SendX
Email software to send campaigns, build lists, and automate marketing
Email is still one of the best performing marketing channels there is. To understand how powerful it is, know this—Email gets more conversions than any other marketing channel. It converts better than search engine traffic or social media traffic. Email marketing generates a whopping ROI of 4200%. Yet, people tend to avoid email marketing.
You need email marketing as part of your entire strategy and understanding these email terminologies is the first step towards implementing it properly. With the list of terminologies you will be better equipped to run your marketing campaigns, understand core metrics and improve your campaigns while at it. It will help you better manage your relationship with people who signed up to your list and oversee your communication with them.
By understanding these terminologies you will develop a well-rounded approach to email marketing.
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
1) Email Bounce Rate
Bounce rate signifies the percentage of emails that don’t land into the inbox of recipients.
There can be many reasons behind an email bouncing, say an invalid email address, your domain being clubbed as spam or the recipient inbox being full.
How is email bounce rate calculated?
Email Bounce Rate = (number of emails bounced ÷ number of emails sent) x 100
2) Block
When the recipient account stops your emails by triggering spam filters or other factors this is a block. This is something you can witness on Gmail when you cross the daily sending limits on the platform.
3) Email Harvesting/Scraping
When a user collects a list of niche-relevant email addresses to send a mass email campaign that’s called email harvesting. There are email harvesting tools that enable this by making the job easy. It’s illegal to collect email ids without user permission. However you can use opt-ins (say popups and signup forms) to grow your email list by acquiring emails legally. Plus collecting emails the right way ensures people are more responsive to what you have to say to them. This ensures you make money. List building is one of the best ways to secure passive income. Always focus on long-term sustainable growth.
4) Landing Page
This page is where the user would land and give away his email id to be collected. That’s the reason it’s called a landing page. It’s different from the homepage or other pages because there’s nothing on it to distract users from turning into a lead.
This is the first point of contact for you with the potential customer.
There are several tools with which you can create good-looking landing pages. Conversion-rate optimized landing pages multiply the number of leads you generate.
5) Opt-out
If someone signs up to your email list by mistake, they have an option before them to get out of the email list and not receive any updates from you. The choice of not being in the email list is called an opt out. It’s required by law that you add an opt out or unsubscribe button to make opting out of an email list easy.
Even if someone subscribed to your list willingly, over time they might find your mailers not as relevant to them as before and may want to opt out.
If not given an opportunity to do so they might mark your mails as spam and that’s going to degrade your reputation.
6) CAN-SPAM
Controlling the Assault of Non Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 is an act brought forth from U.S.A that controls and prevents businesses from sending misleading emails.
7) Call to Action (CTA)
Call to action is a statement at the end of an email that encourages a particular action. 'Click here, Get the item now' are some examples of relevant CTA buttons.
8) Drip Marketing
When a set of pre-written emails is scheduled to a recipient one after the other based on their behavior this is drip marketing.
9) Image Blocking
Due to either settings of the email client or personal settings of the recipient the client may not download images. Image blocking is the biggest reason why most marketers prefer sending plain emails.
10) Domain Blacklist
Anti-spam groups can blacklist a domain for sending too many unsolicited emails. So be careful of the emails you send for link building outreach. Once the domain is black listed the domain will be treated as spammy.
11) GDPR
General Data protection regulation is a law that protects personal data of European users. It makes sure that the business has to comply with norms that prevent it from sending spam.
12) Hard Bounce
When the email cannot be delivered due to reasons like an invalid email address or invalid domain name or if the email server has completely blocked an entry that is called a hard bounce.
13) Soft Bounce
When the email cannot be delivered due to a full mailbox, the recipient’s server sends a soft bounce to the email.
14) Email service provider
An email service provider or ESP is a service that enables you to send and receive emails. Good ESPs give you access to email templates along with options to manage contact lists. With it you can send and get emails. You can set up tracking for campaigns. Most email providers are free but they tend to charge for premium features.
Most ESPs offer benefits like being able to access the email on any device with no software installed.
Here are some features:
- Sending and receiving emails with encrypted connections.
- Most email servers offer enterprise grade security.
- The built-in calendar lets you schedule meetings or events
- Basic information about the contact is available.
- The search feature lets you find people and messages and documents.
