What is one less-common email marketing term that more marketers need to know and why?

A/B Testing or split testing is becoming a less-used and more obscure email marketing term, given the rise and incorporation of AI, but I believe it's one more marketers need to know and utilize. It's a vital tool for improving and optimizing your email marketing results. Whether you're testing list segmentation responsiveness or subject line strength or click-through button text, it's an excellent tool to test the strength of arguably every part of your email marketing strategy and increase your chances of success.

Cost per Mile (CPM) doesn't involve the expense of transporting goods or people over a distance—well, not in the email marketing realm, at least. Here, the term refers to the cost of sending a thousand emails. Or, in marketing generally, it stands for the cost of thousand of impressions or views of a particular advertisement. CPM empowers email marketers to evaluate the cost efficiency of their campaigns on a per-thousand-email basis, providing insights into the overall cost structure. This, in turn, enhances the precision of budget planning and cost estimation, helping allocate recourses in a better-informed way. Moreover, CPM can also be useful for comparing the cost of email campaigns with other advertising channels that use CPM as a pricing model. And these are good reasons for email marketers to know the term and use it as a metric in evaluating their campaigns.

In my experience, the term " permission marketing" is one that more marketers need to know. I've seen a lot of other terms like "inbound marketing," "content marketing," and "social media marketing." Those are all great terms, but those aren't the ones that can help you get more conversions out of your email campaigns. While those other types of marketing might be great for getting more people to your website or social media pages, they don't necessarily help you convert those visitors into paying customers. Permission marketing is different because it focuses on giving people who have already expressed interest in your product something they want—and then asking them if they want more. If you're looking to increase engagement with your email campaigns, I recommend using permission marketing. It's easier than ever today because there are so many tools available that make it easy for anyone to set up their own permission-based email list with little effort and even less cost!

Bacn (pronounced like bacon) is a less common but important email marketing term. Bacn is a non-spam email that, while not entirely unsolicited, floods a user's inbox. The term underscores the difficulty of striking a delicate balance between email frequency and relevance. Marketers must recognize that this type of email is generated by user interactions with websites, subscriptions, or services. Marketers should prioritize delivering content that is not only expected but also relevant and valuable to increase engagement and avoid annoying recipients. Recognizing and responding to BCN enables marketers to fine-tune their strategies, implement effective audience segmentation, and ensure their emails are perceived as welcome additions to recipients' inboxes, fostering positive relationships and improving overall email engagement and deliverability.

We send emails (as newsletters) to our audience and the less-common that most marketers don't know is 'List Churn'. List churn measures the rate at which subscribers join and leave your email list over time. This term is important because it highlights the need to maintain a healthy email list by continually adding engaged subscribers and removing inactive or disinterested ones. High list churn can negatively impact email engagement and deliverability.

Parasite Emails. I have been using this term as it relates to parasite SEO. It is when a business pays another larger company with a bigger subscriber list to include them in part of their email campaign. Normally you would go with a similar industry so that the business's offering fits the rest of the email content they are sending.

"Email List Hygiene" is a less common but crucial term in email marketing. It refers to regularly cleaning and maintaining your email subscriber list by removing invalid or disengaged addresses. This practice is vital for several reasons: Improved Deliverability: Keeping a clean list enhances your sender reputation and ensures your emails reach the inbox. Cost Efficiency: Removing inactive contacts saves money on email marketing services. Engagement: Cleaning your list leads to higher engagement and open rates as you target a more responsive audience. Regulatory Compliance: It helps meet GDPR and CAN-SPAM Act requirements by respecting user preferences. Data Accuracy: Clean lists provide accurate data for better targeting and content relevance.

One less common email marketing term that warrants more attention is "Graymail." Not to be confused with spam, graymail refers to legitimate emails that a recipient has opted to receive but doesn't engage with, either due to lack of interest or overwhelming volume. Graymail can hurt a campaign's overall performance metrics and deliverability because email providers may begin to categorize these messages as low-value or spammy. By monitoring and managing graymail, marketers can improve their email performance and ensure their content reaches the inboxes of engaged and interested recipients.

In my experience, it’s critical for the success of an email campaign to understand the term ‘email deliverability’ as maintaining a positive sender reputation. This is an often overlooked aspect of email marketing but should really be carefully considered if you want your emails to reach the inbox of the recipient and not end up in their spam box. So I would advise regularly cleaning and managing email lists and monitoring performance metrics to ensure good email deliverability.

From my personal journey in the realm of email marketing, I'd emphasize the often overlooked but critical term, "Deliverability." In my experience, grasping deliverability extends beyond the routine act of sending emails; it involves ensuring that emails adeptly find their way into recipients' inboxes. Over the years, I've learned that activities such as vigilantly monitoring and enhancing deliverability rates encompass factors like cultivating a positive sender reputation, implementing robust email authentication measures, and skillfully avoiding triggers that could label emails as spam. Acknowledging the paramount importance of deliverability has been crucial in my role, ensuring that the meticulously crafted emails in our campaigns efficiently reach our intended audience, thereby amplifying the overall impact of our email marketing endeavors.

