Glossary
The words, defined once
Plain-language definitions of the terms used in cold email, deliverability, account-based outbound and proposal tracking.
A
- Account temperature
- A single reading of how engaged a whole company is, built from the recent activity of everyone you contacted there.
- Account-based outbound
- Outbound where the target company is the unit you plan, send and measure against.
- Apple Mail Privacy Protection
- An Apple Mail feature that pre-loads email images through Apple's servers, recording opens whether or not the person read the message.
- Autoreply
- A message sent automatically by the recipient's mail system, such as an out-of-office notice, with no human behind it.
B
- Bounce rate
- The share of sent messages that were rejected and returned, a direct signal to mailbox providers about your list quality.
- Bounce shield
- An automatic brake that pauses a campaign when its bounces cross a threshold you set, before your domain pays for it.
C
- Catch-all domain
- A domain whose mail server accepts any address, so verification cannot tell a real mailbox from a made-up one.
- Cold email
- A first email to a business contact who has not asked to hear from you, sent to open a conversation.
- Company view
- A screen that groups prospects, events and engagement by the company they belong to, instead of listing contacts one by one.
- Custom field
- A column you add to your prospect data, such as industry or last order, that snippets can pull into every email.
D
- Daily sending limit
- The maximum number of messages one mailbox sends in a day, set low enough to look like a person rather than a machine.
- Data controller
- Under the GDPR, the organisation that decides why and how personal data is processed: for cold email, that is you rather than your tool.
- Data processing agreement (DPA)
- The GDPR-required contract between a data controller and its processor, setting out what the processor may do with the data.
- Deliverability
- Whether your email reaches the inbox rather than the junk folder or a rejection, and everything that decides it.
- DKIM
- A cryptographic signature added to each outgoing email so the receiver can check it came from your domain and was not altered.
- DMARC
- A DNS policy that tells receiving servers what to do with mail from your domain that fails SPF or DKIM, and where to report it.
- Domain reputation
- The running score mailbox providers keep about a sending domain, built from bounces, complaints, engagement and authentication.
E
- Email verification
- Checking before you send whether an address exists and can receive mail, so bad addresses never reach a campaign.
F
- Follow-up
- A later email in a sequence, sent after a delay to a prospect who has not replied, adding a new angle rather than a nudge.
H
- Hard bounce
- A permanent delivery failure: the address does not exist or the domain refuses your mail, so retrying will never work.
I
- Inbox rotation
- Spreading one campaign's sends across several mailboxes in turn, so no single address exceeds its daily limit.
L
- Legitimate interest
- The GDPR legal basis most B2B cold-email senders rely on: processing justified by a real business need, balanced against the recipient.
- List-Unsubscribe header
- A hidden email header that lets mail clients show their own unsubscribe button and tell you when it is pressed.
M
- Mailbox warm-up
- Gradually raising a new mailbox's sending volume over weeks so providers learn to trust it before campaigns begin.
O
- Offer gate
- An optional check before a proposal opens: the reader confirms their email with a one-time code, so you know who is reading.
- One-click unsubscribe
- The RFC 8058 mechanism that lets a reader leave your list with a single press in their mail client, with no page to visit.
- Open rate
- The share of delivered messages recorded as opened, measured by a tracking pixel and increasingly unreliable as a signal.
- Out-of-office reply
- An automatic message saying the recipient is away, often naming a return date and a colleague to contact meanwhile.
P
- Positive reply
- A human answer that moves the conversation forward: a question, a meeting request, or a referral to the right person.
- Prospect
- A person you have chosen to contact because their role and company fit what you sell, before any conversation has started.
R
- Reading time
- How long a reader spent on your proposal in total and on each page, the closest thing to watching them read.
- Reply classification
- Sorting incoming replies into a fixed set of outcomes, such as interested or not interested, so the sequence and the team react correctly.
- Return visit
- A reader coming back to a proposal after their first visit, one of the clearest signs the document is being discussed.
S
- Sending window
- The weekdays and hours during which a campaign is allowed to send, applied in each prospect's own local time.
- Sequence
- The ordered set of emails a campaign sends to each prospect, with delays between steps and a stop the moment they reply.
- Snippet
- A placeholder like {{first_name}} in a template, replaced for each recipient with data from their record, with a fallback if empty.
- Soft bounce
- A temporary delivery failure, such as a full mailbox or a busy server, where the address itself is probably still valid.
- SPF
- A DNS record listing the servers allowed to send email for your domain, so receivers can spot forged senders.
- Suppression list
- Addresses and whole domains you will never email again: unsubscribes, complaints, clients and anyone who asked to be left alone.
T
- To check queue
- A holding area for prospects a campaign will not send to yet because something looks wrong with their data or address.
- Tracking domain
- A domain you own, set up with a CNAME, through which opens and clicks are tracked instead of a host shared with other senders.
V
- Variant testing (A/B)
- Sending two versions of the same step to comparable prospects and comparing outcomes to learn which wording works.
W
- Webhook
- An HTTP request your outbound tool sends to a URL you choose when something happens, such as a reply or a bounce.
- White-label offer
- A proposal page served on your own domain with your logo, so the reader never sees the tracking vendor's name.
- Workspace
- The shared account in which a team keeps its mailboxes, prospects, campaigns, offers and settings, with owner and member roles.