Glossary

A/B testing

A/B testing is a method of comparing the performance of two versions of an email campaign. It involves creating two versions of the same email campaign and sending them to different sets of audiences. Once the test period is completed, you can assess which version performed better and send the winner campaign to the remaining audience segment. Learn how to perform A/B testing

Abandoned cart

If a customer adds a product to the online shopping cart of any ecommerce website and leaves the site without completing the purchase, they leave behind an "abandoned cart." You can use the workflow feature to send personalized emails to remind customers to complete their purchases.

API

An application programming interface (API) serves as a connector between computers or software programs, enabling them to communicate and collaborate. APIs enable you to sync contacts, create campaigns, fetch reports, and automate marketing tasks by connecting with external applications.

Autoresponders

Autoresponders are automated functions in campaigns that send subscribers pre-written responses/messages based on their interactions and activity, like welcome emails for new signups or transactional emails.

Average conversion time

The average time taken for a lead to be converted and move on to the next stage of the sales pipeline.

Average revenue for contact

The average revenue generated by contacts during a specific period.

Best subject by open

The email subject line that generated the highest open rate among other subject lines used in the email campaign.

Bounce and spam stats

A report of how many emails bounced and how many emails were marked as spam instead of successfully landing in the inbox.

Brand

A brand is a business's predefined sender identity for an email campaign. It ensures consistency and recognition across all your email communications.

Build your own campaign

One of the default features in the automation tool helps you build your own campaign for your business, which can be anything from an email campaign to an SMS campaign.

Bulk emails

Mass emails that are sent out to your subscribers as part of a marketing campaign.

Bot filter

This is a default feature in Zoho Campaigns that filters out automated bot interactions from your campaign performance reports to give you more accurate engagement data. With bot filtering enabled, actual human interactions are distinguished from automated activity, and you get clearer engagement data instead of inflated numbers due to bot interactions.

Bounce rate

The percentage of emails that have bounced instead of landing in customers' inboxes.

Call to action (CTA)

A call-to-action button is a quick action clickable element that's assigned to perform a specific function and drive a specific behavior. Examples are "Buy now," "Learn more," "Sign up," or "Download."

Campaign name

The name you give your campaign for easy identification and organization. Your campaign's name can be based on the campaign type and purpose to make it easier for you to identify it from your list of campaigns.

Campaign calendar

The calendar is a space where you can set reminders and create draft campaigns for upcoming holidays or events. It already contains all major holidays by country, and you can create private holidays for specific dates. You'll be notified to create campaigns for the date and time you set. The maximum time limit for setting a reminder or creating a draft campaign for a specific holiday is 15 days before the date.

CAN-SPAM

CAN-SPAM is a law that sets rules for commercial email practices, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to opt out of receiving emails, and outlines tough penalties for violations.

Resource: Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) CAN-SPAM compliance guide

Channel

A channel is any form of communication used to generate leads or communicate about products and services, such as email, SMS, WhatsApp, social media, print ads, or other physical or digital media.

Click rate

The percentage of recipients who clicked on links in your emails, out of all delivered emails.

Click-to-open rate (CTOR)

CTOR is the percentage of people who opened an email campaign and clicked on a link in an email campaign. This helps you measure the effectiveness of your campaign.

Clone campaign

Instead of creating a campaign from scratch, you can save time by copying the template/content of a campaign and reuse it by cloning it, modifying it, and deploying it when needed in the future.

Cold contacts

Cold contacts are those who have just started to look around and are not interested in your products yet. They're analogous to window shoppers, who might interact with you in future, but aren't necessarily ready to make a purchase.

Components

Components are workflow elements that determine the direction your contacts take in your customer journey. You can use components to define your workflow according to predefined criteria, contacts' behavior, or at random.

Contacts dashboard

This feature helps you manage your contacts and shows contacts' summaries, as well as their stages, sources, and location stats.

Contacts by stage

The number of contacts currently in each stage of your pipeline.

