glossary
Data and Marketing Terminology
Find our collection of terms commonly used in the data and marketing industry here in our glossary. Our original definitions were written specifically to help professionals navigate through jargon for a more fulfilling customer experience.
If you need any additional clarification on these terms or services that we provide, feel free to contact our team!
Table of Contents
L - M
L
List Hygiene represents the act of keeping a contact or email list clean and up to date. When leveraging a contact list for marketing, it is crucial for the contacts to be legitimate and the list without duplicates, inactive accounts, or invalid email addresses. This is to ensure efficient marketing spend. List Hygiene involves leveraging a variety of methods to update and clean a contact list, including de-duplication, scrubbing, and validation.
List Validation is the process of validating and verifying contact information and email addresses in a contact list to ensure that the contact information is accurate and up to date. List Validation involves checking the list of contact information for duplicates, inactive email accounts, spam traps and other issues that can waste marketing spend, and it returns the list with the erroneous records removed. List Validation is often provided as a third-party service by vendors.
M
A Mailing Keyline is a unique code on mail packaging that allows mailers to incorporate unique identifiers for existing or new customers in outbound mail packages. This keyline is linked to a database record in the customer database that helps the sender more easily identify and track which customers have been contacted and respond. The mailing keyline is seen above the addressee name on a traditional mailing package.
A Match Key is a combination of alphanumeric characters that is used and employed in data deduplication techniques for contact lists. Match Keys are generated and used against various data fields to help identify duplicates within the contact list. Match Keys are specific to a data type or field in a list. For example, unique match keys may exist for ZIP Code, Phone Number, and Street Name to help accurately identify duplicates in the respective fields.
N - P
N
National Change of Address Database (NCOALink) is a repository of over 150 million permanent change-of-address (COA) records filed through the United States Postal Service (USPS). The database is owned and managed by the USPS. NCOALink’s records contain the names and addresses of individuals, families and businesses who have filed a change-of-address with the United States. NCOALink is licensed to service providers and provided to mailers, helping ensure mailers do not send mail to undeliverable addresses and reducing the overall load on the USPS.
O
Opt-out is a term representing the act of declining to participate in the tracking of personal information or receiving email from commercial and marketing campaigns. Opt-out is a widely used term in websites and mobile applications, and it became more common as a result of modern privacy laws such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which require an opt-out option for visitors accessing webpages and applications.
Outbound Marketing refers to marketing in which the company initiates the messaging, advertisement, or conversation with an audience. Examples of outbound marketing includes common forms of marketing such as website ads, TV commercials, radio ads, print ads and cold calling. Outbound Marketing differs from Inbound Marketing in that inbound represents the action of a potential customer seeking the company and includes forms like opt-in email marketing and SEO. Outbound Marketing historically accounts for a much larger percentage of marketing spend and usually sees more immediate results compared to Inbound Marketing strategies. Inbound Marketing strategies, while effective, usually sees results after a longer period of time.
A sales development representative (SDR) may focus their outbound efforts on connecting with prospective buyers through a variety of different mediums, including email, phone, or social media.
P
Penetration Ratio is a measure of the reach, or popularity, of a product or service. It is calculated as the number of people that purchase a specific brand or type of product in a given time period out of the total measured population. Penetration Ratio is used to enable business managers to estimate the size of the potential market for an offering.
Phone Append is a data enhancement service that adds mobile or landline phone numbers to a business or consumer contact list. A phone append service is leveraged to increase the breadth of data in a contact list and provide calling options for customer and prospect lists, usually by connecting to a first and last name or email address. Most phone append services are compared against Do Not Call lists to ensure compliant contact and marketing practices.
For more information on how append services can enhance your data, contact one of our data experts.
Postal Append is a data enhancement service that adds postal address information to a business or consumer contact list. A postal append service is leveraged to enhance the data in a contact list by adding the postal address as well as full name where applicable. Postal append services enable multi-channel communication, ability to geosegment email contacts, and personalized marketing by adding a physical address component.
For more information on how append services can enhance your data, contact one of our data experts.
