Reference
Outbound Glossary
Every term we use with clients, written the way it matters in a live campaign rather than the way a textbook defines it. If a line here saves you one argument with a vendor, it has earned its place.
- SPFA public list of who may send mail for your domain. Getting it wrong is the cheapest way to land every campaign in spam.
- DKIMA signature that proves the message was not altered in transit. It survives forwarding, which is exactly why it matters more than SPF.
- DMARCThe layer that checks the From address a reader actually sees against the domain SPF or DKIM authenticated, and the only one of the three that reports back.
- MX recordThe DNS entry that says where your domain receives mail. A sending domain with no MX record looks fake, because real mailboxes can be replied to.
- Warm-upBuilding a sending reputation by starting small and growing slowly. Skipping it does not slow a campaign down, it ends one.
- Sending domainA separate domain used for campaigns so a bad week never touches the domain your invoices and contracts go out from.
- Inbox rotationSpreading a campaign across several mailboxes to stay under each one's limit. It raises volume, and it multiplies what you have to monitor.
- Spam trapAn address that exists only to catch senders who did not check their list. One hit can undo months of reputation work.
- BlacklistA public list of senders to refuse. Which list you land on decides whether it is a nuisance or a shutdown.
- Hard bounceA permanent rejection, almost always a dead address. Above roughly two percent it stops being a data problem and becomes a reputation problem.
- Soft bounceA temporary rejection, like a full mailbox or a throttling server. Harmless once, a warning sign when it clusters at one provider.
- Catch-allA domain that accepts mail to every address, so verification cannot tell a real colleague from a typo.
- Email verificationChecking an address exists before you send. It removes dead addresses, and it cannot tell you whether a person is worth writing to.
- Inbox placementWhether a delivered message actually reached the inbox or the spam folder. Delivery rate hides the difference, this number shows it.
- Seed listYour own test mailboxes across the main providers, used to see where a campaign lands before the prospects do.
- Reply rateThe share of recipients who answered. Harder to fake than opens, though out-of-office replies and security scanners answer too.
- Open rateA number that used to mean something. Privacy proxies now load the tracking pixel for the recipient, so it mostly counts machines.
- Sending limitThe ceiling a provider puts on one mailbox per day. The published number is the maximum, not the safe number.
- Plain-text emailA message with no images, tracking or styling. It looks like a person wrote it, and it has the fewest things filters can object to.
- Unsubscribe linkAn easy way out. Leaving it off does not reduce complaints, it converts them into spam reports, which cost far more.
- GDPRThe EU rule for handling personal data. It governs whether you may hold and use someone's details, not whether you may send them the message.
- Legitimate interestThe GDPR ground most B2B outbound relies on. It is not consent and not a loophole, it is a balance you have to be able to show.
- Data processing agreementThe contract required when someone handles personal data on your behalf. Every tool in an outbound stack needs one, and most people never read them.
- Data residencyWhich country your data physically sits in. For most outbound tools the honest answer is the United States, and almost nobody checks.
- Controller and processorWho decides versus who executes. Getting the label wrong puts obligations on the wrong party, and agencies get it wrong constantly.
- Opt-outA request to stop. Honouring it across every campaign and every tool at once is the part that quietly fails.
- Suppression listThe list of people and domains you must never contact. It is the one list that has to be shared across every tool you run.
- ePrivacy DirectiveThe EU rule on electronic marketing that sits beside GDPR. It is implemented per country, which is why one European playbook does not exist.
- Subject access requestSomeone asking what you hold on them. You have a month, and the hard part is knowing which of your tools to look in.
- Data minimisationHolding only what you actually use. Enrichment makes breaking this rule frictionless, which is exactly why it gets broken.
- ICPThe profile of a company you can win and keep. Most are written to describe who you sold to, not who you should sell to next.
- TAMThe total market in theory. Useful for a board slide, nearly useless for a campaign, because almost none of it is in the market today.
- FirmographicsThe static facts about a company: size, sector, location, revenue. They tell you who could buy, never who is ready.
- TechnographicsWhich software a company runs. A strong signal when the tool implies a problem you solve, and noise when it just implies a budget.
- Intent dataSignals that someone may be researching a purchase. Sold as certainty, usually bought as probability, and often aggregated far from the person.
- Buying signalObservable evidence that a company's situation just changed in a way that creates a need. This is the unit we build campaigns on.
- Trigger eventA buying signal with a clock on it. The value is not that it happened, it is that the window closes.
- EnrichmentAdding what you do not have to the records you do. Coverage is what vendors sell, and accuracy is what actually decides the outcome.
- Waterfall enrichmentAsking providers in sequence until one answers. Better coverage per contact, and a longer list of places your data has been.
- List buildingDeciding who to approach. It is the step that decides a campaign's outcome, and the one most often handed to the cheapest tool.
- LookalikeCompanies that resemble your best customers. A good shortcut, and a reliable way to inherit the blind spots of your current list.
- Account-based marketingTreating named accounts as markets of one. Expensive per account, which is why the account list has to be short and chosen on purpose.
- Account tieringSorting targets into levels so effort matches value. The honest version has very few accounts in tier one.
- PersonaThe person you write to, as opposed to the company you target. Two personas in the same company need two different messages, not one with the job title swapped.
- Job change signalSomeone starting a new role. One of the strongest signals available, because new people are allowed to change things.
- Hiring signalA job advert read as evidence of a problem. The advert says what they are trying to fix, and often how urgently.
- Funding signalA round closed. Everyone sees it, so the advantage is in the week you act and the specific plan you address.
- Lead scoringA number that ranks prospects. It is only as good as the outcome it was built to predict, which is the question almost nobody asks it.
- DeduplicationRemoving the same company or person appearing twice. Skip it and one prospect gets your campaign three times, from three mailboxes.
- OutboundYou start the conversation. The whole discipline is choosing who and when, because the message cannot rescue a bad choice.
- SDRThe role that opens conversations and hands them over. Outsourcing it is the same decision as hiring one, priced differently.
- Appointment settingPaid to produce meetings. The incentive is the risk: a meeting is easy to produce and a qualified meeting is not.
- SequenceThe planned series of touches to one prospect. The first message gets the attention and the later ones get the replies.
- MultichannelReaching one person in more than one place. It raises reply rates, and it raises the cost of having chosen the wrong person.
- Show rateThe share of booked meetings that actually happen. The number that separates a real pipeline from a full calendar.
- Qualified leadA lead someone has decided is worth sales time. The word means nothing until the definition is written down and shared.
- Pipeline coverageOpen pipeline divided by the target. It tells you whether this quarter is already decided, which is usually the uncomfortable answer.
- Sales cycleHow long a deal takes from first contact to signature. It decides when a campaign can be judged, and it is nearly always longer than hoped.
- Sales NavigatorLinkedIn's paid search tool. Excellent at finding people, and its filters are self-reported, which is why lists built on it need checking.
- Connection requestAn invitation to connect on LinkedIn. Cheap to send, limited per week, and the limit is the thing people plan around badly.