communication to drive conversion.

First-party data is information you collect directly from your customers—on-site behavior, surveys, purchase history—providing the most accurate foundation for personalization and targeting.

Frequency capping limits how often a user sees a particular ad or message within a timeframe to prevent fatigue and improve ad effectiveness and user experience.

Funnel conversion rate measures the percentage of users who progress from one stage of the conversion funnel (e.g., lead → MQL → SQL → customer), revealing drop-off points.

Gamification applies game-style mechanics—points, badges, leaderboards—to marketing or loyalty programs to motivate engagement, repeat actions and community participation.

Geo-targeting delivers content, ads or offers based on a user’s geographic location—country, region or city—to increase relevance and localize messaging.

Growth hacking uses rapid experimentation across marketing channels and product development to identify the most effective, scalable tactics for accelerating growth on a tight budget.

Heatmap analysis visualizes on-page user behavior—clicks, taps, scroll depth—to identify high-interest areas and UX bottlenecks, guiding layout and content optimizations.

In-app messaging delivers targeted messages or prompts within a mobile or web app—tips, promotions or surveys—to guide user behavior and boost engagement without email.

Influencer marketing partners with niche or macro influencers to promote products through authentic content, leveraging their trust and reach to drive awareness, engagement and conversions.

Iterative testing continuously experiments with small changes—copy, design or targeting—measuring results and refining strategies to gradually optimize campaigns and UX.

Journey analytics tracks and analyzes every touchpoint across the customer lifecycle—web, email, support—to uncover friction points, measure experience and optimize the end-to-end journey.

Knowledge management captures and organizes internal expertise—FAQs, guides, playbooks—in a centralized repository, enabling consistent messaging across CRM, support, and automation bots.

Landing page optimization (LPO) tests and refines page elements—headlines, CTAs, forms—to increase conversions by improving relevance, clarity and user experience.

A lead magnet is a value-added offer—eBook, checklist, webinar—provided in exchange for contact information, kickstarting the lead-gen funnel and list growth.

Lead nurturing uses automated, relevant content—emails, SMS, retargeting—to guide prospects through the funnel, building trust and readiness to buy over time.

Lead scoring assigns point values to prospect actions—email opens, site visits, form fills—to rank sales readiness, allowing reps to focus on the hottest leads.

Lead velocity rate measures month-over-month growth in qualified leads (MQLs or SQLs), signaling the health and predictability of your pipeline.

Machine learning personalization uses algorithms to analyze user data—behavior, preferences, demographics—and automatically tailor content, product recommendations and journeys in real time.

Marketing automation automates repetitive tasks—email sequences, lead scoring, ad triggers—across channels, freeing teams to focus on strategy and creative work while ensuring timely outreach.

Marketing dashboards visualize key metrics—traffic, conversions, email performance—in real-time, aggregating data from CRM, analytics and ad platforms for rapid insights.

Marketing mix modeling uses statistical analysis on historical data—spend by channel, sales—to quantify each channel’s impact and optimize future budget allocation.

Multivariate testing simultaneously tests multiple variables (headlines, images, CTAs) in different combinations to identify the optimal mix for conversion uplift.

Native advertising blends sponsored content seamlessly into the user experience—articles, videos or social feeds—driving higher engagement than traditional display ads.

NPS measures customer loyalty by asking how likely they are to recommend your brand on a 0–10 scale. Scores segment into promoters, passives and detractors for actionable feedback.

Omnichannel marketing delivers consistent, seamless experiences across all touchpoints—email, web, mobile, in-store—by unifying data and messaging in real-time.

An onboarding flow is a sequence of steps—emails, in-app guides, tutorials—that acclimate new users to your product’s core value, fostering adoption and reducing churn.

Opt-in is the explicit consent users give—via checkboxes or forms—to receive marketing communications, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations and improving list quality.

Opt-out allows recipients to easily unsubscribe from marketing messages, maintaining list hygiene, legal compliance and sender reputation by respecting user preferences.

Outbound marketing proactively pushes messages to prospects via paid ads, cold email, direct mail or calls, aiming to generate awareness and leads outside owned channels.

Personalization dynamically tailors content, offers and messaging—based on user data, behavior or segment—to increase relevance, engagement and conversion rates at scale.

