The Best And Most Comprehensive Email Marketing And Affiliate Marketing Glossary

The Best And Most Comprehensive Email Marketing And Affiliate Marketing Glossary

A

• A/B Split Test – 
  • A way of testing by comparing two versions of an email, subject line, offer, etc. to see which performs better.
• Abandonment – 
  • When a customer puts items in their shopping cart but then leaves the  cart without finishing the purchase. 
• Above the Fold –  
  • The top of a homepage, blog or online content that viewers can see when opening the page before scrolling down.
• Accessibility – 
  • Writing emails in the most understandable and usable way for as many people as possible, regardless of their individual abilities.
• Action Life Cycle –  
  • The cycle of events a customer needs to complete in order to complete an action, such as make a purchase or download a file.
• Action Referral Period –  
  • The amount of time a “cookie” remains active for an affiliate to get credit for a purchase or action. The amount of time varies by affiliate program.
• Action –  
  • The desired customer event on a website that leads to a sale, clicking a link, downloading a file, or other event.
• Active Publisher –  
  • An affiliate account that is in use. The active publisher account becomes active when a customer has completed a transaction between a website and the affiliate account.

• Active Publisher –  
  • An affiliate account through which there is activity. The active publisher account goes active as soon as a website has completed an action that results in a sales transaction between the website and the affiliate.
• Ad Blocker –  
  • Software that is designed to block pop-up ads from being seen on a visitor’s web browser. 
• Ad Display –  
  • When an ad is successfully displayed on a browser without interference from ad blockers.

• Ad network – 
  • A company that connects website owners to advertisers. This is where affiliate ads are found and links are produced for website owners to place on their sites.
• Ad Stream –  
  • The ad’s that are displayed on a website for the visitor to see. 

• Advertiser CID –  
  • Advertisers Company Identification. This is a string of text that is used to distinguish an individual or company from the advertiser network.
• Advertiser Service Agreement –  
  • The agreement between the advertiser and website or  affiliate network. This agreement is a legally binding contract to protect the affiliate program, advertiser and/or the website.
• Advertiser –  
  • A company that places an ad on a website, or through an affiliate program, to promote a service or products. Website owners get paid for the space the ad’s use on the website.
• Adware – 
  • also known as “spyware”. Unwanted programs downloaded without knowledge. 
• Affiliate Agreement –  
  • An agreement between the affiliate and a website. The agreement will state what types of services or products the affiliate is promoting and the commission the affiliate will receive.
• Affiliate Link – 
  • A unique code in the form of a hyperlink that tracks activity of a visitor on an affiliate website. The code can be embedded into text or picture. This link tells the affiliate network who gets credit for the activity of a visitor. 
• Affiliate Marketing –  
  • A form of marketing where an online retailer or service provider pays an external website a commission for directing traffic to a product or service.
• Affiliate network – 
  • A website where advertisers and affiliates connect. These networks provide a place for advertisers to make their products available for affiliates to promote. These networks also track activities and payments between the advertisers and affiliates.
• Affiliate Program –  
  • A system where a  person or website promotes an affiliate link and gets a financial compensation for generating leads, clicks or sales for a merchant.
• Affiliate Solution Provider –  
  • A third-party company or website that connects affiliate marketers with websites to promote their affiliate links. The third-party company can  handle legal and administrative documents and task. Task such as payments and website traffic tracking and contracts.
• Affiliate – 
  • A person that promotes a product or service in return receives a commission.

• Affiliate, or publisher – 
  • This is a person or company that promotes the products of an advertiser through a tracked Affiliate Link. An affiliate generates traffic for the advertiser to get clicks, leads, or sales.
• Affinity Marketing –  
  • The type of marketing strategy that monitors buying patterns of certain customer types. This strategy allows marketing specialists to target specific customer types to promote related products.

• Aggregator Site –  
  • A type of website that is primarily used to gather third-party information for other websites, companies and services. Users submit their websites to these aggregator sites to increase traffic.
• Alt Tag –  
  • A type of tag where the text displayed is a link to another page or website. The text displayed is not the link address. The displayed text is what the author wants the reader to see/

• Alt Text – 
  • Alternative text is displayed when an image doesn’t show up on the website. Also known as “anchor text”. 
• AMP – 
  • A programming language to make highly interactive emails.
• AMP script – 
  • The proprietary scripting language of Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
• Analytics – 
  • Data that measures performance.
• Animated GIF – 
  • An image that uses the GIF’s animation abilities. 
• Anonymizer –  
  • A software designed to hide an IP address from displaying on the website or browser. 
• API – 
  • Application Programming Interface is a set of standardized coding rules that other software’s can use to send and request information between software’s.

