Glossary for Marketing Automation

API Application Programming Interface

APIs are a set of computer programming rules that allow an application to exchange information with a service (retrieve and/or provide) and use the information in either its own application or in its analytics work.

An API contacts your application and retrieves the exact information that you want to use in your own software.

BI Business Intelligence

Business intelligence, abbreviated BI, (also called decision support or decision support systems) is a collective term for skills, techniques, applications, processes and methods for organizations to better understand their business.

Roughly, the field can be divided into information management systems and analytical processes.

BI collects, structures, analyzes and visualizes information from the business with the aim of supporting decision-making, and a BI system can thus also be called a decision support system.

BI as an information management system covers areas such as business performance management, corporate performance management, enterprise performance management, operational performance management and yield management.‍

CDP Customer Data Platform

Customer data platform is a centralized location for all types of customer information that provides a unified view of the customer collected from all different systems within a business.

Unlike CRM, a CDP is all about the data and not relationship or sales information; rather, a CDP manages the data and retrieves and provides customer information to other systems.

The purpose is to have a central location for your customer information for control, security and to ensure that you have the same information in all your internal systems.

A CDP often has good features to be able to segment and analyze the data, which can create better customer insights and more qualitative communication to narrower customer groups.

You can read more about CDP here‍

CEM Customer Engagement Management

Customer Engagement itself refers to a customer's emotional, cognitive and behavioral commitment to a brand or company. This engagement can be strengthened or disrupted at every interaction (see 'touchpoints') with the company or its representatives.

Management comes into play when, based on this understanding, it tries to foster this engagement through its marketing and other initiatives.

Churn rate

The proportion of customers or leads (entered into a company's system) lost over a period of time, expressed as a percentage of the total number of customers or leads.

CLV

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the monetary value that a customer represents over their time as a customer of a company.

Content Marketing

Communicating with your prospective and existing customers with high quality, relevant and information-rich content.

CPA

Cost per acquisition is the cost of bringing in a customer that can be associated with marketing and sales initiatives.

Can also refer to an advertising model where the advertiser pays for each customer acquired.

CPL

Cost per lead (CPL) is the marketing cost to bring in a lead. It can be seen as a variant of CPA but does not deal with customers, but prospective customers; ie leads.

Can also refer to an advertising model where the advertiser pays for each new lead.

CRM Customer Relationship Management System

Customer relationship management system where information about the organization's relationship with its existing and potential customers is stored. It is usually through this system that salespeople manage their customer contacts.

You can read more about CRM here.

Cross Channel Analytics

Track customer behavior across multiple channels, like your website and blog or social media.

Cross Channel Marketing

Using multiple marketing channels and strategies so you can meet the customer at all stages of the sales journey.

CTA Call to Action

A collective term for elements, usually in the form of text, that call for a specific action. "Buy now", "visit our website", "call this number" are all examples of different types of calls to action.

CTR

Click-through rate. The percentage of the total number of people who click on a link, ad, etc.

Customer Journey

A Customer Journey is usually a visualized timeline of the different "touchpoints" that a customer goes through and experiences in connection with your company.

The Customer Journey is not limited to a "buying process" or "sales process" but is usually much more comprehensive from e.g. before the first dialog to after becoming a customer.

A Customer Journey is usually created to better understand and improve your company's Customer Experience.

It describes all the so-called touchpoints between the customer and the company, but it can also apply to other important activities that the customer engages in during the process, but where the company is not involved.

It specifically identifies the touchpoints that cause frustration or poor customer experience, the so-called 'pain points', in order to implement improvements.

Similarly, you can also identify touchpoints where the customer is particularly satisfied, "gain points", but they are usually not as interesting.

Above is an example of a Customer Journey that is mapped and visualized. Source: CMS-Connected

You can read more about customer journey here.

DMP Data Management Platform

A DMP collects data from multiple digital channels, both internal and external.

The data is divided into 1st party data, which consists of your own internal information from, for example, a CRM system, 2nd party data, which is information from partners, and 3rd party data, which is from external parties such as data suppliers from which you buy data, such as demographic information and behavioral data.