Prospecting is the process of identifying potential customers in a target market. It is often defined as the first step in a sales process, where a repository of potential customers, or prospects, is composed for the purposes of communicating and marketing. Prospects are considered potential customers that have made contact with a company and expressed moderate interest in purchasing a product or service, but have not yet purchased or engaged the product or service.
Psychographics is the study of attitudes, emotions and interests of a group or individual. Psychographic information is used in marketing along with demographics to perform segmentation of customers and prospects for determining effective sales and marketing strategies. Psychographic segmentation includes characteristics such as attitudes, interests, hobbies, convictions, lifestyle, and personality traits. Marketers use psychographic information to build a better understanding of their customer base and communicate a product or service effectively.
Our consumer (B2C) data products allow our customers to target their ideal buyers by interest group. For more information, visit our Consumers page or contact an EMM data expert.
Q - S
Q
A query is a phrase used to retrieve and validate information from a source. Queries are used commonly in search engines such as Google or Bing. Query keywords and phrases are analyzed by marketers to understand search frequency, trends, and common pairings of words or phrases. Marketers leverage the findings from aggregated queries to understand more about their target market or customer base in order to build effective marketing strategies and campaigns.
R
Recency, Frequency, Monetary Value (RFM) is a marketing analysis method used to measure the value of a customer. The three data points it is based on are defined as the following: How recently a customer made a purchase (Recency), how frequently does the customer make purchases (Frequency), and how much is the average purchase value (Monetary Value). RFM is used for multiple purposes, as it gives an indication of how much revenue comes from repeat customers, helps evaluate how to provide value for customers, and provides a method for segmentation.
Interested to learn how you can action your data to become one of your most valuable assets? Inquire about our professional data services to accelerate and scale your projects.
Regular Expression (RegEx) is a set of characters or string of text that allows you to create patterns that can help match, locate, replace, and manage text.
Examples include:
RegEx Matches any String That
b[aeiou]bble contains {babble, bebble, bibble, bobble, bubble}
[b-chm-pP]at|ot contains {bat, cat, hat, mat, nat, oat, pat, Pat, ot}
colou?r contains {color, colour}
Retargeting is a marketing method that focuses campaigns on web users that have previously visited the company’s website. Retargeting efforts focus primarily on potential customers that visit the site without making a purchase, and it is a long-term marketing strategy that can be used to keep prospects engaged, advertise new services or inventory, and build a brand following. Retargeting campaigns are often able to be more personalized as the company has basic information of the user from previous visits to the website.
Reverse Append is a data enhancement technique that leverages one field of data to obtain accompanying data that is linked to it for purposes of expanding the data set. For example, a company with a list of phone numbers may utilize a reverse append service to identify matches and add first name, last name, and email address. Reverse append services are leveraged for both individual and company information.
For more information on how append services can enhance your data, contact one of our data experts.
S
Sales Intelligence refers to the various technologies, applications and strategies used by sales teams in organizations to collect and analyze data. Sales Intelligence can encapsulate the collection, analysis, monitoring, hygiene, and presentation of any data pertinent to sales organizations. Companies use sales intelligence tools and strategies to improve the quality and quantity of sales leads, identify buying patterns, track customers, and a wide array of other actions.
Every Market Media is proud to have helped clients develop and test systems that interact with sales intelligence workflows. Learn more about our professional data services or contact our team for more information.
Standard Industry Classification (SIC) Code refers to a four-digit numerical code assigned by the U.S. government that categorize the industries to which companies belong, while also organizing them by their business activities.
The SIC system classifies the economy into 11 major divisions:
- Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
- Mining
- Construction
- Manufacturing
- Transportation and public utilities
- Wholesale trade
- Retail trade
- Finance, insurance, and real estate
- Services
- Public administration
- Nonclassifiable establishments
Every company has a primary SIC that indicates its main line of business. The first two digits of the code identify the major industry group, the third digit identifies the industry group, and the fourth digit identifies the specific industry.
SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) refers to a particular type of email address. These tend to be personal addresses from domains such as gmail, yahoo, msn, protonmail, and aol and are less often associated with a specific business.