15) Email deliverability
Email deliverability is the measure of the success with which you deliver emails to subscriber’s inboxes. It’s what marketers use to understand how likely their emails are going to end up in subscriber inboxes despite ISP issues, throttling, bounced emails, spam and other problems.
Custom authentication, single opt-in and sending emails from free domain email addresses can negatively impact email deliverability. ISPs additionally associate use of url shorteners with spam and reduce deliverability.
Email service providers display the reason behind why a message was rejected based on the details the server conveys in the error message. It also shows the open rates, unsubscribe rates, click through rates, spam complaints and more.
Monitoring and keeping track of these metrics and email marketing KPIs shows audience engagement and activity levels.
Engagement directly impacts sender reputation and ultimately this is what you need to do to get more email opens.
How is email deliverability calculated?
Email deliverability = ( (Number of emails sent - Number of email bounces) / (Number of emails sent) ) X 100
16) Personalization
In email marketing there are multiple ways to reward personalization.
Understanding who the customer is and what they want is key to determining the kind of email marketing that will work for them. Personalization improves user experience and makes the entire experience positive for the customer.
Personalization makes it easy for the customer to see you as more of a human and less of a brand. Such emails are appreciated because each subscriber feels that the brand caters to their unique tastes and needs.
People are getting 100s of emails every day. When you personalize the email, you improve emails’ potential as a medium to get more out of it.
To send personalized emails collect information from customers. To do this ask for the right information. You need this to deliver content they get after joining the email list.
17) Segmentation
Segmentation makes your marketing resources reach the best and the right audience.
Segmentation allows you to know your customers better and see what’s needed in the market segment and how your product can best meet these needs as well.
When you know who it is you’re contacting you can deliver them a strong marketing message. Vague language that’s designed to attract a broad audience is done away with. Target people with direct messaging by making your message relevant and direct.
There are different ways to get a demographic segmentation:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Location
- Family Situation
- Annual Income
- Education
- Ethnicity
18) A/B testing
A/B testing and split-testing can be conducted around a variety of parameters. You can test multiple subject lines to see which gets you more opens. Advanced testing includes testing different templates to see which one gets more clik thoughts.
One the test is done and you get the winning version, it can automatically send the version to the rest of the list.
A/b testing campaigns increase open and click through rates of emails. You can test call to action buttons to email subject lines.
What should you test?
- Subject lines
The subject line is another element to test. Most devices show subject lines formatted with heavier text to make them stand out. Perhaps including a word like coupon or promo code will get you more opens.
So what kinds of tests can you run in your subject lines to try to drive increased opens? Here’s an idea:
- Length
Length of the email subject lines is something you can improve.
Subject lines shouldn’t be too long because if too long the length would automatically get truncated for mobile. The best length is between 61 to 70 characters.
19) Bulk Email
Emails that are sent in bulk and at once to a large group of subscribers.
Here are a few tips for you to make the best out of email for you while sending bulk emails.
If sending bulk emails is a day-to-day thing for you, then you should definitely try SendX Plus +.
Ultimately maintain list hygiene by frequently deleting subscribers who are inactive. Use double opt ins to ensure that the right people get your emails. Make it super-easy for them to unsubscribe and never use url shorteners.
20) Conversion Rate
The percentage of people who complete the task that you need for them to do on your site is called conversion rate. A click through, a sign up on the app and purchase all signify conversions.
Conclusion
As we said at the start of the post, email is a powerful channel to drive revenue and growth for your business.
Understanding email marketing terminology will help you secure your place in the ever-evolving world of email marketing.
You’re going to see how each aspect contributes to your whole campaign and ties it back to leads, subscribers and their overall behavior. However, to know the impact of it, however, you will need to execute your email campaigns using an ESP that suits you. We recommend SendX, which comes with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
What do you think? Do let us know in the comments below.
FAQs
1. What is email bounce rate?
Bounce rate signifies the percentage of emails that don’t land into the inbox of recipients. There can be many reasons behind an email bouncing, say an invalid email address, your domain being clubbed as spam or the recipient inbox being full.
2. What is a Landing Page?
A Landing Page is where the user would land and give away his email id to be collected. It’s different from the homepage or other pages because there’s nothing on it to distract users from turning into a lead. It is the first point of contact for you with the potential customer.
3. What is a CTA?
A CTA (Call to action is a statement) in the body of the email, or at the end of an email that encourages a particular action. 'Click here, Get the item now' are some examples of relevant CTA buttons.
