Our Marketing Automation Glossary

The marketing field uses a lot of words and abbreviations, and it's not easy to keep up with what they all mean. To make it easier, we've put together a glossary of common words and terms used when talking about Marketing Automation.

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ABM Account Based Marketing

ABM or Account Based Marketing is a marketing strategy that aims to target its communication to a specific company and its decision makers.

The idea is that this allows for higher personalization and relevance to this specific company. A common methodology included in ABM is retargeting based on IP targeting which you can read more about below.

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API Application Programming Interface

APIs are a set of computer programming rules that allow an application to exchange information with a service (fetch and/or submit) and use the information either in its own application or in its analysis work.

An API contacts your application and retrieves exactly the information you want to use in your own software.

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BI Business Intelligence

Business intelligence, abbreviated BI, (also called decision support or decision support systems) is a collective term for skills, technologies, applications, processes and methods for organisations to better understand their business.

Roughly, the area can be divided into information management systems and analytical processes.

BI collects, structures, analyses and visualises information from the business with the aim of supporting decision-making, and a BI system can thus also be called a decision support system.

BI as an information management system covers areas such as business performance management, corporate performance management, enterprise performance management, operational performance management and yield management.

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CDP Customer Data Platform

Customer information systems are a central repository for all types of customer information, providing a unified view of the customer collected from all the different systems within a business.

Unlike CRM, a CDP is all about the data and not relationship information or sales information; rather, a CDP manages the data and retrieves and delivers customer information to other systems.

The aim is to have a central location for their customer information for control, security and to ensure that they have the same information in all their internal systems.

A CDP often has good features for segmenting and analysing the data, which can create better customer insights and more qualitative communications to narrower customer groups.

You can read more about CDP here.

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CEM Customer Engagement Management

Customer Engagement itself refers to a customer's emotional, cognitive and behavioural commitment to a brand or company. This commitment can be strengthened or weakened at every interaction (see 'touchpoints') with the company or its representatives.

Management comes into play when, based on this understanding, it tries to foster this commitment through its marketing and other initiatives.

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Churn rate

The percentage of customers or leads (entered into a company's system) that are lost over a period of time, expressed as a percentage of the total number of customers or leads.

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CLV

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the value in money that a customer represents over his or her time as a customer of a company.

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content marketing

To communicate with your prospective and existing customers with high quality, relevant and informative content.

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CPA

Cost per acquisition is the cost of acquiring a customer that can be associated with marketing and sales initiatives.

May also refer to an advertising model where the advertiser pays for each dedicated customer.

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CPL

Cost per lead (CPL) is the marketing cost of acquiring a lead. You can think of it as a variation of CPA but not dealing with customers, but prospective customers; i.e. leads.

Could also refer to an advertising model where the advertiser pays for each new lead.

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CRM Customer Relationship Management System

Customer care systems that contain information about the company's relationship with its existing and potential customers. It is usually through this system that salespeople manage their customer contacts.

You can read more about CRM here.

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Cross Channel Analytics

Track customer behaviour across multiple channels, such as your website and blog or social media.

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Cross Channel Marketing

Use multiple marketing channels and strategies to meet the customer at every stage of the sales journey.

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CTA Call to Action

A collective name for elements, usually in the form of text, that call for a specific action. "Buy now", "visit our website", "call this number" are all examples of different types of calls to action.

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CTR

Click-through rate. The percentage of people who click on a link, ad or similar item out of the total number who see it.

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Customer Journey

A Customer Journey is usually a visualised timeline of the different touchpoints that a customer completes and experiences in relation to your business.

The Customer Journey is not limited to a "buying process" or "selling process" but is usually much more extensive, from e.g. before the first dialogue to after becoming a customer.

A Customer Journey is usually created to better understand and improve your company's Customer Experience.

It describes all the so-called touchpoints between the customer and the company, but it can also cover other important activities that the customer engages in during the process, but where the company is not involved.

In particular, the touchpoints that cause frustration or poor customer experience, so-called "pain points", are identified in order to implement improvement work.

Similarly, touchpoints where the customer is particularly satisfied can also be identified, "gain points", but they are usually not as interesting.

