Email glossary

A/B testing is the act of sending two version of an email which contain the same information but are presented in different ways. This kind of testing is carried out to see which of the emails performs better and has greater open rates. Whichever is the more successful will be the email that will be sent out to a wider audience.

Abandoned cart emails are emails sent as part of an eCommerce system. When a user is shopping online and places a product into their online ‘cart’, but they leave the site without making a purchase, an abandoned cart email will be sent to their registered email account prompting them to complete.

Above the fold refers to the first part of a website that is available to see without the user having to scroll down the webpage.

Acceptance rates are metrics used to measure how much emails from a campaign were not bounced back from the receiving email servers. It is different to deliverability in the sense the acceptance rates include anything that wasn’t bounced, including mail that doesn’t arrive in the intended mailbox.

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is an area of technology in which software can think and operate without, or at least with minimal, human input. AI uses machine learning to develop itself and to make more complex choices to better solve problems. Some AI is more complex than others, and can include things like chatbots, art generators, content writing software, self-driving cars, video game bots and much more.

An alias email address is an alternative email address to your personal one which still directs mail to the same original inbox. Alias email addresses are especially useful for businesses who can have a business address which they share with business contacts, which is all kept in the same handy place as their personal emails.

An alternate email address is essentially another email account which you have alongside your primary address. You might set up an alternate email address for your business for example, or to manage your household email correspondence.

AMP email is a new technology that allows email marketers to create emails with more dynamic elements, like interactive forms, embedded videos, comments and polls. AMP emails are typically more interesting and engaging than standard static email content and can improve readability and click rate.

Apple Mail Privacy Protection, or AMPP, is a feature on Apple Mail that hides the user’s IP address when sending and receiving mail. This makes it harder to identify the user’s general location and to track their online activity – as well as hiding whether they have read or opened any received emails.

API stands for application programming interface. It is a connection which lets different apps and digital elements interact with each other.

APOP, or Authenticated Post Office Protocol, is an email protocol that enables a user to get their email from a POP3 server while also adding an extra layer of authentication and protection to keep both server and user secure. With POP, a user’s username and password use normal letters and numbers, while APOP uses authentication to encrypt credentials.

When your email inbox gets too full, you can choose to archive your emails. This means storing them in a special folder so that they don’t show up in your email inbox. Archive email is what we call these emails that are stored in your archive.

An email attachment is a file that can be sent with an email, which the recipient can view or download if they choose. The files can be documents, audio files, videos and more.

Email authentication formats like SPF, DKIM or DMARC are forms of digital signatures that many emails have. These signatures show email providers and servers that the email comes from a legitimate source and isn’t being spoofed by malicious users for spam or fraud.

Automated emails are emails that are automatically sent to users according to a pre-set schedule that the sender has created ahead of time. They are often used as part of a marketing campaign.

Automation flow is a method used to streamline different automation tools and to get them to work in unison. Operating automation tools seamlessly together can help businesses perform at their maximum capacity.

Autopilot is a feature included for premium uses of the Mailmeteor email platform. It is an advanced scheduling tool that has a number of options, designed to maximize the delivery rate of your emails. It gives you complete control over your email campaigns schedule and how often emails are sent from your account. Find out more on our Autopilot blog post.

An autoresponder email is a tool that you can use to automatically send an email to an individual contact or multiple contact.

No. The short answer is: email addresses are not case sensitive. If your email address is [email protected] but someone enters it in as [email protected], you’we still receive the email.

Backscatter emails are mass numbers of messages, automatically sent by mail servers, to incorrect addresses that never sent the mass emails in the first place. Spammers will use someone else’s sending address to avoid being detected, and the automatic responses come back from invalid addresses, causing the backscatter.

Base64 is a collection of encoding schemes that are binary to text, representing binary data in an ASCII string format. They can be used to transfer text and sometimes images into a string which can be read, saved or transferred.

BCC stands for blind carbon copy – so what is a blind copy email? Like a CC email, a blind copy email is an email you send to someone, while also copying in another recipient. The difference is that the main recipient isn’t aware of the second recipient.

Behavioral emails are emails automatically sent to a user based on their behavior on the sender’s site or social media accounts. These emails are often to demonstrate a level of personalization to encourage additional interactions and purchases.

BIMI is an acronym that stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification. This new kind of email specification, backed by Google, Mailchimp and Sendgrid, offers the ability to attach your brand and logo to the emails you send. Similar to DMARC and DKIM, it is an authentication method which includes the brand and logo of a company within an email to establish the email as genuine.

Email blacklists or blocklists are lists that are updated in real-time containing IP addresses and domains which are deemed to be fraudulent or spammy. Emails sent from these addresses and domains will be automatically sent to the spam file, and often the addresses and domains themselves will be blocked from sending on email servers.

A blocklist is a list of email addresses which a mail server or an email user considers fraudulent or spammy. When an address is on the blocklist, any emails sent to an inbox will either bounce or will be placed in the spam folder.

Bot detection is the act of using software and AI to identify bots or bot activity. Bot detection software is very good at spotting bot behavior and seeing the difference between bots that do positive work and bots that are problematic.

When you send out large numbers of emails all at the same time, most will likely arrive at their destination. However, some may “bounce” which means they won’t arrive in any inbox. The bounce rate is the number of these emails that bounce compared to those that arrive at their intended address.

A bounce in email means that the email sent didn’t reach the recipient’s inbox. Bounce is a kind of notification that the recipient’s email address isn’t receiving the email and displays an error message indicating the reason for the bounce.

BounceShield is a unique feature of the Mailmeteor email platform. It is a fully automated service which goes through the email addresses in your campaign contact list, verifying each one to ensure they are legitimate. This in turn will prevent your emails from bouncing. Find out more on our BounceShield blog post.

A branded email is an email sent by a company that contains the logo, colour scheme, tone-of-voice and imagery of the company’s brand.