Contact by source

The names of sources from which you obtained contacts.

Contact lifecycle over time

A graphical representation of contacts' various lifecycle stages.

Contact lifecycle stage

Contacts' lifecycle stages are defined according to your business needs. You can classify contacts as raw leads, marketing ready, marketing engaged, marketing qualified, and sales ready.

Contact scoring

Contact scoring involves assigning scores to your email recipients based on their profiles and campaign responses. Using these scores, you can assess their progress as contacts and potential customers.

Contact stages by time

The length of time contacts spend progressing through different lead stages.

Conversion rate

The total percentage of lead conversions made compared to the number of emails sent as part of a campaign.

Credit and cost stats

Credit and cost details of SMSs sent as part of a campaign. This also includes the amount spent per click and per contact.

Customer success and retention

Customer success and retention is the practice of helping customers achieve their goals, keeping them interested in and loyal to your brand, and preventing them from canceling your services.

Deals

Deals are simply opportunities to sell your products and services.

Deals won

The number of deals you've won with respect to a specific time period, based on data from your Zoho CRM account.

Delivery rate

The percentage of emails or SMSs delivered with respect to the number of emails or SMSs sent.

Delete campaign

You can delete a campaign you've created. However, once a campaign is deleted, you'll permanently lose all data related to it and will not be able to retrieve any of it.

DKIM

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) automatically adds a digital signature to emails from your domain to help identify the authenticity of the users using your domain. The DKIM "signature" is a cryptographic digital signature that verifies the email's origin domain.

DMARC

Domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication, policy, and reporting protocol. Its purpose is to improve and monitor the protection of email domains from fraudulent emails.

Domain authentication

Domain authentication is a method all email marketers use to protect their email inboxes from malicious attacks via validation mechanisms that verify incoming emails' points of origin. This authentication affects email senders' reputations.

Drag-and-drop template editor

This is a feature in Zoho Campaigns you can use to design your email campaign templates, including customizing and personalizing your email content and design to suit your marketing needs.

Drill down

Drilling down refers to examining metrics and data in greater detail.

Email automation

This simply refers to the automation of email functions, and is generally used for mass emailing and marketing purposes. Emails are pre-programmed to go out through Zoho Campaigns when certain conditions are met.

Email campaigns

Email campaigns are series of business emails targeted at audiences in order to increase interactions and sales.

Email deliverability

This refers to your ability to land your campaigns in your contacts' inboxes, and is a crucial factor that accounts for much of your campaign's success.

Email header

A code snippet hidden at the top of an email that appears before the email body itself and contains information about the sender, recipient, and the message.

Email leads

These are leads generated through email marketing and campaigns. They might be visitors who have shown interest in a particular product or topic, and therefore might be subject to more targeted emails related to their interests.

Email list

This is the list of contacts who receive personalized and customized emails from businesses about products, launches, and updates. Subscribers usually opt in to receive such communications.

Email newsletter

A newsletter is an email sent regularly to update your audience on the most recent news, tips, or updates regarding your products or services.

Newsletters are most effective for educating and entertaining your subscribers rather than pushing sales, and functions more as a service to keep your subscribers informed and interested in your business.

Email subject line

This is simply the subject line in an email, which is the first email content recipients see when an email appears in their inboxes. Thus, it's important to phrase your subject lines carefully and strategically so as to generate enough interest for recipients to click on them and open your emails.

Email open rate

The percentage of emails that were opened after successfully landing in subscribers' or contacts' inboxes.

Email templates

Zoho Campaigns offers pre-designed email templates that you can build upon and tweak to fit your brand.

Each pre-designed template is built to cater to a variety of business requirements. Choose from the available templates and quickly build a journey to meet all your business needs.

Email thread

This is a series of email replies all stemming from an original email. Threads include replies between two or more entities and could go back and forth.

