Skip to main content

Marketing Glossary

Digital Marketing

A/B Testing
Comparing two variants of a particular variable in a communication (e.g. email subject lines) to determine which delivers the better outcome.
Above the Fold
The section of a Web page that is visible without scrolling.
Analytics
The discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data for a website, social, paid marketing campaigns (PPC), etc.
Audience
A defined group of people identified for ad targeting.
Attribution
The determination of which element of a marketing campaign had the most effect on the outcome.
Bottom of the Funnel
The layer of the conversion funnel where the customer is closest to making a purchase.
Conversion Path
The series of web-based events that eventually drive to a lead capture or sale.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
The process of improving conversion rates through enhanced design, copy modifications, usability testing, A/B testing and other approaches.
Crowdsourced Content
Inviting customers, experts, and other external parties to develop your content. For example, Wikipedia.
CTA (Call to Action)
In digital advertising, a clickable image, text, or button that encourages a visitor to take an action, often with the goal of turning them into a lead.
Deterministic
Data that can uniquely identify a consumer for advertising targeting. For example, a credit card or phone number.
Evergreen Content
Content that continues to provide value to readers no matter how long has passed since it was first publsihed.
Friction
An aspect of your online presence that disrupts a consumer's journey through confusion, stress, or another negative experience, causing them to abandon.
Inbound Marketing
Marketing campaigns that pull users into a site to convert to a lead as inbound traffic. Reliant on tools like SEO and social media.
KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
A type of performance measurement companies use to evaluate an activity's success.
Landing Page
A web page that revolves around a marketing offer, such as an ebook or a webinar, and serves to capture visitor information in exchange for the valuable offer.
Lead Nurturing
the practice of developing a series of communications (emails, social media messages, etc.) that seek to qualify a lead, keep it engaged, and gradually push it down the sales funnel.
Sequential Messaging
Pushing unique, sequential messages to a consumer to take a particular action, often across multiple devices.
Top of the Funnel
the very first stage of the buying process. Leads at this stage are usually identifying a problem they have and are looking for more information.

Email Marketing

Autoresponder
A program that sends an automatic response to incoming emails, or to confirm subsriptions or registration completion.
CAN-SPAM
U.S. law that establishes the rules for commercial email and commercial messages, giving recipients the right to opt out of receiving messages.
CASL
Similar to CAN-SPAM, a Canadian law that covers the sending of "commercial electronic messages." It covers email, texts, instant messages, and automated cell phone messages.
Permission Marketing
marketing centered around getting customer’s consent to receive information from a company.

General

Animated GIF
A graphic in the GIF89a file format that creates the effect of animation by rotating through a series of static images.
Lead
A person or company who's shown interest in a product or service in some way, shape, or form.
Lookalikes
Individuals who are not exact matches for an audience, but share similar attributes which make them good prospective targets for a campaign.
Microsite
A cross between a landing page and a “regular” website, used when marketers want to create a different online experience for their audience separate from their main website.
Persona
Fictional people based on real data and insights that help marketing and sales understand their buyers, their unique needs and use cases.
PII (Personally Identifiable Information)
Data that can be used to specifically identify an individual.
Probabalistic
Using data to infer who is browsing a site or viewing an advertisment. These data points may include time and location.
QR (quick-response) Code
A machine-readable code consisting of an array of black and white squares, typically used for storing URLs or other information for reading by the camera on a smartphone.
Social Proof
The act of an individual seeking direction from others to determine how they should act or think. Often based on likes, follows, shares, and user reviews.
UI
An area where a user interacts via a Digital Device and its full form is User Interface. (How it looks.)
UX
UX is User Experience that tells how a user will interact with a site or App (How it works.)
Viral Content
A piece of content that has become wildly popular across the web through sharing.

Media

Ad blocking
A browser setting or plugin that allows the blocking of web advertisements, including pop-up ads, display ads, and other forms of online advertising.
Affiliate Marketing
Revenue sharing between online advertisers and online publishers. Compensation is based on performance measures, typically sales, clicks, or registrations.
Banner Blindness
The tendency of web visitors to ignore banner ads, even when the banner ads contain information visitors are actively looking for.
Cross-device
Communicating across multiple screens while managing consumer exposure to the message. For example, preventing message oversaturation across multiple devices.
DMP (Data Management Platform)
A system used to combine first-party brand data with third-party datasets to deliver holistic intelligence.
DSP (Demand-side Platform)
Where advertisers buy ads through automated platforms. These integrate with advertising exchanges and advertising supply platforms to create the digital advertising ecosystem.
Geo-targeting
A method of detecting a website visitor’s location to serve location-based content or advertisements.
Header Bidding
When an advertising publisher offers the same inventory to mulitple advertising exxchanges simultaneously.
Interstitial
An advertisement that loads between two content pages.
Native Advertising
Online advertising that takes on the form and function of the platform it appears on. Its purpose is to make ads feel less like ads, and more like part of the conversation.
Pixel Tag
Code placed into advertisements online to track campaign performance and gain insight into who viewed the ad. These can also be used for retargeting.
PPC (Pay-per-Click)
An internet advertising model where advertisers pay a publisher (usually a search engine, social media site, or website owner) a certain amount of money every time their ad is clicked.
Private Marketplace
When a publisher creates an invitation-only market for placement using real-time bidding.
Remarketing
A type of paid ad that lets advertisers show ads to customers who earlier visited their site but did not perform any desired action
SSP (Sell-side Platform)
The systems advertising publishers use to sell advertising inventory.
Trading Desk
In-house agency programmatic buying platforms which often purchase large amounts of inventory for better pricing before re-selling.