Bulk email is large numbers of emails all sent at the same time. Bulk email software allows marketing teams to reach a very wide audience of recipients with just one click – it often is used as part of a campaign to spread the word quickly and effectively via email. Most of the time, it’s best to avoid sending emails in bulk to protect your account and prevent spam. The best practice to avoid getting blocked when sending emails in bulk is to split your email campaigns in smaller batches and send them across several days.

A burner email is an email address that you can set up if you don’t want to share your personal details with a business that requires an email address to access.

A call to action or a CTA is a piece of text or a button that asks or suggests that the reader should take an action. That action can be calling a number, sending an email or clicking through a link to a website.

CAN-SPAM, also known as the Controlling the Assault of Non-solicited Pornography and Marketing act, is a piece of legislation passed by the United States of America in 2003. It sets the standard for how marketers can send marketing materials that haven’t been requested by the recipient, letting them know what the can, and can’t, do.

Canned emails are pre-written emails that are automatically sent to emailed enquiries to provide answers to frequently asked questions. Some email clients and email service providers, such as Gmail, allow you to write these emails as automatically templated responses.

CASL stands for Canada’s anti-spam legislation, and is a law that regulates how much unsolicited email marketing a business can send in Canada. It is famous for being one of the toughest anti-spam laws in the world, and requires anyone that sends commercial electronic messages to get permission or consent from the recipient before they send anything.

A catchall email is an email address which will collect any emails that are sent to an incorrect email account on a domain. If an email is sent to an address that doesn’t exist on a domain, the catchall email account will collect that email so that the domain owner can see them.

CC stands for carbon copy – so what is cc on email? CC on an email is where you can add multiple secondary recipients to the same email. These CC recipients aren’t the same as the main recipients, but they do get to see the email thread too.

The CCPA is a piece of data protection regulation that protects the privacy of internet users in the state of California in the USA. It stands for California Consumer Privacy Act and dictates how businesses are allowed to use the private data of its customers.

ChatGPT is an AI language model that works like a chatbot. It uses vast amounts of data to simulate a conversation with a user, answering complex questions, solving problems and providing creative content like generated blogs, marketing content and even poems. It is owned and operated by Microsoft and uses machine learning principles to constantly improve.

Click rate is a metric used by marketers to compute how many people clicked a link or an image on the emails they sent. This rate gives an overview of how good the email’s content is for encouraging the reader to take another action, showing the marketer what needs to be improved for the next email campaign.

Click through rates are what marketers use to see how many people clicked on a link or an image on the emails they sent. These rates give an idea for how good the email’s content is for encouraging the reader to take another action, showing the marketer what needs to be improved for the next email campaign.

Cold emails are emails that are sent to recipients who haven’t asked to be contacted – or have never been in contact with the sender. They are often used by marketers to start a conversation or to inform the reader of a product or service. Cold emails are unsolicited – but is cold email illegal? The answer is no, sending cold emails is not illegal – but it can be annoying for the recipient. You may want to check the law applicable in your country and the ones of your recipients before sending cold emails to ensure you”re compliant with the legislation.

Commercial email is an umbrella term for any email that is sent by a business to promote the business, its services or its products. Another word for commercial email is marketing email.

An email complaint is when a recipient flags an email for spam. The complaint rate measures how many of the recipients flagged the email for potential spam and abuse. A high number of complaints can put the sender’s reputation at risk.

To compose an email is another term for writing an email. For many email providers, you”ll see a button that says “compose email” which, when clicked on, will let you start writing an email to be sent to a recipient.

When you make a purchase online or sign up to something, like a newsletter for example, you”ll receive a confirmation email from the business or organization. These emails are there to confirm that your order has been placed or the action you took on their website has been successful.

A contact form is an element on a web page that acts as a form that the user can fill out to get in touch with the web page owner. They normally include fields like name, company name, email address, mobile and a place to send a full message. Contact forms save users from having to find and use an email address to reach an organization.

Everyone has a contact list in its smartphone. In emailing, it’s very similar. A contact list is a collection of email addresses, sometimes with more information about each recipient, such as:

Conversion rate is a marketing and business metric which measures how many recipients of marketing emails take an action based on those emails. An email with a high conversion rate is one that inspires a lot of people to click on a link or buy a product for example

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and it is a tactic used by businesses to improve their relationship with their customers, using things like data and research to create more targeted and relevant marketing materials.

A CRM manager is a piece of software that is designed to help marketers, salespeople and businesses manage customer interactions across different platforms, all from one app. They also contain analytics tools to see whether people like their product or service, and have a positive opinion of a business.

CRM stands for customer relationship management. It is a process used by sales and marketing teams to give the best possible experience for the customer through positive interactions with the hopes that they return to their business in the future. These interactions can be in person, over the phone, through email or online.

The click-to-open rate is the measurement that tracks and compares how many times an email is opened against how many unique times links are clicked within those emails. It allows email marketers to pinpoint whether the content of an email is the problem, or whether the problem is that the emails aren’t even being opened.

A custom domain is a domain that has been given a customized name, as opposed to one that uses another brand’s name. They are unique labels, attached to IP addresses of websites, and can be used to establish that an email has come from a familiar business.

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service, which is a type of cyber attack that aims to disrupt the normal functioning of a targeted computer system or network. In the context of email, a DDoS attack can be used to overwhelm the email server with a massive influx of traffic, causing it to crash or become unavailable.

A dedicated IP address is one that can only be used by and for your domain. These addresses aren’t shared by other devices and domains – they are exclusively for you. Sometimes, they can cost a little bit extra for the added security and privacy they bring.

Email deliverability is the word that describes how likely it is that your emails will be read. It measures how many of your emails will land in your recipient’s inbox folder instead of spam. What does deliver mean? Delivering is another word for getting an email from one account to another.

A disposable email addres is an email address that you can create when you don’t want to share your personal email address.

DKIM is an acronym for DomainKeys Identified Mail. It is an authentication protocol that allows anyone receiving emails to check that those emails were actually sent by the genuine sender. DKIM does this by including a digital signature in the form of a header with every email.

