15 Essential Email Marketing Terms Defined to Make Your Life Easier

There's a lot of misinformation and confusion when it comes to email marketing terms. Many are used in the wrong context and other terms are difficult to understand. This short glossary defines the most important email marketing terms, shares use cases, and gives you concrete examples you can adapt to your own needs.

1. Transactional email

Transactional emails (also known as triggered emails) are automated messages triggered by events performed by a recipient. This type of email is independent of a company's email marketing campaigns and delivers necessary information such as a receipt. One hallmark of a transactional email is inherent personalization: it's sent to a specific person and contains information that would only be important or useful to that recipient. Use cases include receipts, subscription notifications, email confirmation messages, event registration confirmations, support ticket confirmations, password resets, and two-factor authentication codes.

2. Email marketing automation

Email marketing automation is the process of sending timed or event-triggered emails to subscribers. The definition is broad: a receipt sent to a new customer and a welcome sequence can both be considered email marketing automation. Generally, it refers to messages that move people further down your funnel, get them to specific landing pages, and encourage the sale. Use cases include welcome sequences, cart abandonment nurturing sequences, course content delivery, birthday emails, significant event emails, event promotion, webinar follow-ups, and product launch sequences.

3. SPAM

SPAM is often difficult to pin down. In general, the CAN-SPAM Act and its counterparts in different countries define SPAM as unsolicited or unwanted commercial emails whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service. Emails classified as SPAM can carry stiff penalties. The good news is that it's not difficult to stay compliant: build a permission-based email list and clean it regularly.

4. Email open rate

The email open rate is the percentage of total recipients who opened the email sent out. It isn't tied to the total number of subscribers on your list, and it varies depending on your industry and the level of personalization you use. To maximize your open rates, focus on the subject line and relevance of the message, and A/B test different subject lines over time.

5. Email click-through rate

The email click-through rate is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link in your email, including your main CTA as well as unsubscribe links and other secondary clickable elements. You calculate it by dividing the total number of clicks by the total number of emails sent, expressed as a percentage. Increase it by creating relevant messages and providing multiple opportunities for people to click on your links.

6. Drip email sequence

An email drip sequence, also known as an email drip campaign, is a predefined series of emails that go out to a targeted group of subscribers on a schedule or after specific criteria are fulfilled, sharing educational content, marketing material, or announcements in order to close a sale or achieve a goal. Use cases include welcoming subscribers, launching products, introducing concepts, teaching complicated lessons, and selling existing products.

7. Double opt-in

A double opt-in is when someone signs up for an email list and receives a transactional email asking them to confirm their willingness to join. If they don't click the link, they won't become part of the mailing list. Double opt-ins ensure contacts didn't sign up accidentally, help you comply with regulations such as GDPR, and protect against spam signups while increasing the quality of your mailing list.

8. Email newsletter

An email newsletter is an email sent out to inform your subscribers about news, updates, tips, and promotions related to them or your company, often as a one-off, self-contained campaign. Newsletters are the most common type of email and tend to be sent regularly to subscribers; the frequency you choose should be something you're able to deliver consistently.

9. Email template

An email template is a predesigned or prewritten email, usually an HTML file, that can be tweaked and reused multiple times to quickly create high-quality email campaigns. It saves time and creates a consistent style for your brand so people have brand recall when they see your messages in their inbox. Consider creating different templates for transactional emails, confirmation emails, newsletters, and drip campaigns.

10. Email list hygiene

Email list hygiene is the process of checking the status of contacts on your list and removing the ones who no longer open or interact with your messages. These emails may have gone "cold," and if they remain on your list, your open rates will reduce and email deliverability may be impacted. Clean your email list regularly by removing bounced emails or contacts who haven't opened your emails in months.

11. Email bounce rate

Email bounce rate is the percentage of emails sent out that are returned as undeliverable. There are two major types: a hard bounce, where the email address or domain doesn't exist or the server has blocked delivery entirely, and a soft bounce, where the recipient's mail server sends the email back after it's been accepted, usually because the server is down, the inbox is full, or the message is too large.

12. Email lead scoring

Lead scoring is the process of assigning a numerical score to actions your subscribers take and using that to sort and rank them, helping you identify your most engaged subscribers and customers. A higher score typically translates to higher interest and a greater likelihood to purchase. Develop a clear understanding of what actions deserve to be scored, and how much weight each action should carry, before implementing this strategy.

13. Email list segmentation

Email list segmentation is the process of splitting your subscribers into different groups based on criteria important to you, increasing personalization and ROI from email campaigns. You can go beyond basic segmentation (like separate lists for different lead magnets) into behavioral segmentation, which takes into account the pages people visit, the emails they open, and the links they click.

14. Cart abandonment email sequence

An abandoned cart email is an automated email sent to a recipient after they've added items to their cart but didn't complete checkout before leaving the website. They're an essential part of eCommerce because cart abandonment rates can run as high as 70%. A simple three-part cart abandonment sequence can recover as much as 15% of the revenue that would have otherwise been lost, so it's important to start the process quickly while the purchase is still top of mind.

15. Dynamic email content

Dynamic email content is imagery or text that changes based on characteristics of the recipient, whether that's gender, purchase history, or anything else that matters to your goal. You can use it with templates or build it from scratch; how much flexibility you have depends on your email marketing provider, since some support it extensively and others don't at all.

Conclusion

These email marketing terms are essential if you want to make the most of your beautiful templates and your campaigns. The list isn't exhaustive, but it'll point you in the right direction so you can make the most of every email you send.