• Applet –  
  • Software application used in a browser to display some types of graphics or animation, or it also allows a site to run database queries.
• Archived Link – 
  • When an advertiser no longer wants to use an affiliate link this link can be archived to stop any further payments to the website or affiliate link owner.

• Attachment – 
  • A file that is sent in an email, but not part of the text in the email.
• Attribution – 
  • A form of tracking an affiliate link through multiple web pages.
• Authentication – 
  • A security system that verifies the sender and the receiver.
• Auto-Download Offers – 
  • When content is downloaded automatically without the user’s consent.
• Autoresponder – 
  • An email that is sent automatically in response to a trigger.  This trigger can be signing up on a website, or sending an email to a mailbox. 
• Average Order Value –  
  • AOV, is the metric that is used to determine the average  purchase amount a user spends in a defined time.

B

• B2B – 
  • Business-to-business exchange of products or services
• B2C – 
  • Business -to-consumer exchange of products or services
• Backlink – 
  • Incoming link from one webpage to another.
• Banner Ad – 
  • An ad in the form of an image with an affiliate link to advertise a product or service on a website. 
• Base Rate –  
  • The lowest rate an affiliate will earn for the required action.
• Behavioral Targeting – 
  • When advertisers analyze a customer’s shopping, browsing and buying habits over time and show ads for similar products or services based on the pattern the shopper has.
• Beta –  
  • A test version of a product, service or software. 

• BIMI – 
  • Acronym for Brand Indicators for Marketing Identification.
• Blacklist – 
  • Another term for blocklist, or a list of email addresses that have been blocked because of security reasons or known to be a spammer.
• Black Hat SEO –  
  • A term used for unethical SEO practices. Examples include keyword stacking, cookie stuffing, keyword stuffing, using keywords unrelated to a product or spamy blogging techniques. These types of practices could result in negative rankings from Google and other search providers.

• Blast – 
  • A way of sending bulk or mass emails to an email list. This can be used to notify a list of people of new content on a site and keep them involved.
• Blocklist – 
  • Another term for blacklist, or a list of email addresses that have been blocked because of security reasons or known to be a spammer.

• Blog – 
  • Blog is an abbreviation for “web log.” A website with articles and/or videos around a selected niche, most use SEO to drive traffic to the site. Most blogs monetize the traffic through ads displayed or affiliate offers.. 
• Bonus – 
  • 1. Extra money an affiliate can earn by getting to milestones in the affiliate program.
  • 2. Extra items that a customer can get by performing an action. Such as eBooks, white papers, guides, etc..

• Bounce (Hard) – 
  • When an email fails to be delivered permanently, many times because the email address no longer exists.
• Bounce (Soft) – 
  • When an email fails to be delivered temporarily for a variety of reasons, including: full inboxes, messages being too large, a server being temporarily offline, etc. 
• Bounce Rate – 
  • The ratio, or percentage, of emails that fail to be delivered.
• Bulk Mail – 
  • Emails that are sent out to a large group of email addresses, like a newsletter. 

C

• Call-To-Action  – 
  • CTA The action you want a visitor to take, such as click a button, click a link, buy a product or service, sign up on a mailing list, etc.
• CAN-SPAM – 
  • A set of rules for email marketing messages vs. spam. These rules should be known if you are in email marketing.  There is a schedule of giving fines for sending spam, but are rarely enforced.
• CASL – 
  • Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation, Rules that email marketers should use when interacting with Canadian recipients. Primarily related to gaining, recording, and maintaining consent from subscribers.
• Charge Back –  .
  • When a customer cancels a purchase or wants a refund. Any money the affiliate would have earned from that purchase it deducted from their account.
• Click Fraud –  
  • A website pays people, that are not real customers, to perform a task on a website to earn affiliate commissions. The website could also use software to do this.

• Click Rate (CR) – 
  • The number of clicks received compared to the number of visitors to a webpage or email, normally displayed as a percentage.
• Click To Open Rate (CTOR) – 
  • The percentage of people that opened an email and clicked a link.