One often overlooked term in email marketing is 'Churn Rate'. As the CEO of a tech company, it's crucial for us to manage the number of subscribers who discontinue their subscriptions within a given time period. Understanding churn rate helps identify potential pitfalls in your campaign and rectify them before they negatively impact your broader strategy. Evaluating churn rate is as critical as gaining new customers, in fact, more so because the cost of retaining an existing customer is much less than acquiring a new one.

Email Shares: This statistic keeps track of how frequently people have shared or posted your emails on social media. Gain knowledge about email shares to gain insight into the virality of your content and audience involvement outside of the inbox. It shows the reach and resonance of your email content, as well as the degree of interest or relevance that it has for subscribers. It can also increase the visibility of your business on social media.

One that I don't hear used too often is honey pot. This is essentially an email address that an organization would have act as a spam trap of sorts, in order to lower the rate of spam going to legitimate in-use inboxes. These types of accounts usually have aggressive anti-spam reporting to flag external emails and carry those blockers to the rest of the organization as they are managed by the company's cybersecurity division.

Email marketing terms are ever-evolving and can quickly become outdated. One less-common term that more marketers need to know is ‘User Generated Content’ (UGC). This refers to content created by consumers instead of brands, such as reviews or videos. Utilizing UGC emails can be hugely beneficial for marketers since research has shown that this type of content elicits greater consumer trust in a brand over traditional promotional messages. UGC can provide valuable insights into customer preferences and allow brands to increase word of mouth referrals from existing customers even further.

One less-common email marketing term is Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN is a network of geographically distributed servers that work together to deliver digital content like images, videos, and other media, to users based on their geographic location. In the context of email marketing, using a CDN for hosting and delivering email content can significantly improve email load times and overall performance. This is because it reduces latency and makes sure that the content is delivered faster. CDN integration is a lesser-known method for email campaigns, but is a valuable strategy to optimize content delivery and ensure that customers receive visually appealing and responsive emails.

A less-common email marketing term that can greatly benefit marketers is "Spam Trap." Spam traps are email addresses created and maintained by ISPs or anti-spam organizations to identify senders with poor list management or those sending unsolicited emails. Knowing about spam traps is crucial because falling into one can harm your sender reputation and deliverability. Marketers need to be vigilant about cleaning their email lists regularly to avoid hitting these traps and maintain a positive sender reputation.

Every entrepreneur relies on email marketing today, and if there’s someone out there who doesn’t, they’re missing out on the most profitable marketing channel that exists. However, I’ve met many business owners who don’t understand the details of acceptance and bounce rates, or the difference between hard and soft bounces. Acceptance Rate is the acceptance of a marketing email by the recipient’s mail server. But being accepted by the server doesn’t mean that it will get to the recipient. Bounce Rate measures your emails that are not delivered. The general rule for an acceptable bounce rate is under 5%. Hard Bounce is a failed delivery because of a permanent problem. An invalid, incorrect, or blocked address. Soft Bounce is a failed delivery because of a temporary problem. A server is down, or the recipient’s inbox is full. It's vital to know these terms, and manage all of these aspects of email marketing to ensure that your emails will be opened, and that you are getting accurate data on your open rates. Without accurate data, we can’t make accurate adjustments, and grow.

Dark mode optimization is an emerging trend in email marketing that more marketers need to know. It involves designing and formatting emails to ensure readability and visual appeal in dark mode settings. By considering dark mode optimization, marketers can enhance user experience, engagement, and cater to recipients who prefer this display setting. For example, they can use lighter colors for text, adjust background images, and leverage proper contrast. Implementing dark mode optimization demonstrates a marketer's attention to detail, modernization, and commitment to providing a seamless email experience.

I'd recommend marketers familiarize themselves with the terms "Double Opt-In" and "Single Opt-In". Double Opt-In requires the user to confirm their subscription to a mailing list twice, providing a clear consent and reducing the chance of spam. On the other hand, Single Opt-In is a one-step process where users are added to the mailing list as soon as they provide their email address. Although it generates a larger number of subscribers, it may also lead to lower engagement rates as some of these emails can be invalid or less interested. For instance, when I used Single Opt-In for one of my campaigns, I saw quick growth in the subscriber list, but over time, the engagement was quite low compared to the Double Opt-In strategy. As a leader in the marketing industry, it is crucial to understand the impact of these terms and make informed decisions when implementing email marketing campaigns. While Single Opt-In may seem like a convenient option, Double Opt-In can ensure higher quality engagement and better ROI.

Cinemagraph: A creative but underutilized technology, cinemagraphs insert engrossing, momentarily repeating films into emails and webpages. These eye-catching components give recipients a more engaging experience by drawing their attention and raising levels of engagement. Using cinemagraphs in email marketing is a novel approach to drawing in subscribers, increasing the recall value of the material, and increasing click-through rates.