The data in a DMP is usually anonymized, for example, demographic data is linked to a cookie or Profile ID.

DMPs are used to:

• Achieve higher returns on ads as they can be more targeted

• Enable more efficient use of data

• Better allocation of ad money due to better access to data (data based decisions)

• To run more campaigns in more channels and device types

• To identify new audiences

Double opt-in

When someone fills in a form and gives their consent to be contacted for marketing purposes, they receive a reply email asking them to confirm, usually by following a link.

Drip marketing

Also called lead nurturing. Usually a series of emails aimed at qualifying leads, keeping them engaged, and eventually bringing them down the sales funnel.

Dynamic content

Displaying different content on websites, landing pages, in emails, etc. depending on a lead's score in the current scoring model. This is a way to personalize the experience.

Sales process / Sales Process

A sales process, unlike a buying process, is usually based on your internal sales-related process to be implemented in order for you to have the best way to follow up and manage the ongoing business opportunities you are pursuing.

A properly elaborated sales process should therefore serve as a tool to ensure that everyone is working according to the same processes and ways of working.

Geo-targeting

Targeting ads or messages to people according to their geographical location.

Inbound Marketing

Attracting customers to you by creating quality and relevant content. Make it available through blogs, podcasts, videos, e-books, newsletters, white papers, physical products and social media to attract and convert visitors into customers.

Integrate / Integration

Integration means connecting several different standalone systems to work together. For this to work, an application is created that works with the system's various interfaces (APIs).

Then the systems can send information to each other automatically without having to have a person sitting and manually entering this information.

IP targeting

Usually refers to advertising that targets an IP address or a group of IP addresses. In this way, you can achieve a high degree of accuracy against the person or persons you are targeting.

This technique is also used in the "Retargeting" methodology, which is also part of Account Based Marketing, both of which you can find here in the glossary.

Conversion

The activity you want users to complete to move forward in your lead and sales process.

The activity could be that a recipient of an email presses a CTA (Call-to-action) button to visit your website, that they download a white paper on the website, fill in a contact form on the website or that they order your product/service on your website when they visit your site or your shop.

Conversion optimization

Working systematically to test all the factors you can think of that affect a conversion with the ambition to improve the conversion.

It could be a form or a payment gateway but even the smallest color difference can result in unexpected results on customer behavior and conversion.

KPI Key Performance Indicator

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator or Nyckeltal in Swedish. These are used to continuously monitor a business in relation to the goals that have been set.

Landing page / Landing Page

A landing page is a stripped-down web page with a specific content and purpose, as the landing page's task is to get the visitor to perform a specific action.

You peel off the design and lead the visitor to your Call to Action (CTA). This could be a purchase, an event registration, a download or a newsletter subscription.

Lead magnet / Gated content

An offer aimed at your target audience and potential leads where they have to share their contact details to receive the material. Classic examples of Lead Magnet and Gated Content are white papers, guides and free consultations.

Lead scoring

All leads are scored according to behaviors that we can interpret as being more or less interested in the company and its offer. These are summarized in a lead score.

Leads can be scored through website visits, forms and mass mailings, among other things. The more points, the "hotter" the lead is.

Read more about lead scoring here.

Lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is about building relationships with your leads. Continuously maintaining, educating and providing value to strengthen the relationship with the aim of leading them through the customer journey.

Marketing Automation (MA)

is an increasingly common umbrella term for strategies, processes and often includes software that automates processes that otherwise need to be done manually.

This enables even corporate marketing teams to perform beyond their capacity, as they can do 'more with less'.

It also creates opportunities to fine-tune the way you communicate with your customers, such as experimenting with different types of messages to increase conversions and sales. The aim is to reach the right person, with the relevant message at the right time in the right communication channel.

Read more about what Marketing Automation is here.

Marketing technology stack

The collection of programs and tools used to perform the marketing function of a business.