DMARC stands for domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance. It is an authentication protocol that authenticates emails and protects your email domain from being used by cybercriminals for phishing and scamming purposes.

A DNS text record is a TXT file that allows a domain manager to input text into a DNS. A DNS is a Domain Name System which allows users to access the internet using domain names rather than Internet Protocol addresses.

Double opt-in is a method for opting in or subscribing to an email newsletter or marketing communications. Where single opt-in mechanisms would let you sign-up with just a single action, such as clicking a button on a website, double opt-in methods combine two mechanisms – such as signing up by a button on a website and then confirming that opt-in with an email requiring an action.

An email drip campaign is a number of automated marketing emails that are sent out at set times and at a set rate - for example, a welcome email sequence sent to new customers. So what is drip email? Drip emails are emails that are sent one at a time as part of a planned schedule, as “drips” of emails, one after the other.

Dynamic email is email content or parts of an email that can be automatically personalized to the recipient. It can include things like names, businesses, order numbers, dates of births, and is included by using variables in mailing lists.

Email address fields are entry fields on forms that are only able to be filled with full email addresses. Anything that doesn’t contain an email address similar to “[email protected]” will be rejected.

An email address is an address for an email box where messages can be delivered and sent. All businesses and most individuals have an email address for professional and personal reasons – they are made up of a local part, which is normally a name, and the domain. Are email addresses case sensitive? No – while passwords are case sensitive, email addresses are not.

Email analytics is the practice of using data to see how likely an email is to be read or interacted with. Marketers will use email analytics to see how well their email campaigns are doing and to work out how to improve.

Email authentication is the process of ensuring the sender of an email and the email itself are authentic, genuine and not cybercriminals seeking to fool recipients into scams or fraudulent activity. There are many forms of email authentication, all designed to certify the sender as a real and trustworthy figure.

Email automation is where a series of emails are sent automatically as part of a schedule. The automation part means that the sender doesn’t need to manually click the send button every time – the software will send the email on his or her behalf. In certain cases, automation can be triggered by specific events, such as when one of your recipients reads, opens or clicks your email.

An email blast is a scheduled marketing method that sees email marketing professionals send a “blast” of emails, all at the same time and all with one click of a button. The emails in the blast are sent to a wide range of recipients, held on the same distribution list and containing similar marketing content.

Email campaigns are a series of emails, sent by a business or organization, to promote either a product or a set of services. These emails will be used to encourage the reader to take an action, whether it’s visiting a website for more information or even directly making a purchase. Marketers will use email campaign software to create the campaign and to automatically send emails at set points.

Email clients are platforms and pieces of software which enable you to send and receive emails. Some contain other tools and features to help schedule and manage email, such as calendars, address boxes and more.

Email compliance refers to the set of regulations, policies, and best practices that businesses and individuals must follow when sending emails to ensure they are legal, ethical, and effective. Email compliance covers various aspects of email communication, including data privacy, security, marketing, and content.

Email deployment is the act of sending a number of emails to a number of accounts through an email marketing app or extension such as Mailmeteor. Email deployment is a key stage in many marketer’s email campaigns.

An email editor is an element in webmail or in an email client where users can write, edit and draft emails. They include things like formatting tools, file attachments, hyperlinks and more to enable users to complete emails.

Email encryption is the act of encrypting any email that is sent from an email server so that it can’t be intercepted or spoofed by a malicious party. It is also a way of showing that the email is from a reliable source and not from a scammer’s account.

Engagement is a series of metrics used by email marketers to measure how people are interacting or engaging with the marketing emails they send out. Commonly used metrics include things like number of replies, open rates, conversion rates and click rates, and they can be used to see what works in emails, and what doesn’t.

Email etiquette is the term used to describe how proper or polite an email is. An email with good etiquette is more likely to receive a response or be read, especially when it contains things like personalization for example. An email with bad etiquette is more likely to go unread and in the worst case scenario, be registered as spam.

Email fatigue is a reference to the way email recipients feel when they have received too many emails from you or your business. It can be a problem for you, giving your organization a bad reputation for being a spammer and overwhelming your customers.

Email filtering is an automatic tool which many email clients have which separates different incoming emails into a series of folders, based on what the content of those emails are. Email filtering is also used to automatically send potential spam mail to the junk folder.

Email finders are software that allows a user to access lists of emails that the finder has sourced from the internet. These finders will scrape or scam HTML webpages to search for email addresses which they will then provide to a user for a fee. The user can then use the addresses for the email marketing campaigns.

An email gateway is a dedicated server, used by businesses as a safeguard against any malicious emails coming through their network. Also known as an SEG, or a secure email gateway, these gateways stand between the wider internet and an organization’s network, monitoring every email that goes in and out.

Email harvesting is where you collect a large number of email addresses to be used for marketing purposes. Often email harvesting will be carried using an email parser, which will scan emails and texts to automatically pick up any email addresses which will be added to a list. These lists can be used to target recipients with cold email communications.

An email header is a piece of code attached to every email which shows the sender, the recipient, the date when the email was sent and the subject line of the email. That also track an email’s route which helps with things like security and authentication - keeping the recipient and sender safe from interception.

Email hygiene refers to how valid a contact list of emails is. Marketers will often have large lists of email addresses to send cold emails to. A list with bad email hygiene is one that has many invalid emails that won’t receive messages; a list with good hygiene is one where most email address will receive the emails.

Email integrations are when various tools, software and methods of creating email marketing campaigns are brought together to make the process smoother and more efficient. Integrating different email tools helps marketing teams work more cohesively on campaigns together.

There are several laws and regulations that apply to email communication. Here are some of the most common email laws:

Email layout refers to how your email will look to the recipient. Paragraphs, headers and text formatting are all parts of your email layout, and a well thought out layout can make it much easier to read and interact with your emails.