Above is an example of a Customer Journey that is mapped and visualized. Source: CMS-Connected

You can read more about the customer journey here.

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DMP Data Management Platform

A DMP collects data from multiple digital channels, both internal and external.

The data is divided into 1st party data which consists of your own internal information from for example a CRM system, 2nd party data which is information from partners and 3rd party data which is from external parties such as data providers that you buy data from, for example demographic information and behavioural data.

The data in a DMP is usually anonymised, with demographic data linked to a cookie or Profile ID, for example.

DMP is used to:

• Achieve higher returns on advertising as they can be more targeted
  
• Enabling more efficient use of data
  
• Better allocation of ad spend due to better access to data (data based decisions)
  
• To run more campaigns across more channels and device types
  
• To identify new target groups

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Double opt-in

Filling in a form and giving consent to be contacted for marketing purposes will result in a reply email asking for confirmation, usually by following a link.

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Drip marketing 

Also called lead nurturing. Usually a series of emails aimed at qualifying leads, keeping them engaged, and eventually moving them down the sales funnel.

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Dynamic content

Displaying different content on websites, landing pages, in emails, etc. depending on a lead's score in the current scoring model. In other words, a way to personalize the experience.

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Sales Process

A sales process, as opposed to a buying process, is usually based on your internal sales-related processes to be implemented in order for you to have the best way to follow up and manage the ongoing business opportunities you are pursuing.

A well-developed sales process should therefore serve as a tool to ensure that everyone works according to the same processes and ways of working.

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Geo-targeting

Targeting ads or messages to people based on where they are geographically located.

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inbound marketing

To attract customers to you by creating quality and relevant content. Making the material available via blogs, podcasts, videos, e-books, newsletters, white papers, physical products and social media to attract and convert visitors into customers.

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Integrera / Integration

Integration means linking several different stand-alone systems to work together. For this to work, an application is created that works against the system's various interfaces (APIs).

Then the systems can send information to each other automatically without having to have a person sit and manually input this information.

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IP targeting 

Usually refers to advertising that targets an IP address or a group of IP addresses. In this way, a high degree of accuracy can be achieved against the target(s).

It is this technique that is also used in the methodology of "Retargeting" which is also part of Account Based Marketing, both of which you will find here in the glossary.

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Conversion

The activity you want users to complete to move forward in your lead and sales process.

The activity can be that a recipient of an email presses a CTA (call-to-action) button to visit your website, that they download a white paper on the website, fill in a contact form on the website or that they order your product/service on your website when they visit your site or your shop.

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Conversion optimization

Working systematically to test all the factors you can think of that affect a conversion with the ambition to improve conversion.

It could be a form or a payment gateway, but even the slightest difference in colour can result in unexpected results on customer behaviour and conversion.

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KPI Key Performance Indicator

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. These are used to continuously monitor an activity in relation to the objectives that have been set.

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Landing Page / Landningssida

A landing page is a stripped-down web page with a specific content and purpose, as the purpose of the landing page is to get the visitor to perform a specific action.

You scale down the design and lead the visitor to your Call to Action (CTA). This could be a purchase, an event registration, a download or a newsletter subscription.

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Lead magnet / Gated content

An offer aimed at your target audience and potential leads where they have to share their contact details to receive the material. Classic examples of Lead Magnet and Gated Content are white papers, guides and free consultations.

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Lead score

All leads are scored according to behaviours that we can interpret as being more or less interested in the company and its offer. These are summed up in a lead score.

Leads can earn points through website visits, forms and mass mailings, among other things. The more points, the "hotter" the lead.

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Lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is about building relationships with your leads. Continuously nurturing, educating and providing value to strengthen the relationship with the aim of leading them through the customer journey.

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Marketing Automation (MA)

is an increasingly common umbrella term for strategies, processes and often includes software that automates processes that would otherwise need to be done manually.

This also enables corporate marketing teams to perform beyond their capacity, as they can do "more with less".

It also creates opportunities to fine-tune the way you communicate with your customers, such as experimenting with different types of messages to increase conversions and sales. The aim is to reach the right person, with the right message, at the right time, in the right communication channel.

Read more about what Marketing Automation is here.