A personalization engine uses AI and rules to automate dynamic content delivery across web, email and ads—matching offers to individual preferences in real time.

PII compliance ensures that personal identifiable information (name, email, address) is collected, stored and processed in line with GDPR, CCPA and industry standards to protect privacy.

Predictive analytics applies statistical models and machine learning to historical customer and campaign data to forecast future outcomes—churn, CLV, campaign success—enabling proactive actions.

Product recommendation engines use collaborative filtering or content-based algorithms to suggest relevant items based on user behavior, boosting average order value and retention.

Programmatic advertising automates the buying of display, video and social ads in real time using AI-driven bidding, targeting users at optimal moments for maximum efficiency.

Quota attainment measures the percentage of sales reps who meet or exceed their revenue targets in a period, indicating sales performance and forecasting accuracy.

Real-time personalization updates site content or recommendations instantly—based on current user behavior—delivering the most relevant experience at each visit.

A referral program incentivizes existing customers to refer friends via rewards or discounts, leveraging word-of-mouth to acquire high-quality leads at low cost.

Retargeting serves ads to people who’ve visited your site or engaged with your content but didn’t convert, bringing them back with tailored messaging and offers.

Retention rate measures the percentage of customers who remain active over a period. High retention indicates strong product-market fit, loyalty and effective engagement.

ROI calculates the profitability of marketing spend by dividing net profit from a campaign by the campaign’s cost, guiding budget allocation and channel performance comparisons.

An RSS feed syndicates your blog or news content in XML format, allowing subscribers and apps to automatically receive updates and drive repeat site visits.

SaaS integration connects cloud-based applications (CRM, marketing automation, analytics) via APIs or iPaaS, creating seamless data flows and unified customer experiences.

Sales enablement provides reps with content, training and tools—playbooks, case studies, automated insights—to improve productivity, win rates and sales cycle speed.

The sales funnel visualizes the stages prospects pass through—awareness, interest, decision, action—helping you optimize messaging and nurture strategies at each step.

Scalability describes a system’s ability to handle growing volumes—more users, data or campaigns—without performance loss, enabling your marketing operations to expand seamlessly.

A scoring model assigns weighted values to user behaviors and attributes—email opens, demo requests—to rank prospects by quality and prioritize sales follow-up.

Segmentation splits your audience into subsets—behavioral, demographic, psychographic—to deliver targeted campaigns that resonate with each group’s unique needs and interests.

SEO optimizes website content, structure and technical elements—keywords, meta tags, site speed—to rank higher in search results, attract qualified organic traffic and support inbound lead gen.

An SLA defines performance expectations—response times, uptime, resolution targets—between a service provider and customer, ensuring accountability in marketing or support services.

Social listening monitors brand mentions, keywords and sentiment across social platforms to uncover customer needs, track campaign impact and inform real-time engagement or crisis response.

Social proof uses customer testimonials, reviews, case studies and UGC to build trust, reduce purchase anxiety and increase conversions by showcasing real-world success stories.

Spam compliance ensures your email and SMS programs adhere to laws (CAN-SPAM, CASL), requiring clear consent, honest subject lines, valid sender info and easy unsubscribe options.

A tag management system (e.g., Google Tag Manager) centrally controls tracking codes—analytics, pixels, scripts—enabling faster deployment, version control and improved site performance.

A template library stores pre-built email, landing page and ad designs with consistent branding, enabling quick campaign launches and ensuring design standards.

Test & Learn is a culture of continuous experimentation—A/B and multivariate tests—paired with data analysis, enabling marketers to validate ideas and scale winning tactics.

A touchpoint is any interaction a prospect or customer has with your brand—ads, emails, support calls—shaping their perception and guiding them through the journey.

UGC is content—reviews, photos, videos—created by customers and fans. Leveraging UGC in marketing builds authenticity, social proof and community engagement.

UX testing evaluates website or app usability through user tasks, heatmaps and feedback sessions to identify pain points and improve navigation, design and conversion paths.

A value proposition clearly communicates your product’s unique benefits and why it’s better than alternatives, serving as a cornerstone for messaging across campaigns and channels.

Zero-party data is information customers voluntarily share—preferences, feedback, intents—enabling the most accurate personalization and compliance-friendly marketing.