Email lead generation is the process of gathering sales leads by sending out marketing emails. A sales lead is the marketing term for someone who is interested in learning more about your product or service, so lead generation is when you reach out to find these people.

Email lists are lists of email addresses which are collected through website forms or newsletter subscription forms. Email lists can be used by the owner to send email campaigns.

Email logs are collections of data about all emails that leave or are received by a server. These logs contain key information about the recipient, the sender, any errors that happen and any attachments that are sent.

Email marketing is the term used for kinds of marketing that are promoted through emails. Email marketing software and email marketing content are used to promote services and products, while features like automation and campaigns can ensure that content gets to as big an audience as possible.

Email migration is where emails are moved from one email client to another email client. For example, if you had Microsoft Outlook on your computer, but you wanted to move to Mozilla Thunderbird, email migration would be the action of moving all of your emails to the new Thunderbird client from Outlook.

Email newsletters are regular scheduled emails that contain updates about a company, an organization or an individual. Newsletters will inform the reader on recent news and events that have happened that may be of interest, and sometimes they will be used to promote new products and services.

An email order confirmation is an email that is sent to a recipient, confirming an order that that recipient has made with a business. These emails act as confirmation that the transaction has been completed (here’s an example).

Email parsers are pieces of software which are used to automatically read emails and pull out key information for the recipient – such as payments, addresses and other examples of relevant information.

Email personalization is the process of creating single or multiple emails that are personalized to their user, unlike mass emails that provide the same message and contents to every recipient. Personalization can include things like personalized names in subject lines, providing specific links for specific groups of recipients or providing user-specific details.

Email phishing is an illegal practice where a sender sends an email pretending to be someone the recipient knows in order to get them to open the message. On opening the email or attachments, the recipient becomes open to having their data stolen or to have their computer infected by a virus. A common example of email phishing is a fake bank notification by email where you are asked to fill in your credit card details.

An email prefix is the part of an email address that comes before the @ sign. These are used as identifiers to show who is sending the email – as an example, the hello in [email protected] is an email prefix.

Email protocol is a set of standard rules (RFC), shared by different email servers and email clients. These shared rules are what enable different inboxes and outboxes to receive and send emails between each other in a way that works for everyone.

An email reputation is a score your email account is assigned by an ISP or an internet service provider. This score is an indication of how genuine your email account is and how closely you follow the standards set out for good emails that readers want to read. It is intended to help ISPs spot potential spam and scammer accounts.

“Email ROI” stands for “Email Return on Investment.” It is a measure used to evaluate the effectiveness and profitability of an email marketing campaign.

Email routing is a term that refers to the process of ensuring an email makes its way to the correct recipient. There are different ways an email can be routed, with many used for specific purposes, such as analytics and marketing.

Email scraping or email scrapers are programs which uses automation to scan messages and texts and to draw out key information or data that the user requires. They can be used to extract email addresses for example, or to pull out phone numbers, prices and regular mail addresses.

An email sequence is a series of emails between two or more recipients that make up an email-conversation. Email sequences can contain any number of emails, but they are always about the same topic over a number of different replies and responses.

When you send an email, you send it through an email server. These servers are computer systems that manage the sending and receiving of emails for users, instantly connecting with other servers to deliver mail between email addresses. They are essential for emails to reach their final destinations.

An ESP, or an email service provider, is a business which provides other businesses with email services. The most well-known ESPs are Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Yahoo or GMX. Often, these services can be used in pair with an email marketing platform, which is a type of software from which you can manage your email campaigns as an email marketer.

An email signature is a snippet of text which you can write which will be attached to every email you send from your email account. People use email signatures to save themselves from having to write their name and details at the end of every email they write.

Email spoofing is when a scammer registers an account that sounds very similar to that of a legitimate business, and uses this false account to send phishing emails.

Email templates are pre-set emails which can be populated by specific content. They act as starting points for your emails, saving you from having to write new emails all the time and helping you to follow your brand guidelines to maintain consistency for your business. Email templates are features of most email service providers and platforms.

An email thread is a series of emails that follow a conversation. These email threads will contain initial messages and replies which usually run through the same topic. In an email thread, emails are stacked from the oldest to the newest. It’s possible to turn off email threading in Gmail if you would rather view your email conversations separately.

Email validation is a process which ensures an email address is deliverable. An email validation tool will run through lists, verifying each email address to let the sender know if the address is valid or incorrect.

Variables are the different things in a personalized email that can change according to the recipient. They are often shown in brackets, and they use liquid syntax to fill in the content shown between the brackets.

Email verification is similar to email validation in that it is a process of checking an email address to see if it is valid or if it is incorrect. This is important for email marketers to ensure their emails are being read and delivered.

Email warm up is a method of getting a good reputation for your email address to ensure your emails make it through spam filters and your address doesn’t get added to an email blacklist.

An email worm is a malicious “worm”, that can send copies of itself to as email attachments to various recipients in a victims contact list. The main cause of concern when a network is infected with a worm is the added network load the multiplying worms can concern – though there are some that can cause more serious damage.

Emails, or electronic mail, are messages which can be sent by the internet to different devices – so what’s the difference between email and instant messaging? Emails are messages which are sent to devices to be viewed – instant messaging is where two people, logged onto the same server, exchange messages instantly.

An encrypted email is an email that has been secured by the sender to ensure that no one other than the recipient can read what the email says. The text in the email will be electronically scrambled as soon as it is sent, turned from plain words into cipher text. Once it arrives at its intended destination the reader will be able to read it. This is the most secure way of sending emails.

Email remarketing is a marketing tactic where you send specific emails to specific people, tailored to their interests, based on their behavior. These remarketing emails are more targeted, which makes them more relevant to the reader and more likely to be opened.

Follow up emails are emails that are sent to a recipient who has already been contacted in the past. They act as messages to remind the recipient of earlier emails that have been sent and to encourage a reply or an action taken on their behalf. In terms of the auto follow-up meaning, auto follow-ups are follow-up emails that are sent automatically, on a set time after the first email.