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Marketing technology stack

The collection of programs and tools used to perform the marketing function of a company.

You can read more about Martech here.

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Marketing Technologies

Technological solutions and systems used in various ways for the purpose of marketing or communicating with the outside world.

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MQL Marketing Qualified Lead

A lead that has met the requirements to be qualified by market. These requirements are adjusted in a lead scoring model which then ranks the person according to how "hot" interest they show.

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Multivariate Analysis.

Statistical method for simultaneously testing how variations in several variables affect a result.

As the ambition is to find the best combination of a large number of variables, the test group needs to be much larger than for simple A/B analyses.

If you want to read more about Multivariate analysis, you can do so here.

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Onboarding

Market space to introduce new users to a service or product.

An onboarding can involve a series of introductory emails to new employees, to new customers or to someone who has signed up for a product launch.

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outbound marketing

The traditional way of marketing through print advertising, trade fairs, leaflets, cold calling and unaddressed mass mailings.

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Permission pass

Asking their leads if they still want to receive marketing communications in order to purge lists of cold leads and thus keep them relevant.

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Personalize 

Creating messages in marketing that are directly relevant to the recipient.

This can be anything from using their name to a reference to their personal preferences, or one of their previous purchases.

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Personas

Method to better understand your customers by personalising a market segment that represents your target group.

The method involves using different types of data to build typical users of your product or service. Personas are simply type customers for your target audiences and serve to simplify targeting and communication.

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Progressive profiling

In forms, present different fields depending on what a lead previously filled in. If we already know their name, it is not relevant to ask the same question again.

Instead, you can take the opportunity to ask for other information, such as a telephone number.

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Prospect

A qualified and interested individual who shows interest in buying and is preparing to make a purchase decision.

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Retargeting

Retargeting is a strategy that aims to use IP targeting technology or cookies to target advertisements to prospects who have previously visited our website or shown interest in our services with the goal of converting them into customers.

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sales enablement

Giving the sales force the materials and information they need to successfully take a lead through the buying journey.

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Segmentation

Using specific criteria to divide your customers into different groups so that you can market in a more targeted way.

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Silos

For example, processes or information that stand alone without relationships to surrounding parts. It can also be described as a number of pipes with water flowing parallel and separated through them.

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SMarketing

It means integrating marketing and sales within a company, which can bring great benefits if successful.

Want to learn more about SMarketing? Read our article "What is SMarketing..."

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Smart/Dynamic list

A list in a marketing automation program of leads and/or customers where members are added or removed based on predefined rules.

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Split Test

Conduct controlled experiments to see how a change in your marketing improves click-through rates, registrations, purchases and other statistics. A classic example is testing different colours on a CTA button. Also known as A/B testing.

If you want to read more about the split test, you can do so here.

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SQL Sales Qualified Lead

A visitor who has moved from lead to MQL and on to SQL. These are leads that are ready to start a dialogue about a purchase, for example via a phone call or a visit from a salesperson.

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Static list

A list of leads and/or customers where users in the respective system need to manually add or remove members.

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Support system

Refers to digital tools or software such as CRM systems or email applications used in the business to perform various tasks.

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Sunsetting

Clearing lists of leads that have been inactive for a long period of time.

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Permit-based marketing 

Where someone asks if you can market to them, for example when they sign up to receive a newsletter or subscribe to a blog.

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Touchpoint

Instances where leads or customers come into contact with a company in real life or digitally.

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Trigger 

Activity or change that is the starting signal for sending a message or updating a data field, for example.

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UTM

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) is 5 parameters can be added to a URL to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

These five are:

1. Utm_source: identifies which page referenced the traffic.
   
2. Outm_medium: identifies the medium in which the clicked link was located, such as email or PPC.
   
3. Utm_campaign: identifies campaign
   
4. Utm_term: Identifies the search term
   
5. Utm_content: identifies what was clicked.

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WYSIWYG

Long term meaning "What You See Is What You Get". Refers to tools in many modern marketing applications and services to allow the creation and editing of pages, landing pages, emails, forms, etc. without requiring the user to know HTML/CSS.

All elements can be edited from a graphical menu and what the user sees represents the final result in real time.