• Click-Through Rate – 
  • Or CTR, is the rate a visitor clicks a specific link and continues on to the next page.  This is an important metric to measure in affiliate marketing. Knowing what links have the highest or lowest CTR will show you what is work and what is not on a website.
• Click-Through –  
  • A metric used to determine how many users click on a given link. Similar to CTR.
• Commission Rate –  
  • The amount of commission an affiliate will earn when a sale or action is completed on an affiliate website.
• Commission –  
  • The amount of money an affiliate earns when a visitor completes a task, such as clicking a link, visiting a page, submitting information, or making a purchase.

• Complaint – 
  • Someone making a complaint that your emails are spam or junk.. Too many spam complaints will impact your sender reputation and decrease deliverability.
• Consent – 
  • The permission given by a subscriber when signing up for your mailing list so you can send relevant email messages. The subscribers’ emails need to be collected, maintained, and honored to be compliant with CAN-SPAM. Subscribers need to be able to leave your list at any time.
• Consumer – 
  • A person that is a visitor to a site.  A person “consumes” the information on the website, fills a form, or completes a purchase.

• Content Farm – 
  • A website that produces content, normally in the form of articles, for their own or other websites.  This has become a derogatory term for sites that put out a lot of low quality content just to drive traffic to ads.  There are also content farms that produce good quality content produced ethically.
• Conversion Rate (CR) – 
  • The percent of visitors that take the intended action in an email campaign or on a webpage that you want them to take. This could be clicking a link, purchasing a product or service, replying, etc. The number of clicks that produced the desired result divided by the total number of clicks received and normally displayed as a percentage.
• Cookie expiration date – 
  • The amount of time that a “cookie” stays active on a user’s browser.  This can be a specific date, or amount of time. 

• Cookie Stuffing –  
  • A black hat practice where many “cookies” are placed on a user’s browser that have the appearance that the user has used an affiliate link to reach a webpage. Most times the user has no idea that this has happened to them. This is a way for affiliates to make commissions from unsuspecting users.
• Cookie –  
  • This is a small piece of code that is saved in a browser and tracks information about a user.  Depending on the type of cookie being used various information is saved, such as; what pages were viewed, what links were clicked, time on a page, and more.  This is also how affiliate networks know how to credit an affiliate, by the cookies stored on the browser that are passed along during a user’s activities.
• Core metrics –  
  • The most important data about your site or marketing campaign.
• Cost Per Action –  
  • Or CPA, some affiliate programs pay when a visitor completes an action, such as submitting an email address or zip code.  This action does not have to be a purchase of a product for an affiliate to get a commission.
• Cost Per Click –  
  • Or CPC, The fee that is paid when a visitor clicks on an ad that you are paying to display through a network, such as Google Ads.
• Cost Per Lead –  
  • Or CPL, The fee that is paid to a website for each lead received with  customer private information such as; email addresses, demographics, phone numbers or other contact information.
• Cost Per Order –  
  • Or CPO, is a measurement that determines how much it costs to get an order completed. Dividing the number of orders by the cost of placing an ad or paying a website for sharing a link.
• Cost Per Sale –  
  • Or CPS, the same as CPO except it determines the cost of the sale instead of the cost of the order. Number of sales divided by the cost of placing an ad or paying a website for sharing a link.
• Cost per View –  
  • Or CPV, The fee that is paid  for each time their ad is displayed to a visitor.
• Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions –  
  • Or CPM, The fee paid for every one-thousand impressions viewed by users. 
• Crawlers – 
  • These are the programs that scan and analyze websites to determine their value and rank the results for certain keywords in a browser. 
• Creative –  
  • Marketing materials that advertisers and affiliates use in websites. Most often in reference to images and videos, but can be any type of media  used to attract a visitor to complete an action.

• CSS – 
  • Cascading Style Sheets, a programming language used to style HTML email campaigns and webpages, it also enables certain types of animation or interactivity.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – 
  • How much it costs to gain a new customer. Included in this metric is the cost of advertising.
•  Customer Lifetime value – 
  • The value that a customer is worth over the lifetime that the customer is interacting with your site. 

D

• Daily Budget – 
  • The budget limit for your campaign on a daily basis.

• Data Transfer –  
  • Sending data between 2 parties.
• Database –  
  • A file that stores information and is sorted and organized for use by a program.