The footer is the part of an email template that sits at the bottom of any email. Often this can include information about the sender’s company or alternative ways to get in touch, such as a physical address, a telephone number or links to social accounts.

If you receive an email which you would like someone else to see, you can “forward” the email to another recipient. When forwarding an email, you can also add a new message or attachment of your own, ahead of the forwarded email to give more information.

GDRP stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It is a law within the European Union and selected other countries that ensures that businesses are careful when managing the data they collect about their customers. The regulation requires these businesses to store data securely and to not use the data in ways that could potentially harm the customer.

A gigabyte, or GB for short, is a form of digital information storage. One gigabyte is made up of one billion bytes and can be used to store anything from sound and video, to images and digits.

Gmail is an email service which is provided by Google. Users can use this service to receive and send emails quickly and easily through Google’s servers.

Gmass is a mail merge extension for Gmail that lets Gmail users quickly and efficiently send emails to multiple recipients, all at the same time, with just one click. As an email marketing toolkit, Gmass also lets you personalize mass emails, schedule send times, and create and manage full email campaigns.

GMX Mail is an email service, provided for free by GMX (Global Mail eXchange) an email platform located in Germany. The service provides an email account, along with other handy tools like organizers, address books and more for a complete suite of productivity software. It also uses two-factor authentications for all users for added security.

Google Sheets is an application created by Google that lets users create databases and spreadsheets. It is free software which a user needs a Google account to use, and can be best compared to Microsoft Office’s Excel.

Google Workspace is a cloud-based suite of productivity and collaboration tools developed by Google. It was formerly known as G Suite and was rebranded in October 2020. The suite includes various web-based applications that are similar to traditional office software, such as word processing, spreadsheet creation, email and calendar management, video conferencing, and file storage.

Greylisting is a method used by mail servers to protect a recipient from spam. To greylist a sender is similar to placing a sender on a blocklist – but the key difference is that a greylist is only a temporary measure.

When an email can’t be delivered to an address, it will “hard bounce” which means that it can’t be delivered at all. Unlike a soft bounce, which means an email address can’t be reached temporarily, a hard bounce means that an email address can’t be accessed at all, permanently.

Holiday marketing is the act of creating marketing materials on a number of channels, all focused at specific times of the year around specific holidays or events. These can include things like marketing across the Christmas period, or around the end of Ramadan for example. Often they will feature services or products that are relevant to that celebration.

A honey pot is a cybersecurity method which operates as a trap to lure in cybercriminals. The attackers attack a deliberately vulnerable computer or device and the breach gives you the opportunity to learn more about their methods and the vulnerabilities in your systems.

An email host name is the name of the host which you use to send emails. Hosts are services like Microsoft Outlook or Gmail, servers through which your emails will be sent and received. The host name is the name of those servers – these come after the @ sign in your email address.

HTML emails are a kind of email that have images, colours and graphics along with text. These are the opposite type of email to plain text emails which will only ever use text. HTML emails are commonly used by marketers and businesses because the images and formatting will make them stand out to the reader and encourage them to read the email and take action.

An icebreaker is an opening paragraph in a cold email, designed to capture the attention of the reader and to ensure they keep reading. They are normally engaging, personal and humorous to keep the recipient interested in the content, so that there is more chance the reader will convert. Some icebreakers can be created using AI language models like ChatGPT.

Image blocking is where an email account disables the automatic loading of images within emails.

IDLE is a feature of IMAP protocol that allow inboxes and outboxes to automatically receive and send new mail with user input. Email account holders don’t need to click the refresh or get/send mail buttons in order to take and dispatch new emails.

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It is a way for you to access email, similar to POP. IMAP is used for when you need to access email from a range of devices such as phones, tablets and laptops – you aren’t downloading the email when you use IMAP; rather you”re reading it straight from the email service.

Inbound marketing is a kind of marketing that seeks to attract customers by presenting them with attractive, valuable and engaging content that is relevant to them. On the opposite, outbound marketing is the action to reach out to your targeted audience using direct sales for example.

Inbox Zero, or Inbox 0, is a term which refers to when a user tries to keep their inbox entirely free of unread emails. It is a form of email management that is used to help people deal with the enormous numbers of emails that can flood inboxes on a daily basis – especially for professionals. To reach inbox zero can also help with workplace stress.

An inbox typically refers to a digital or electronic mailbox used to receive messages, emails, or other forms of digital communication. It is a central location where incoming messages are stored until the recipient accesses and reads them.

An IP address is a numerical number that is assigned to every computer that uses internet protocol to connect to a computer network. The address is used to identify the connecting machine, both for location purposes and for security reasons.

IP warming is the process of establishing a new IP address as a genuine one. It involves sending small volumes of emails at one go, and slowly increasing the number of emails so that email inbox providers approve your IP addresses. These providers are suspicious of new IP addresses or that haven’t been active for a while – IP warming helps establish a reputation for the address.

IP addresses which are brand new, or that have been inactive for a period of time, can often be considered potentially fraudulent or spam by email servers. To ensure that emails from an IP address make it to the recipient’s inbox, the address needs to be warmed up – this process involves sending only a small number of emails first, before building up the volume to establish a reputation for the IP address.

A landing page is a web page that is designed for a marketing campaign. Marketers will include links and call to actions in their email campaign, which will take potential customers to landing pages designed to drive conversion or provide more information.

LDAP, or lightweight directory access protocol, is a software protocol which allows applications to rapidly get information about users or files on a network. This information can include things like ISP data, location, credentials and more.

Lead nurturing is the marketing strategy of creating relationships between the business and customers, supporting them throughout their journey in buying products and services. Lead nurturing includes sending messaging and marketing materials to “nurture” potential customers until they convert.

Lemlist is a platform which is designed for cold email creation and campaigns, as well as email automation. Created to help businesses do outreach marketing, Lemlist includes things like in-depth personalization, tracking domains and integrations, all focused on gathering sales leads to drive prospects down the marketing funnel.

