A/B Testing: Testing of multiple versions in a campaign to see which yields the best result. In its simplest form, all variables are held constant except one.
Bidding Software: Tools that allow users to optimize their bidding strategies for their paid search efforts. These tools work across search engines and seek to obtain the best search ranking for the lowest cost per click.
Buyer’s Funnel: The classic stages a typical buyer goes through in making a purchase decision. Typical stages are awareness, familiarity, consideration, purchase, and loyalty.
Closed Sale: More typically used in large B2B transactions, the completed purchase of service or product denoted by a signed contract and initial payment.
Content Management Tools: Software that allows users to add, edit, and provide basic functionality to a website. Current industry leaders are Drupal and SquareSpace are two examples.
Conversion: A desired action that a user took such as downloaded content, attended a webinar, registered for an event, or requested a demo. Each campaign needs to define what the conversion action is.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Strategies and tools companies employ to manage and analyze customer and prospect interactions at various contact points and across channels. Salesforce is currently one of the leading CRM tools.
Dedupe: The elimination of duplicative records when merging two lists.
Gated Content: Exclusive content on a website for which users must enter contact information or other demographic information in order to access
Hard Bounce: An email with a failed delivery usually because the recipient’s address is not valid or the domain name doesn’t exist.
Hero Image: A prominent, large banner image placed front and center on a web page. Usually, it is what the visitor sees first so its content plays a very important role.
Marketing Automation Tools: Software to execute campaigns like emails and social media and to score, grade, and route leads. Often marketing automation tools are synchronized with a CRM tool. Industry leaders include Eloqua and Marketo.
Operational Metrics: In the content of digital marketing campaigns, these are performance numbers showing more detailed metrics, usually for campaign owners rather than for senior management. Examples include delivery rates, unsubscribe rates, open rates, click-through rates, like/share/comment/retweets, page traffic, and time on site.
Persona: A fictional character who represents the key characteristics of a group of users for whom to customize an online journey. Examples include HR Manager, Facilities Director, or Procurement Director.
Scorecard: A series of metrics to showcase the performance of a marketing campaign, usually updated regularly and shared with senior management.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Optimizing bids, keywords, and copy to solicit website traffic through buying ads on search engines. SEM campaigns should always have a defined goal or conversion metric.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Improving the organic ranking on a search display page (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.) to a website through optimizing copy, keywords, link equity, and technical improvements allowing for efficient web crawls. The goal is ultimately to increase web page traffic and conversions.
Soft Bounce: An email that reaches the recipient’s mail server but bounces back as undelivered, usually because the recipient’s mailbox is full or set for “out of office” and not receiving incoming messages.
Web Analytics Tools: The measurement and analysis of web data including page traffic, sources, user engagement metrics, and conversion data for optimizing web usage.