Metrics

Average Position
A metric in Google Adwords that helps advertisers understand where, on average, their ads are showing in Google search results pages.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of people who enter a website and then leave almost immediately without interacting.
CAC (Customer Aquisition Cost)
The total sales and marketing cost including advertising, salaries, commissions, hard costs, etc. divided by the total new customers over the time frame.
Churn Rate
A measurement of customer retention and value, calculated by dividing the number of customers lost in a time period by the total numbers you had at the beginning, not factoring in new customer acquisitions.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of people who complete the action desired by the campaign objectives.
CPL (Cost Per Lead)
The total cost of all marketing activities required to generate one lead.
CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions)
The cost an advertiser pays for having their ad display 1,000 times
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
Software that manages brand relationships with current customers and potential customers.
CTR (click-thru rate)
The average number of click-throughs per hundred ad impressions, expressed as a percentage.
Engagement Rate
Social media metric that describes interaction with a piece of content. For example, likes, shares, or comments on a Facebook post.
Heatmap
A graphical representation of data where varying degrees of a single metric are shown using colors.
Impression
A single instance of an online advertisement being displayed.
LTV (lifetime Value)
A prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer.
NPS (Net Promoter Score)
A customer satisfaction metric, delivered in a simple survey, that measures the degree to which people would recommend your company to others. (1-10 scale)
Quality Score
Rating of the relevance and quality of keywords used in PPC campaigns. Scores are determined by relevance of ad copy, expected click-through rate, landing page quality and relevance.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
A PPC marketing metric that demonstrates the profit made as compared to the amount of money spent on the ads. Similar to ROI.
ROI (Return on Investment)
A calculation involvling revenue earned using marketing channels vs. the money spent on the marketing itself.

SEO

ALT text
HTML attribute that provides alternative text when images cannot be displayed. Essential for SEO and to meet website accessibility standards.
Backlink
The practice of one website linking to another. Good quality backlinks are a major factor used by Google in determining organic rankings.
Off-Page Optimization
Incoming links and other outside factors that impact how a webpage is indexed in search results. Factors like linking domains and even social media play a role in off-page optimization.
On-Page Optimization
SEO based solely on a webpage and the various elements within the HTML, ensuring key pieces of the page (content, title tag, URL, and image tags) include desired keywords to help a page's organic rank.
Organic Search
the unpaid entries in a search engine results page that were derived based on their contents’ relevance to the keyword query.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page - page of search engine listings, typically the first page of organic results.

Website

API (Application Programming Interface)
A set of rules in an application which allow it to communicate with other applications.
Bot
A computerized program that crawls or visits websites, also known as a “crawler” or a “spider”.
CMS (Content Management System)
A system that allows non-technical users to manage content within a website. For example, WordPress.
Cookie
Information stored on a user’s computer by a website so preferences are remembered on future requests.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
The system that provides your website its colors, fonts, background images and generally controls the style of your online presence.
Dynamic Content
Content on a website or in an email that is tailored to a particular user, audience type, stage of site exploration, or other variable to improve conversion along their customer journey.
Freemium
A technique by which a business offers a free basic product, giving the customer an option to use an advanced version for a premium cost.
Hashing
The masking of personal information for security.
JavaScript
The programming language which allows developers to design interactivity on websites. For example, pop-ups, animated CTAs, and special effects.
Mobile Optimization
Designing and formatting your website so that it’s easy to read and navigate from a mobile device.
Redirect
A way by which a web browser takes a user from one page to another without the user clicking or making any input.
Referral
A website visit that came from another website. When users click on a link to another, external webpage, they are said to have been “referred” there.
Responsive Design
Allows all of the website content to show correctly regardless of screen size or device.
Splash Page
A branding page that appears before the home page of a web site.
Stickiness
the amount of time spent at a site over a given time period, often over multiple visits
Tracking code
A script, often placed in the header, footer, or thank you page of a website that passes information along to software tools for data gathering purposes.
Web accessibility
The practice of ensuring there are no barriers to prevent interaction with, or access to, websites by people with physical disabilities, situational disabilities, and socio-economic restrictions on bandwidth and speed.

55% PREFER PRIME DELIVERY TO BUYING AT RETAIL

SCS surveyed 750 US consumers on how their physical and digital buying habits have changed during the pandemic. These insights and more are presented in Omnichannel Overdrive.

Download the white paper →