Engagement pop-ups

Engagement pop-ups are designed to increase visitor engagement on your website. They advertise your webpages by enshrining redirection URLs in call-to-action buttons. Pop-ups connect quickly with your website visitors and prompt them to take necessary actions on your message.

Entry pages

These are the first pages visitors land on when they navigate a website via an email campaign link. They aren't necessarily home pages, but could be any page, and are also often known as landing pages.

Event-based campaigns

A type of marketing that targets customers' life events and behavioral patterns and uses them to create personalized emails and relevant marketing campaigns.

Exit pages

These are the last pages visitors view before leaving websites linked to email campaigns. Tracking this information helps businesses understand when and why visitors leave pages.

Footer

Footers are the bottom-most sections of pieces of content that often contain additional information such as business details, contact information, and redirect links.

GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation in the European Union and the European Economic Area that focuses on information privacy.

It governs the handling of personal information and regulates the free movement of such data.

Hard bounce

If an email is sent but doesn't get delivered, this is known as a hard bounce. A hard bounce means there is a permanent reason for the delivery failure. Generally, recipients' addresses are immediately added to the "Bounced" list. Frequent hard bounces negatively affect the reputations of sending sources.

Hot contacts

These contacts have the highest potential and are on the verge of conversion. Contacts who actively engage by reading blogs or requesting demos for certain products usually score higher and become hot contacts.

HTML

Hypertext markup language (HTML) is the standard computer language for creating documents or pages that can be viewed in a web browser. HTML serves to outline the structure and content of webpages.

HTML editor

An HTML editor is a software program that helps in creating and editing HTML code for websites and applications.

Hyperlink

A hyperlink is a link that allows users to reach or land on documents or pages via the Internet. It's simply text encoded with a web address that redirects users to a specific place on the internet.

ICS

Part of the template editor in Zoho Campaigns, ICS is a file format that allows users to store and exchange calendar and schedule information, such as events, to-dos, and more.

Integration

In the context of software, integration refers to the process of connecting two or more software tools to bring data and functionality from one tool into another. This enables users to access data and functionality without having to switch between applications.

Import contacts

This refers to the function of importing contact information into an application by uploading a spreadsheet file. This is useful because adding each contact manually is not only time-consuming but tedious. Zoho Campaigns allows you to import contacts you've sourced from various platforms, either from the cloud or from your device.

Landing pages

Landing pages are pages where potential customers are taken to when they click on links in emails, ads, or social campaigns. They're generally standalone and are used for marketing purposes to boost lead generation. In Zoho Campaigns, you can create your own landing pages using pre-designed templates and designs to capture leads and track conversions.

Landing page URLs

These are the web addresses of your landing pages, which you can customize in Zoho Campaigns.

Layouts

Layouts are customizable visual and functional presets you can build and deploy in your campaign templates in Zoho Campaigns. They help you organize images, text, buttons, and other elements in the bodies of your email campaigns.

Leads

Leads are potential customers acquired via interactions with your website, services, or advertisements. Leads are who sales teams nurture so as to convert them into customers.

Lead classification stats

Contacts are classified as raw leads, marketing ready, marketing engaged, marketing qualified, and sales ready. Zoho Campaigns tracks stats related to these classifications.

Lead generation

Lead generation is the process of creating or gaining new leads through various marketing channels and media.

Lead source

This refers to the channels or methods by which leads originally find your website.

These channels could include social media and communication apps.

Lead stage

Lead stages are groupings of contacts based on their engagement with your product and their inclination to convert.

Library

With Zoho Campaigns's library feature, you can import your documents and images from various sources and reuse them quickly instead of having to search for or upload again each time you need them.

Lists

Lists help you categorize or segment your contacts based on specific criteria. Lists are static by nature, and the criteria you set for the list will fetch only from the existing contacts and add to the List to send targeted email campaigns. No new contact can be directly added to a list.

List key

List keys are used to add contacts to mailing lists via APIs. They function as authentication parameters and represent the mailing list you're trying to access and is generated automatically by the system as soon as a list is created in Campaigns.