• Data feed – 
  • A stream of information that is continuously updated for a user to view.
• Dedicated IP –
  • An IP address that does not change for a connection..
• Dedicated Server – 
  • Similar to dedicated IP. The ports on a server are always used for the same connections.

• Deep Link –  
  • This type of link refers to a hyperlink that points to a specific website or content on a site. It points to content that is not the website’s homepage itself but rather is linked somewhere else on the site. This is also known in the web world as a direct link.
• Default URL –  
  • This is normally the home page of a website.  A website designer choses a page that is displayed when the visitor enters a URL into a browser.

• Deliverability – 
  • The ability to send emails that reach a mailbox and are not dropped, bounced, or blocked for some reason.
• Delivery Rate (DR) –
  • Similar to deliverability but displayed as a percent of sent emails that reach a mailbox and are not dropped, bounced, or blocked for some reason.
• Design System – 
  • A system of designing and building emails. This could consist of modular components, codes, and rules, to enable faster, more consistent email production.
• Disclosure – 
  • A statement or document that explains an affiliate may earn a commission as a result of an action that is taken by the visitor. It is important to have one to be compliant with FTC laws.
• DKIM – 
  • One of the major authentication protocols in use. Stands for Domain Keys Identified Mail. Essentially a digital signature that helps verify a sender.
• DMARC – 
  • One of the major authentication protocols in use. Stands for Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance. Essentially another digital signature that helps verify a sender and monitor domain protections.
• Domain Authority – 
  • A score system created by Moz based on 0-100 points, this score predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. 0 id bad, 100 is the best chance.
• Double Opt-In – 
  • This is when a visitor subscribes to an email list, then receives an email that asks them to click a link to confirm that the new subscriber wants to be on the list. If the subscriber does not confirm they will not be on the email list for future emails. 
• Drop-Down –  
  • Or Drop Down Menu, or Drop Down Box.  Is a list of options that open up that a user can select from.  
• Dynamic Content – 
  • Content that is generated and personalized to the person viewing the content.  This is usually done with adding short pieces of code into an email.  Such as putting the person’s name they entered in the opt-in page into the emails that are sent to them, or looking at browser information and putting the users location into the content.  Text or images can be dynamic.
• Dynamic Link –  
  • A type of hyperlink that can be changed based on the visitor’s actions to take them to the page the webpage designer wants the visitor to go to.  

E

• E-Commerce – 
  • Buying or selling goods and services over the internet.
• Earnings –  
  • The money that you earn through an online business.
• Effective Clicks –  
  • The number of clicks that produce the desired effect.  
• Electronic Funds Transfer – 
  • Transferring money in a digital form.

• Email Alias – 
  • Setting up an alias email address allows one inbox to receive messages from more than one email address.
• Email Appending – 
  • The process of taking customer data to match email addresses against another known list. Often a shady practice that subverts the formal consent process.
• Email Campaign –  
  • A marketing technique where emails are sent in an order to persuade the recipients to complete an action. This could be to get a download, visit a web page, or purchase a product.
• Email Client – 
  • The software used to send, receive, and read emails. Some large common email clients are Gmail, Apple Mail, Yahoo! Mail, etc. 
• Email Collection – 
  • To collect email addresses. This is a marketing technique where websites have a place where a visitor can submit their email address to be put on a mailing list.  Most times there is an incentive for the visitor to enter their email address, such as a free download of a file with information the visitor wants.

• Email Marketing – 
  • Collecting email addresses and sending messages to subscribers to promote products, services, and other related content.
• Email Service Provider (ESP) – 
  • Software’s that handles the automation of email marketing campaigns.  
• Engagement Time –  
  • The amount of time that a visitor spends on a webpage.  

• Engagement – 
  • The measure of how well your subscribers interact with your email campaigns. 
• Envelope – 
  • What is seen in the inbox preview before a message opened. This typically consists of the sender name, subject line, and preview text.

• Event Date –  
  • The recorded date that is used for payment, data analysis and processing records.
• Expire –  
  • To end. The term that is used for when an affiliate or advertiser chooses to end a relationship with a publisher or vice versa.