You can read more about Martech here‍

Marketing technologies

Technologies and systems used in various ways to market or communicate with the outside world.‍

MQL Marketing Qualified Lead

A lead that has achieved the requirements to be qualified by marketing. These requirements are adjusted in a lead scoring model which then ranks the person according to how "hot" interest they show.

Multivariate Analysis.

Statistical method to simultaneously test how variations in several different variables affect a result.

As the ambition is to find the best combination of a large number of variables, the test group needs to be much larger than for simple A/B analysis.

If you want to read more about Multivariate analysis, you can do so here.

Onboarding

Marketing term for introducing new users to a service or product.

An onboarding can be a series of introductory emails to new employees, to new customers or to someone who has signed up for a product introduction.

Outbound Marketing

The traditional way of marketing via print advertising, trade shows, flyers, cold calling and untargeted mass mailings.

Permission pass

Asking your leads if they still want to receive marketing communications in order to clear lists of cold leads and keep them relevant.

Personalize

In marketing, creating messages that are directly relevant to the recipient.

This can be anything from using their name to a reference to their personal preferences, or one of their previous purchases.‍

Personas

Method to better understand your customers by personalizing a market segment that makes up your target audience.

The method involves using different types of data to build typical users of your product or service. Personas are simply type customers for your target groups and serve to simplify targeting and communication.

Progressive profiling

In forms, present different fields depending on what a lead previously filled in. If we already know their name, it is not relevant to ask the same question again.

Instead, we can take the opportunity to ask for other information, such as phone number.‍

Prospect

A qualified and interested individual who shows an interest in buying and is preparing for a purchase decision.

Retargeting

Retargeting is a strategy that aims to use IP targeting technology or cookies to target advertisements to prospects who have previously visited our website or shown interest in our services with the goal of converting them into customers.

Sales Enablement

Providing the sales force with the materials and information they need to successfully take a lead through the buying journey.

Segmentation

Using specific criteria to divide your customers into different groups so that you can market in a more targeted way.

Silos

For example, processes or information that stand alone without relationships to surrounding parts. It can also be described as a number of downpipes with water running parallel and separated through the pipes.

SMarketing

Involves integrating marketing and sales within a company, which can bring great benefits if successful.

Want to learn more about SMarketing? Read our article "What is SMarketing..."

Smart/Dynamic list

A list in a marketing automation program of leads and/or customers where members are added or removed based on predefined rules.

Split Test

Conducting controlled experiments to see how a change in your marketing improves click-through rates, registrations, purchases and other statistics. Classic example is testing different colors on a CTA button. Also known as A/B testing.

If you want to read more about split testing, you can do so here.

SQL Sales Qualified Lead

A visitor who has moved from lead to MQL and on to SQL. These are leads that are ready to initiate a dialog about a purchase, for example via a phone call or visit from a salesperson.

Static list

A list of leads and/or customers where users in the respective system need to manually add or remove members.

Support system

Refers to digital tools or software such as CRM systems or email programs used in the business to perform various tasks.

Sunsetting

Clearing lists of leads that have been inactive for an extended period.

Permission-based marketing

Where someone asks if you can market to them, for example when they sign up to receive a newsletter or subscribe to a blog.

Touchpoint

Occasions where leads or customers come into contact with a business in real life or digitally.

Trigger

Activity or change that is the starting signal for sending a message or updating a data field, for example.‍

UTM

The Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) is 5 parameters can be added to a URL to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

These five are:

1. Utm_source: Identifies which page referred the traffic.

2. Utm_medium: Identifies the medium the clicked link was in such as email or PPC.

3. Utm_campaign: Identifies the campaign

4. Utm_term: Identifies the search term

5. Utm_content: Identifies what was clicked.

Download our whitepaper about UTM-taggning.

WYSIWYG

Long term meaning "What You See Is What You Get". Refers to tools in many modern marketing programs and services to allow the creation and editing of pages, landing pages, emails, forms etc. without the need for the user to know HTML/CSS.

All elements can be edited from a graphical menu and what the user sees represents the final result in real time.