Lead nurturing

This is the act of nurturing or developing leads at every stage of the sales pipeline via marketing updates and messages.

Lead scoring

You can assign scores to your leads based on the activities they perform on your websites, such as downloading ebooks, clicking particular links or buttons, or reading particular blog posts. You can define your own activities and score your leads when they perform them. You can consider any leads with your target score "marketing qualified."

Lead score configuration

If you haven't configured a scoring schema for your leads, you can do so in the Lead Qualification subsection in the Contacts module of Zoho Campaigns.

Lead stage configuration

Configuring lead stages involves setting up your own custom lead stages separate from system-default stages, for which you can define the criteria.

Lead status

Lead status is a way of tracking leads' progress through your campaigns and identifying their current stages.

Location stats

Location stats are metrics that show the locations of the devices that were used to click WhatsApp messages in your WhatsApp campaigns.

Marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns are individual series of marketing emails and messages that are sent to multiple contacts simultaneously. With relevant content, it’s an effective way to reach out to your contacts at the right time.

In Zoho Campaigns, you can send different types of campaigns according to your requirements by selecting a campaign type, adding recipients, drafting relevant content, and configuring send settings.

Marketing engaged

The number of contacts that have been contacted for marketing.

Metric

Metrics are simply data points that reflect measurements. In the case of Zoho Campaigns, commonly used metrics include the number of website visitors your campaign has generated or the number of email opens.

Multiple clicks

Multiple clicks occur when a recipient clicks on a link or button multiple times within an email campaign.

Multiple opens

Multiple opens in email marketing occur when a recipient opens an email multiple times beyond the expected number of opens a recipient might open.

Multiple replies

This metric calculates the number of recipients who replied to your email campaign multiple times.

Negative replies

Negative or unfavorable replies to your email campaigns.

Next stage conversion

The percentage of leads who are transitioning to the next phase of a marketing or sales funnel as part of the campaign.

Number of engagements

The total measure of how many of your subscribed contacts have interacted with your emails.

Open rate

The percentage of emails that contacts opened in comparison to the number of emails sent.

Open trigger

An open trigger can be used to start a journey when contacts are imported from another application using API keys. You can also associate other journeys, campaigns, and signup forms with this journey. Contacts from associated entities will enter this journey.

Opt-in

When leads enter their email address in a signup form, they're directly added to the mailing list of the business/service, which is the standard opt-in process. Alternatively, a subscription confirmation email is sent to the lead, which includes a link that the lead must click to confirm the subscription. This is called a double opt-in.

Organic search

Organic searches occur when people visit your website on their own by looking it up on the Internet without using any hyperlinks or redirects, or when they click on your website link among a list of search results when looking for something.

Page visit

The total number of times visitors have viewed or opened your page.

Personalized campaign

A type of custom campaign where you can define your own criteria, personalize it to suit your company's voice, and allow only those contacts that satisfy your criteria to be added as recipients.

Pop-up frequency

The number of times or the duration after which a pop-up appears when users visit your website. In Campaigns, you can choose how frequently a pop-up will be displayed to your visitors.

Pop-up type

There are four types of pop-up forms in Zoho Campaigns. They differ based on how they are positioned on the users' screen on their device. They are:

• Pop-up - Appears as a dialog box in the middle of the webpage.
• Full-screen pop-up - Appears as a full-screen pop-up in the middle of the webpage.
• Slide-in - Appears from the side or corner of your webpage.
• Banner- Appears as a thin banner at the top or bottom of your webpage.

Positive reply

An instance when a recipient has sent a positive reply to an email campaign.

Pre-header

The short text that follows the subject line and can be viewed only in your inbox's list view; designed to support the subject line in conveying the essence of an email. A good pre-header should convince the recipient to open the email.

Promotions

Promotions are a marketing technique that serves to inform and advertise to potential customers and target audience about your products and services; they keep your audience interested and updated about your offerings, and could include updates, events, blogs, or even special offers from your brand.