F

• Field – 
  • A general term used to describe an area on a webpage where data can be entered, such as a place to enter an email address or select an option from a list.
• First Click –  
  • If a visitor clicks on more than one affiliate link for the same product, the first affiliate link owner gets credit for the action.
• Forward – 
  • When an email is received, then the same email is sent onto another person.  The next person can see all of the previous activity.
• Frequency –  
  • The number of times an ad is shown to a visitor in any given time frame. 
• Funnel – 
  • This is a system where leads are captured and then they start on a journey to take an action.  This action in most cases is a sale. This journey most times is a chain of emails, but can also include phone calls, webinars, or other content. This content is to entice the reader to stay active and produce the desired result.

G

• GDPR –  
  • General Data Protection Regulation and has a big impact on data collection and consent requirements for email marketers. Responsible for all those annoying banners on websites. A piece of legislation designed to protect EU citizens.
• GEO Target – 
  • selecting a specific country, city, or location for an ad to be displayed.

H

• Homepage –  
  • The front page, or main page, of a website that most visitors land on when visiting a website.
• HTML – 
  •  Hypertext Markup Language, a standardized system for tagging text files to display the correct font, color, graphic, and hyperlink effects on web pages.
• HTTP – 
  •  Hypertext transfer protocol, a communications protocol used to connect to Web servers on the Internet or on a local network. Most websites use HTTPS now because of added security. 

I

• Image Blocking – 
  • When an email client blocks images from being displayed due to security reasons. This should be considered when designing emails, always including ALT TEXT.
• Image Pixel –  
  • The smallest individual color point in an image. If an image is 250 x 250. This means there are 250 pixels tall and 250 pixels wide. For a total of 62,500 total pixels to make up the image. The more pixels the image has the larger the image is and space it will require for storage and the more time it will take to load on a website. Also the more pixels an image contains the better the quality of the image.

• Image Size –  
  • The number of pixels an image has. If the image is 150 x 200, this means the image is 150 pixels tall and 200 pixels wide.
• Impression –  
  • This is the number of times an ad is displayed to a visitor.

• In-House – 
  • Advertisers that manage an affiliate program by themselves using an affiliate software or tracking system and not an affiliate network.
• Incentivized Affiliates – 
  • Advertisers that use promotions like free giveaways, discounts, prizes, and more to attract traffic to their affiliate link.
• Inclusion – 
  • Creating emails, content, and experiences that include people that have historically been excluded, because of their race, gender, sexuality, abilities, etc. 
• Influencer – 
  • A person on social media that has a large following and is able to promote a product or service to that following.
• Integration – 
  • When two or more tools work together, typically through an API, plugin, or connective tool. Adding an item to a webpage, such as a link or contact form, that is connected to another site or service.
• Interactive Email – 
  • Email that a subscriber can perform an action within the email that will change the layout or content of the email. 
• Internal Linking – 
  • A hyperlinks that takes visitors to another page of the same website.

• Internet Service Provider – 
  • ISP, The companies that provide access to servers that are connected on the internet.
• IP Warming – 
  • The process by which a new IP address or sending server is “warmed up” by slowly sending to increasingly larger audiences while monitoring email deliverability.
• Item-Based Commissions –  
  • Most affiliate programs offer a percent of a sale or a flat rate commission.  Some affiliate programs offer a different percent or rate for each item in the program. 

J

• JavaScript –  
  • A type of programming language that allows for more interactive effects on a website.
• JPG or JPEG –  
  • Joint Photographic Experts Group, This is a type of file that compresses images into smaller file sizes for easier and faster displaying and transferring.

K

• Keyword Links –  
  • Links that contain the keywords the advertiser wants to rank for.
• Keyword Research – 
  • The process of finding search terms, or a keyword,  people use to look up in search engines to get traffic information.
• Keyword –  
  • A keyword is the words and phrases that a user types into a search engine to find what they want to see.  
• Kinetic Email –
  • A new term for Interactive Email.

L

• Landing Page –  
  • A page that a visitor is sent to when clicking a link, for most websites this is the home page. For an advertiser this may be a page that is try to sell something to a visitor.
• Lead –  
  • This is a visitor to a website that information has been collected from and can be marketed to later.  A visitor can submit an email address or a phone number that later a marketing will start sending emails to or call back in the attempt to sell a product or service.
• Lifetime Value –  
  • Also Customer Lifetime Value, LTV or CLTV. The value that a customer is worth over the lifetime that the customer is interacting with your site. 
• Link Building – 
  • A process of getting hyperlinks from other websites to link back to your website. The more links to your site the search engines see the more authority your site holds in the rankings.