Liquid syntax is a type of templating language, often used to personalize emails and other message content. Liquid syntax means you can use different variables in your email templates; these variables, like NAME and COMPANY will be automatically filled in by software to save you time typing each one in each email.

List fatigue is the word used to describe when subscribers to your email list or newsletter become bored or uninterested by your emails and stop interacting or opening them.

List segmentation is the action of splitting your contact lists into smaller, more targeted groups, such as age, gender or other categorizes. Doing so allows you to send certain, more relevant content to these groups rather than just sending the same email to everyone and getting fewer results.

List-Unsubscribe is an option included by major email clients. When a List-Unsubscribe header is included by a sender, it will appear next to the subject line as a button for the recipient. Clicking on this button will allow the recipient to unsubscribe from all future mailings from the address.

Looping mail is when two automated email programs start sending each other messages, replying to each other over and over again in an infinite loop.

Multi-send is a feature of Google Workspace. It functions like a low-level mail merge, allowing the user to send multiple emails at the same time to a list of recipients. There are no tools like personalization or scheduling, so it lacks the features of mail merge extensions.

A mail bomb is a malicious attack that works similar to a DoS (Denial-of-Service) attack. A cyber attacker will send a huge number of emails to an address all at the same time. These emails will overflow the recipient’s inbox and slow down their network and their computer.

Mail merge is the action of sending a large number of emails, with personalization or not. Mail merge solution (sometimes shorted as “mail merge”) is a software that automates the process by taking a mailing list and an email template to merge them together, sending an individual email to each recipient.

Mailchimp is an email marketing service which contains a number of features and tools for businesses to create email campaigns. It is designed to help these businesses reach existing and new audiences quickly and easily with their email content. Features include things like AI-assisted content, segmentation targeting for emails, customer journey management and more.

A mailer daemon is an email server that controls the emails that are sent from your account, ensuring they reach the intended recipient. These servers will let you know if your emails haven’t reached the recipient for whatever reason, and some will resend the email to try again a few days later.

Mailkshake is a piece of sales engagement software which salespeople can use to build relationships with cold sales prospects. It uses automation to help collect leads, send automated messages on social media and carry out personalized campaigns on a number of formats (including email). The platform also boasts a number of analytics and management tools for overseeing sales teams.

Mailto is a HTML link which upon being clicked, will open the default email client on the user’s computer to create a new message. For example, if your default email client was Apple Mail, clicking on a Mailto link on a website would open Mail and a new message to the Mailto address.

Mass email means collecting a large number of emails together and sending them all at the same time. Email marketing professionals use mass email to reach large numbers across a wide audience, all in one go.

A merge tag is an element which you can include in your email to help personalize them to each recipient in your mail list. These merge tags take information from a CSV. file of your contact list and tailor them for every email, automating the personalization and making your work much more efficient.

MIME, or multipurpose internet mail extensions, is an internet standard that expands the possibilities for what people can include in emails, moving from simple characters to text formatting, image inclusion, rich text, unlimited word count and more. It is an extension to the regular SMTP protocol.

MJML or Mailjet Markup Language, is a form of markup language that simplifies and streamlines the process of coding a responsive email, which can often be a complex and time-consuming task.

An MTA, or Mail Transfer Agent is the same as an email server. It is a kind of software that uses SMTP to transfer emails between different devices, acting as the funnel for messages to reach their intended destinations.

An MUA, or a mail user agent, is the same as an email client. It is an application on a computer from which a user can read, draft, send and manage emails. Examples of MUAs include things like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla and Apple Mail.

Multichannel marketing is where a business uses a number of channels or platforms to promote a product or service at the same time, rather than just one. These channels can include marketing emails, social media content, video marketing and more.

Multivariate testing in email marketing is the practice of sending multiple variations of an email at the same time, to see which of these variations is the most successful and the most read. Unlike A/B testing, which only sends two email variations, multivariate sends more to get a broader idea of what works and what doesn’t.

An MX record stands for “mail exchange” record. It is a kind of DNS record that tells mail servers to accept your outgoing emails and directs incoming mail to your domain. Faulty MX records can mean that you won’t receive emails so they play an important role in your email operations.

A no code email editor is one that doesn’t require the user to write code to format their emails. These editors will allow users to create emails with visual elements that will look exactly how they look while they’re being written No technical or coding knowledge is required with a no code editor.

It the good old days of the emailing communication, businesses started to send emails from noreply addresses. When you received an email from a no-reply address, it means that messages sent to it won’t be read.

Omnicanal, or omnichannel is a word that marketers use to describe a company use different platforms or channels – like emails, SMS messages, social media content and more - to create a consistent look and feel for business communications.

An on-boarding email is an automatic email which a company will send after you have subscribed to their service or their communications. It will often contain educational information about the subscription, the service or the product to help “on-board” the recipient.

Open rate is a term used by marketers that refers to how many marketing emails are opened by recipients. Open rates are useful to understand how well emails are performing and how much people want to read what the emails say.

Opt out in email refers to the unsubscribe button in an email. When you sign up to an email newsletter or regular email updates, the opt out option is what you click to tell the sender you no longer want to receive this email correspondence.

An out of office reply is an automatic reply, sent when someone tries to email a recipient who has set their status to “out-of-office”. The status normally indicates that a person is not currently working and will not be able to respond; sometimes it will contain an alternative address that the sender can try.

Outbound marketing is where a business sends out promotional and marketing materials to recipients, without those recipients asking for information first. It is the opposite to inbound marketing, which is where the recipient will contact the business first.

The outbox of an email account is where emails wait before they get sent to their final destination. Once you write an email, that email is then placed in the outbox where they will establish a connection to the server to be sent on.

Outlook is an email service which is provided by Microsoft. Individual and professionals can use this service to receive and send emails, schedule appointments and meetings, create to-do lists and tasks, manage contacts, and organize their personal and professional life.

A pass-along email is another word for a viral email. Pass-along emails are emails that are forwarded on by many recipients, normally for the high-quality or valuable content they contain.