Raw leads

The total number of contacts available and which are prospective customers.

Recipient time zone

The geographical time zone in which recipients live. Emailing recipients based on their time zones can result in higher open and engagement rates with your campaign.

Recipient's optimal open time

Optimal open time refers to the time and day of the week when recipients are most likely to open your campaign emails. As recipients open more and more of your emails, the pattern of when they most often open your emails—given also their geographical locations/time zones—emerge organically. You can target this pattern to achieve effective open rates.

Redirect

When a user clicks a link and it redirects them to a different webpage.

Re-engagement

When a brand contacts recipients again for marketing through emails, messages, and other channels in order to regain their interest.

Referral

When a user of a certain product or service recommends the product to another person, it is called a referral. It can also be leveraged as a marketing tool that encourages existing customers to promote a business to their contacts, which in turn helps the business expand its customer base.

Response action

Response actions enable you to set up next steps for your email campaign depending on how recipients respond, not only to save time but also to automate certain actions and eliminate the need for manual intervention.

Revenue by source of last interaction

The revenue that was generated because of the last sent campaign or social media post.

Return on investment

Return on investment (ROI) represents the total return received from money invested. ROI is shown in percentage format; the total percentage of returns from the investment.

RSS campaign

RSS campaigns allow you to distribute your content to your audience to keep them updated and engaged. From blogs and news updates to marketing materials and announcements, RSS campaigns provide a streamlined way to share your content via email campaigns with your contacts on a timely basis.

RSS feed URL

The address of a specific organization or account's RSS feed, which is a web technology that enables subscribed users to receive updates via email.

Sales-ready

Number of contacts that have been converted into customers.

Sales-qualified leads

Sales-qualified leads (SQLs) refer to a lead stage in which leads are moving into the decision-making stage of their buyer's journey and are ready for sales outreach.

Schedule campaign

A feature that enables you to pre-program the time when your email campaign will be sent out to your recipients, which helps when emailing recipients across different time zones.

Scores

You can assign scores to your contacts for the activities they perform on your websites, such as downloading an ebook, clicking a particular link or button, or reading a particular blog.

Segment

Segments in the Contacts section enable you to categorize contacts in groups based on different criteria in order to focus more effectively on the needs of that particular set. This helps in strategizing marketing campaigns for targeted contacts and thereby increase contact conversion and overall revenue.

Send in batches

Refers to the process of sending a message in timed batches to a group of recipients, or "batch," instead of to all recipients at once.

Sent campaigns

Refers to campaigns that have already been sent out to the intended recipients, which you can track in Zoho Campaigns' report.

SEO

Also known as search engine optimization, SEO is a strategy that helps websites achieve higher rankings in search results so as to increase traffic and potential leads. It helps search engines identify websites' contents and enable users to locate sites when searching for relevant information.

Signup form

You can create and embed signup forms in your sites, blogs, and social media pages to boost conversion rates among visitors. In Zoho Campaigns, you can design signup forms using pre-designed templates to collect and store contacts who are interested in your brand.

Signup pop-ups

Pop-up windows that contain signup forms. These can help you capture users' attention at the most favorable times, as you can add them to your pages and display them to visitors under certain conditions, such as at specific times or at specific points on the page.

Simple email campaign

A campaign type that lets you market your business with regular promotional emails, such as newsletters, holiday offers, and product updates.

SMS campaign

SMS campaigns use text messages to run promotional campaigns. SMS campaigns are more personal than email campaigns because they act as direct and immediate channels for communication. They increase open rates and drive more engagement by reaching your audience at their fingertips.

Social campaign

Social campaigns are quick, easy ways to reach a wider audience and engage with your followers on social media. Zoho Campaigns can do it all, from posting a campaign on social media to running promotions via your social media handles.

Social media marketing

Involves developing content for social media platforms to advertise your products and/or services, engage with your target audience, and increase traffic to your business. Can be done by first connecting your social media handles, then running campaigns, scheduling posts via automation, tracking campaign performance, and converting visitors to customers.