• Link Code –  
  • This is the link an affiliate is given that tells the affiliate network what product a visitor is looking for and what affiliate gets the credit.
• Link – 
  • Or Hyperlink, is a clickable part of a website such as text or an image that takes the visitor to another webpage.

• List Broker – 
  • People that have lists of email addresses for sale or rent. Don’t buy them.
• List Churn – 
  • The percentage of subscribers that opt-out from your email list.
• List Fatigue – 
  • A list becomes Fatigued when too many emails are sent, unrelated content is sent, or other reasons the subscribers don’t want to receive your emails anymore. This is a reason subscribers opt-out from your list.
• List Hygiene – 
  • Keeping your subscriber lists up to date by honoring unsubscribes, removing bounced addresses, and running reengagement campaigns to keep subscribers active and removing inactive subscribers.
• List – 
  • A collection of people who have opted into receiving your emails.
• Listing – 
  • The name for an ad that is displayed on a website.
• Localization – 
  • The process of adapting content to a geographic location, cultural region, local customs, language, etc. to be more inclusive.
• Login –  
  • The field where a user input their username and password to enter a secure section of a website.
• Loyalty Affiliates – 
  • Similar to incentivized affiliates, but these users make a longer term commitment and are required to purchase products and participate in activities.

M

• Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) – 
  • This is software used to set up, automate, and send marketing campaigns to email subscribers.
• Marketing Automation – 
  • Using tools and processes to automate sending emails to subscribers. 
• MarTech – 
  • The broad term for the technology, tools, and platforms that power marketing programs. Encompasses everything from planning tools to campaign creation tools, tracking and analytics tools, and everything in between.
• Meta Description – 
  • A description of a webpage to search engines and displayed to people searching.
• Meta Tags – 
  • Information that is used by browsers to determine what a website or webpage is about.
• Meta Title – 
  • The title that is displayed in search results of a browser.
• Metrics – 
  • The measurements of data used to measure the performance of email marketing campaigns. The output of analytics tools. Common metrics include Open Rate, Click To Open Rate, Deliverability Rate, etc.
• MIME Type – 
  • Part of email protocol that tells email clients what kind of email is being sent. The two most common in marketing are “text/plain” and “text/html”.
• Monthly Active Users –  
  • The number of users that visit a website in one month, or the last 30 days.
• Multivariate Test – 
  • A type of testing which compares different variables between campaigns in order to determine which variables work the best. Works well for broader tests on content, as opposed to the more focused A/B Split Test.

N

• Native advertising – 
  • These are ads that do not look like an ad, but look like part of the content the webpage is about.  

• Niche – 
  • This is a very defined segment within a market for a product or service. Example, “weight loss” segment of the market. “How to lose weight on a smoothie diet “ is a defined niche. 
• Niche Marketing – 
  • Targeting ads to a very specific group of people that are part of a niche.
• Nurture – 
  • Supplying visitors with valued content to make them come back and building trust. Often done through email.

O

• Offer – 
  • Any written, audio, or video content that an affiliate uses to advertise a product or service.
• OID –  
  • Order Identification, this number identifies the product ordered and the affiliate that the order came from.

• Omnichannel – 
  • An approach to marketing that attempts to create a seamless, engaging experience across different marketing channels like email, SMS, social, TV, etc. Email marketers are increasingly being called on to better integrate email with other channels.
• Onboarding – 
  • The process of welcoming new subscribers to a service by introducing them to benefits, features, etc. Normally done by automated series of emails.
• Open Rate (OR) – 
  • The percentage of subscribers that open an email. 

• Opt In –  
  • When a visitor voluntarily gives a website information and permission to have it, such as an email address or zip code.

• Opt-Out – 
  • When a subscriber decides not to receive emails from a campaign any longer. Typically happens with an “unsubscribe” link in an email 
• Order – 
  • When a customer pays for an item or service. 
• Organic Search –  
  • This is when a user types in a keyword in a browser. The browser returns results, and the user clicks on a link that is not a paid ad.
• Outbound Link – 
  • A hyperlink that takes a user off the website they are currently on, and takes the user to another website.

