Engagement Systems' Marketing Campaign Automation Glossary

1:1 Marketing:

A customer relationship management strategy emphasizing individual and personalized marketing interactions and communications with prospects and customers containing content that is relevant to them.

Email Bounces:

A soft bounce occurs when an email reaches a valid email address but is not delivered due to the mailbox being full, or some other factor. With a soft bounce, the email system continues to attempt to deliver the message for a certain number of times. A hard bounce occurs when an email is not deliverable because of an incorrect/invalid address, canceling further attempts to deliver the message.

ERP:

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). A business support system that maintains the data needed for a variety of business functions across an organization, such as Supply Chain Management, Financials, HR and Customer Relationship Management.

CRM:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Specialized database software used by internal departments that interface with customers and prospects. There are varying degrees of sophistication of these systems and they may include: contact management, sales automation, marketing campaign tracking, forecasting and more. Software is offered either as in-house server-based (user organization loads and maintains the software on their in-house system) or a hosted solution commonly referred to as SaaS.

Campaign:

A single or multiple-step series of marketing or advertising touches, usually with a specific start and stop date. Campaigns are often run around a specific event or promotion.

CAN-SPAM:

Federal regulations and rules governing email distribution designed to prevent email spam.

Customer-Centric Marketing:

An approach to marketing based on detailed knowledge of customer behavior within the target audience that seeks to fulfill the individual needs of customers. The marketing efforts and sales process revolve around the customer, not the vendor or product.

Customer Life Cycle:

The stages a prospect/customer goes through related to their development with a supplier company. Life cycle stages typically include: Suspect, Qualified Prospect, New Customer, Established Customer, and Lost/Declining Customer. The customer life cycle stages help to determine the types of marketing communications that are appropriate in order to match their needs at a particular stage.

Engagement Systems:

A 1:1 marketing communications and campaign automation system that works with CRM systems to execute, deliver and track multi-touch, multi-channel communications to support lead generation, lead nurturing, customer retention and customer reactivation efforts.

Integration:

Usually refers to two different software applications or platforms working together by seamlessly sharing data or information.

Lead Nurturing:

A tactic for lead development. The process of building a relationship with a lead through multiple communications until they are ready to take the next step in the buying process.

Life Time Value (LTV):

Refers to the cumulative value (in sales revenue) a customer represents to an organization during the time of their business relationship.

Marketing Automation:

Refers to a broad category of technology solutions that help to automate the different functions performed by marketers. Some solutions strictly focus on operational and administrative aspects, some are stand alone solutions and some are integrated with ERP or CRM systems. Even within the category of marketing automation, some technologies cover a wide range of marketing campaign management and others focus on a single specialty application (i.e. lead management).

Marketing Touch:

A single communication or contact with a prospect or a customer.

Multi-Channel Campaigns:

A campaign where multiple types of media or communications are used to deliver marketing touches. For example, using email, direct mail and landing pages within the same campaign.

Multi-Media:

See multi-channel campaigns.

On-boarding:

The process of welcoming a new customer and acclimating them into the relationship with the supplier/vendor.

On-Demand:

May also be referred to as ad hoc. A specific action that is initiated at the time of request, such as on-demand printing.

Program:

An ongoing series of marketing communications (perpetual in nature). Used primarily for customer loyalty and retention.

PURL:

Personalized URLs link databases to unique online content for each person. Content is delivered via a personalized landing page or micro-site that includes personalized text, imagery and offers.

ROMI:

Return on Marketing Investment.

SaaS:

Software as a service. A type of software deployment where the software is accessed over the internet and offered as a service which is hosted on the provider's server. SaaS eliminates the need to install and run the software on the customer's own computer and does not require the customer to perform updates since these are automatically uploaded to the web server for them. SaaS is also referred to as computing in "the cloud."

Sales Force Automation:

Software that automates and tracks the functions performed by sales people as part of the selling process, making them more efficient.

Salesforce CRM:

A popular SaaS-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution from Salesforce.com.

Sales Optimization:

The process of making salespersons and the selling process itself, more efficient and effective.

Triggers:

Pre-programmed business rules that identify a specific behavior, event , or change in status or information involving a customer or prospect, and automatically cause a specific action to occur in response. Usually, refers to the automated initiation of a pre-determined marketing communication.

VDP:

Variable Data Printing (VDP). Communication with variable elements (also referred to as variable content), such as text, graphics and images that are changed from one piece to the next using information from a database or external file. Variable Data Printing enables the customization of individual documents via digital print technology, as opposed to the "mass-production" of a single document using offset printing. While VDP usually applies to printed materials, the same variable data application can be used in creating emails and landing pages or micro-sites.