Soft bounce

A temporary delivery failure; does not necessarily mean the email address is invalid or no longer active; Zoho Campaigns will continue trying to send emails to these addresses.

Source

The origin from where the user found your website, such as social media websites or communication apps.

Spam rate

The total percentage of sent emails that have been marked as spam by email service providers.

SPF

Sender policy framework (SPF) is an authentication technique that helps receiving email servers identify legitimate email senders and prevent spam from entering the inboxes. SPF allows email senders to publish the IPs from which their emails are sent.

Stats

Also known as statistics, stats are analytical measurements that help businesses evaluate the effectiveness of their email marketing campaigns.

Survey-based email campaign

An email campaign that involves ending recipients feedback surveys. Zoho Campaigns makes it simple to manage, market, and receive valuable feedback from your customers. This ensures your surveys reach the largest and most relevant audience possible. You can boost lead engagement by integrating Zoho Campaigns with Zoho Survey and other third-party applications.

Subscribe

The action of opting in for a particular service or website and giving the brand permission to send you emails.

Tags

Tags are labels that you add or assign to a group of contacts so that you can sort, search, categorize, filter, and segment them efficiently. You can add tags to contacts based on demographics such as location, revenue, age, or company size, and scores. When you click on any tag, you view all records associated with it.

Target audience

The group of potential customers whom you've identified as being most likely to buy from you. Targeting, more broadly, is the process of engaging your target audience and pitching your product to them. After identifying your target audience, you can focus your marketing efforts on them by using various strategies to present your product and create a precise understanding of its functionalities.

Tell-a-friend

When a contact of yours refers a friend to your website. In signup forms, contacts can share your newsletters with their friends by clicking a link in the form.

Templates

Templates are pre-designed elements upon which you can build and tweak to fit your brand. You can edit them per your business requirements and only need to replace images, copy, links, and other media.

Template editor

The drag-and-drop template editor makes designing your email campaign using Zoho Campaigns much easier. This feature lets you customize and personalize your email content and design to best suit your marketing needs. The template editor has three components:

• Elements
• Layouts
• Design

Template gallery

The template gallery helps you design your campaign by providing numerous email templates to suit various use cases. You can choose a specific template depending on your requirement. For instance, if you want to send your customer birthday wishes, you can choose a template from the Birthday section.

Topics

Topics are a hierarchical pattern that provides a framework between email senders and recipients. Senders can send content to which recipients have subscribed, and recipients can subscribe specifically to the topics that interest them.

Total contacts

Total number of contacts available to you in campaigns to engage, including the ones imported from other applications/platforms.

Total revenue

The full amount of income generated from contacts during a specific period. This information is gathered from your Zoho CRM account.

Tracking code

A code snippet added to tracking pages that helps you track data about your visitors and their activities on your website. Adding the code snippet to your website is a one-time process, and doesn't require modifications every time to run multiple experiments.

Trigger

Initiates an action or a journey that contacts will enter when they meet specific criteria. Contacts activate triggers by performing actions that satisfy trigger conditions.

Businesses pre-set triggers to perform actions that are manually infeasible.

Unique click

A metric that calculates the total number of users who have clicked on a particular link in your campaign once. Only the users who've clicked the link are counted.

Unique open

A metric that calculates the total number of recipients who have opened your email campaign once. Only counts recipients who have opened it. This metric helps understand the reachability and interest in your campaign.

Unique reply

A metric that calculates the number of recipients who have replied to your email campaign once.

Unsubscribe

An instance in which a subscriber cancels their subscription or opts out of a mailing list. Reasons for this may include spammy behavior, disinterest, or even accidentally unsubscribing.

Unsubscribe rate

The percentage of users who have unsubscribed from your mailing list after receiving your email campaigns.

Visitors

Individuals who visit your website, typically through links, redirects from your emails, or direct searches on the internet.