Personalized email is marketing email which has been tailored to its recipient. There are many ways to personalize an email – from as simple as including the recipient’s name at the start of the email to as complex as including targeting products that the recipient specifically may be interested in. Personalized emails stand a much higher chance of being open and read, rather than more generic, broad email.

Phishing is a type of cyber attack where a fraudulent entity or an attacker tries to trick or deceive an individual or organization into providing sensitive information such as login credentials, personal information, financial information, or other confidential information by impersonating a legitimate entity.

Plain text email is email that only uses text as its content. There aren’t any pictures, colours or graphics involved, it is only written text. Most emails sent between individuals will be in plain text whereas business will often use HTML text instead, which is email that uses HTML coding to include formatting, images and more.

POP, or Post Office Protocol, is a form of email protocol which allows users to retrieve emails from an email server. With POP3, the most recent interation, emails are sent straight from an email server to your email client, after which they are deleted from the server. The most common alternative is IMAP, which by contrast, stores all emails on one server, which can be retrieved by any device.

The postmaster is the administrative email account for an email domain. This account will automatically email other accounts of the domain when their sent messages bounce. They will also handle things like blocklists, spam filters and much more.

A preheader text, or preview text, is the stretch of text you see in some inboxes that immediately follows the subject line. This text is designed to show the recipient a little bit more of the message, so that they can make a decision on whether the contents are worth reading.

Preview text is the short bit of text that you will see under each email subject line in your inbox. The text lets you preview the email’s content, so that you can get a general idea of what the email will say before you open it.

A primary email is the main email address which you choose to receive mail to. This will be the email where you will want the most relevant email to you as an individual to go to. Primary emails are different to alternative email addresses and alias email addresses.

The primary folder is a folder within your email inbox where all important messages from people you know will land. This folder also contains any other emails which don’t belong in the other folders in your inbox – like Social, Updates and Promotions for example.

A promotional email is any email that is sent by a business or individual to promote, advertise or inform the reader about a service or product. These can also be called ‘marketing’ or ‘commercial’ emails.

A proxy email address is an email address which can be used to direct emails to another primary email address. You can have multiple proxy email addresses which all connect a single primary address which collects all mail in one handy place.

A PST (Personal Folders File) is a Microsoft Outlook file that stores a variety of personal data. Often users can use them to efficiently transfer data like contacts, emails, attachments and more from a mail server to a local folder on their own machine.

Queued emails are emails that are waiting to be sent by the server. What does it mean when an email is queued? Generally, queued emails can’t be sent immediately – whether because of a connectivity issue or because of an issue with the email provider. Once the problem is resolved, the queued emails can be sent. Sometimes, email platforms will queue email to avoid sending them all at once, ensuring a higher email deliverability.

Ransomware is a form of software that is created and shared by a malicious cyber criminal, scammer or hacker. The software takes control of the recipient’s computer and locks down access to files and crucial components.

Rate limiting is when a computer or server puts a limit on the number of actions a user can take on a website or email account. It is designed to prevent spammers from carrying out DoS (Denial-of-Service) attacks which overload websites with constant requests.

A reactivation email is an email sent by marketers to an account that is no longer interacting or reading the marketer’s emails. The aim of the email is to ‘reactivate’ the recipient; to get them to restart interacting with the emails.

Real-time is the term that is used to explain data measurement that changes immediately with the clock, rather than being updated ahead or before time. It can be useful to see the changes occur as they happen.

Recipient simply means the person to whom you”re sending an email to. If you were sending an email to a family member, that family member would be the recipient of that email.

Reply all is a feature in email platforms which allows you to reply to all of the recipients of an email at the same time.

In general, when you send an email to someone, you expect that person to reply directly to you. But in many use cases, especially for businesses, it might be useful to send emails from one address and invites the recipient to reply to another.

When an email is sent to an invalid email address, that email will bounce, meaning it won’t land in an inbox. Many emails that bounce will have a return path embedded in the email information – this return path is the address that will be alerted about the bounced email.

Rich text is a file format that is used by different word processes to show text. Often shortened to RTF, rich text is useful for transferring text between different software like Google Docs and Microsoft Word for example.

Segmentation, or audience segmentation, is the act of dividing up your target audience into different categories. Once segmentation work has been done, you can tailored specific emails to specific segments of your audience in order to maximise results.

Sendinblue is a complete digital marketing SaaS toolkit hosted on the cloud. It is specifically designed to help businesses promote their products and services over a range of platforms including email, SMS, chatbots, WhatsApp and more. The software also contains useful tools for audience analysis and data capture for full digital marketing campaigns.

A shared IP address is one that is shared across multiple domains belonging to different parties. Often, smaller businesses will use shared IP address in accordance with their smaller budgets – however, the behavior of one site or domain can negatively affect the reputation of everyone who shares the same IP address.

Single opt-in is a method of subscribing to a service or communications. Single opt-in methods like filling a form in on a website, or clicking a subscribe button, are “single” because you only have to do one of them to subscribe. The opposite method is called double opt-in, and it means you have to do two rounds of opt-ins to subscribe.

S/MIME, or secure multipurpose internet mail extensions, are a set of internet standards, designed to encrypt emails. They use asymmetric encryption to sign any email that leaves a server, ensuring that the contents of the email can’t be changed by a malicious user.

SMTP is an email application that email servers use to send and receive email. It stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and decides which emails go to which servers. Every email client or program will have its own SMTP address which is how SMTP knows where to send the correct emails.

Unlike bounced emails which can’t be delivered, emails that soft bounce are emails that only can’t be delivered for a short time. This is normally because of a problem with the recipient’s inbox – once the problem is fixed, the soft bounce email can be received.

SpamAssassin, or Apache SpamAssassin is software created by the Apache Software Foundation designed to spot and filter out spam emails. It does this using online databases and sophisticated features to send spam to junk folders.

