The terms used regularly in our industry and have included various levels of additional explanation, which we hope you will find useful.

A/B split – to test a campaign, it is sensible to send out a percentage split of two versions, often to test response to different messages.

Affiliate – a person or company linked to a campaign as referrer or sales agent.

Append – if you already own a database, you may wish to append additional fields to your existing base, such as telephone number or email address.

Campaign – an individual mail / email / telemarketing programme.  Each campaign should be measured and judged separately.

Data Cleansing – removing inaccuracies and out-of-date contact information and updating with relevant details.

Click-through – a positive response to a link in an email. Click through is a crucial measurement in judging the success of a campaign as there is a strong indication of the level of interest in an email campaign.

DNC List – Do Not Call List – this is the central opt-out register allowing Canadidan individuals to register their preference not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing telephone calls to their telephone numbers or to certain numbers. It is a legal requirement that companies do not make such calls to numbers registered.

De-dup – De-duplicate or de-duplication of a data list, removing any unnecessary duplicates.

Fold – The fold or more than likely referred to as – above the fold.  The most important part of your message needs to be displayed at the top of a direct mail or email marketing piece to engage with recipients and encourage them to read further.

Follow-up – the most neglected part of the process.  After the flush of creating and despatching a campaign, the most crucial element is following up on interest to clinch the sale.

Fulfilment – the despatch of your direct mail or email marketing campaign, completion of your order or any action taken as a result of your campaign.

GAS – Gone Away Suppression – It is vital to screen your contact base against various national suppression files immediately before launching your campaign.  This checks your data against files such as Royal Mail to ensure that you are not mailing contacts which are no longer at an address, saving you time and money.

HTML email – Email that is formatted using Hyper Text Mark-up Language, as opposed to a plain text email. Basically any email which incorporates pictures and logos and is normally formatted in a narrower style on the page is an HTML email. It’s one of the ways to help your message to stand out.

Hybrid – A pricing model which is based on a combination of CPM and performance related prices.

Landing Page – the specific destination for click-throughs from a campaign, often produced as a temporary site or page specifically related to a particular campaign.

List – refers to a data list that is made up of a specific set of segmented contacts.

LTV – Lifetime Customer Value – Judging the value of a customer’s potential spend across their life and not just from a single transaction.

Mailsort – a Royal Mail service, offering discounted postal rates for mail which is, to varying degrees, pre-sorted by the sender.

MC – Multi-Channel – A style of campaign with a co-ordinated use of a number of different direct marketing techniques which can include email, direct mail and telemarketing

Microsite – a website set up for a particular campaign, including a carefully planned landing page which quite often includes the ability for individuals to sign up for special offers or a newsletter.

Data Mining – data mining is a technique used on a regular basis to source variables that are important to your campaigns including the what, where, when, why, who and how.

Open Rates – As with click-throughs, a key measure of the response to any campaign. Whether an email has been opened can be tracked and is a key initial signifier of interest.

Seed – To monitor the correct use of a rented database i.e. single use only, ‘seeds’ are placed in the database.  These are ordinary-looking contacts which when contacted a notification is sent to the data provider.

Segmentation – this includes choosing criteria that is specific for your campaign i.e. geographic location and industry to target businesses that will have a genuine interest in your products / services.

SIC Codes – These are national standard classifications of industries or market sectors, with each industry designated a 4 digit SIC code i.e. 2750 Commercial Printing; 3570 Computer and office equipment.  Data can be segmented using these codes to allow you to target just the market sector(s) you wish to reach.

Solo – A one-off campaign with a strong promotional offer and the intention of building a customer list rapidly.

Solus – no other clients promotional items will be used within the campaign and the focus will remain on the main advertising of a single client.

Subject Line – this is the title line of an email campaign which entices the recipient to open the email and read further.

Suppression – the removal from data lists of, principally, deceased or gone-aways.

Telemarketing – not be confused with telesales, this is a joined-up approach to your marketing, using the phone as an integral part of prospecting and follow-up.