Spam filters are automatic filters which inboxes use to separate spam or junk email from email that the reader would want to read. These filters use automation to scan emails for signs that they may be fraudulent or unsolicited, and once an email is identified as such, it is sent to the spam folder.

Spam traps are email addresses created with the single purpose of attracting spam accounts so that those accounts can be identified and placed on blocklists by ISPs and email providers.

Spam email is unwanted email sent by both legitimate and fraudulent senders to encourage readers to take an action, such as buying something or sharing personal details. Also known as junk mail, spam emails are often sent out in large numbers to a large recipient list to try and get as much of a response as possible.

A spammer is a person who sends a lot of spam emails to a number of recipients, often overwhelming their inbox with messages. Spam emails are emails that contain information and content that is irrelevant and unwanted by the recipient; spammers are therefore annoying and undesirable – they are often blocklisted by mail providers for this reason.

SPF is short for the Sender Policy Framework. It is a protocol which is used by domain administrators to clarify the email servers which they send their emails from – this is to prove their authenticity and to prevent emails from being forged.

SSL stands for Secured Socket Layer – which is a way of encrypting the connection between an email client and an email service. It’s a method of ensuring your emails cannot be seen by others and confirms that your emails are coming from your address through authentication layering.

The subject line of an email is a short piece of text that gives a summary of what the email will be about. When writing an email, you have the option of writing a subject line and this subject line is what will appear in the inbox of your recipient as the title of your email. On clicking on that subject line, the recipient will be able to read your email.

Your target audience is the collective word to describe the people you most want to reach with your marketing emails. These are the readers who’ll be the most interested in your product or service and who will be most likely to buy.

A thank you page is the webpage that appears after you have placed an order or booked a service. The page also acts as a confirmation that the transaction has gone through.

Threadjacking is the act of taking over an email thread with information that is irrelevant to the thread’s topic. For example, a threadjacker may threadjack an email thread or chain about an upcoming event, by filling the thread with emails about a separate product that has nothing to do with the event.

Email throttling is a delay you can define and schedule between each email sent. In other words, throttling is when a server controls the number of email addresses that get sent to an Email Service Provider (ESP). It is a method of stopping too many messages arriving into an inbox, especially from one sender, preventing spam and junk mail.

A tracking pixel is a tiny 1x1 pixel that appears on a web page or email and is used to track user activity, monitor user numbers, track open rates, register sales and much more. They are a key device in marketing analytics to help marketers see what’s going right and what’s going wrong with their page design or with their email content.

A transactional email is an email sent to someone automatically, after that person has carried out an action – such as making a purchase online, changing account details or subscribing to a newsletter. They are normally automated, but can also be sent manually.

Triggered emails are emails that are sent after a trigger has been activated. These triggers can take a number of forms such as a user registering an account, making a purchase, subscribing to a mailing list or filling out a contact form.

Typosquatting is a method used by cyber criminals to trick users into thinking a URL or email address is from a legitimate organizations. These criminals will register a domain that is very similar to an existing one, only one of the words will be spelt slightly differently.

Unsolicited Commercial Email, or UCE, is a word for marketing email that hasn’t been previously requested or opted into by the recipient. Sometimes this can be spam but it can also be part of a genuine cold email campaign.

An undisclosed recipient is a recipient of an email whose identity is known only to themselves and the sender of an email. Normally these undisclosed recipients will all be entered into the BCC field which keeps all recipients from knowing who any of the other recipients are.

Unicode is an internationally used coding standard where letters, numbers and characters are assigned their own unique value. These values can be recognised by different kinds of software, platforms and interfaces and are translated into their corresponding characters accordingly.

Unsubscribe rate is a metric used by email marketers to see how many people have unsubscribed from the emailing lists they operate. The higher the unsubscribe rate, the more chance there is something wrong with the emails – and the more likely it is that a new approach is needed.

Your USP is the unique aspect of your product or service that no one else in the market has. Standing for unique selling proposition, promoting your USP can help you stand out in the crowd against your competitors.

Web-based email, sometimes shortened to webmail, is an email account that is accessed through a web browser like Safari, Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome. Users can send, receive and draft emails through the web-based email pages just like with a downloaded email client.

A webhook is a way for applications to communicate with each other in real-time when a certain event occurs. It allows for apps and software to interact with each other, notifying of changes that affect the other app and enabling the user to be notified of those changes through their mobile device or laptop.

Webmail is an email inbox that is accessed through a web browser like Google Chrome, Safari or Microsoft Edge. Many email accounts can be accessed by webmail (such as Gmail or Outlook), but some can only accessed through an exclusive email software client.

A welcome email is the first email a user will receive when they sign up to communications from a business or brand. This email is the equivalent of an “on-boarding” email, and will contain information about the subscription, the business and the products or services that the business sells.

Whitelisting an email address is adding that email address to a list of approved senders. Senders on your whitelist are senders who you believe are genuine and safe, as opposed to those on email blacklists who have a higher probability of being fraudulent.

The Google Workspace Marketplace is a platform where users can download apps for the Google Workspace. These apps can be used with things like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets and more to make your work and personal life easier.

A WYSIWYG email editor is an email editor interface where you can see exactly how your content will look to the person who is reading it – as you are writing the content. This is in contrast to something like HTML, where you write the code without seeing how it looks, until you preview it.

YAMM, short for Yet Another Mail Merge, is a mail merge extension for Gmail. It allows users to send multiple emails to a large number of recipients with a few steps. YAMM also contains a number of tools to help email marketers understand their recipients, track open rates, prevent emails from ending up in spam folders and personalize emails for better results.

Yesware is sales management software that has a toolkit to help salespeople collect, manage and convert sales prospects through email marketing. It can help them track email open rates, analyze email outreach automatically and uncover new leads, all on the same platform.

Zapier is an automation software, used by marketing and sales professionals, to help manage workflows faster and more effectively. The software contains a range of apps that individually help different professionals in different industries connect workflows, create communications and streamline business operations.