P

• PageRank – 
  • An algorithm used by search engines to rank websites in the search results. 
• Paid Search – 
  • When an advertiser pays a search engine to display a desired link to a website owned by the advertiser based on the user’s keywords entered.  

• Pay-for-Performance Marketing –  .
  • An  advertiser or affiliate gets paid based on performance milestones rather than on certain sales or actions.
• Pay-Per-Click –  
  • This is when an advertiser pays each time their ad link is clicked. 
• Pay-Per-Lead –  
  • Each time an affiliate provides lead information to a marketing company, the marketing company pays a fee to an affiliate.
• Pay-Per-Sale –  
  • The commission an affiliate earns for each sale made through an affiliate link.
• Payment Threshold– 
  • The amount of commissions an affiliate is required to earn before the payment is given to the affiliate.
• Payout –  
  • When the money earned by an affiliate is given to the affiliate, this could be a check in the mail or an electronic transfer to a bank.
• Performance based marketing – 
  • The better you perform as a marketer the more you earn. 
• Performance Incentive –  
  • Normally this means there are milestones that an affiliate reaches and receives a bonus or increased commission rate.

• Personalization – 
  • Making emails more relevant to the subscribers by customizing the content, design, or offer.
• Pixel 1×1 –  
  • A small graphic image that cannot be seen by the naked eye that is transparent on a webpage. This graphic is generally input into a link to help track the link and the click performance of each link.
• Placement –  
  • Where a link or ad is placed on a webpage or in an email. Placement is important, it needs to be in a place a user can easily see it and click on it.
• Plain Text – 
  • An email that does not use HTML or CSS code.
• PNG –  
  • Portable Network Graphic, PNG is an image format type. This format is better for graphic design and contains more information and is easier to edit than a JPG file.
• Poor quality traffic –
  • This is traffic that does not take the desired action you want on a webpage.  This can happen if the wrong audience is targeted in paid ads. 

• Pop-Under – 
  • This is a window that opens under the browser you are using and normally contains an ad or message. It won’t be seen until the browser is closed or minimized.
• Pop-Up –  
  • An ad or message that opens on top of the browser you are using. This can be triggered by an action or on a timer when on a webpage.
• PPC – 
  • Pay Per Click. This is when you pay a fee every time your ad is clicked. This is a very common type of paid advertising.

• PPL – 
  • Pay Per Lead, This is when an affiliate gets a commission for providing a lead, or contact information, to a merchant. 
• PPS – 
  • Pay Per Sale, this is when an affiliate gets a commission for sending a visitor to the merchant selling a product and making a sale.
• Pre-sell – 
  • When an affiliate convinces a visitor to a webpage that the product being promoted is what the visitor wants or needs before sending the visitor to the sales page where the product or service is purchased.

• Preference Center – 
  • A web page a user has access to in order to change the settings on what email list they are subscribed to and make changes to the subscriptions. 
• Preview Text – 
  • This is the short line of text that can be seen in most email inboxes before the message is opened. It gives the user an idea of what the message is about.

• Profile Targeting – 
  • This is when an advertiser selects a very specific type of user demographics to build a profile of the type person to target ads for products and services towards. 
• Program Category –  
  • The category in an advertiser’s program belongs. This is used by both publishers and advertisers for indexing purposes.
• Program Terms –  
  • This is the contract between an affiliate and the merchant that runs the affiliate program. 
• Promotion –  
  • This is when special pricing or extra incentives are offered to increase sales of a product or service.  
• Promotions Tab – 
  • A section in Gmail that automatically filters out promotional and marketing emails to make them easier for users to find.
• Publisher –  
  • The person or company that publishes a website, this can be a newspaper site, magazine site, blog site, or other type of written content.

Q

• QA – 
  • Quality Assurance. In the email marketing or affiliate marketing world this means that all parts of an email or webpage is working correctly. Those parts, to name a few, can be; spelling, hyperlinks, images, pages, email schedules, etc.

R

• Raw Clicks – 
  • The total number of clicks an affiliate link receives. 
• Real-Time –  
  • This is when information is updated as it is happening. The lag is normally only a few seconds.
• Recency, Frequency, Monetary (RFM) – 
  • Acronym for Recency, Frequency, Monetary. A model for analyzing the value of customers based on the recency of their last purchase, how frequently they purchase, and how much money they spend. Good for identifying your best customers.

• Redirect Setting –  
  • A redirect setting is when a visitor makes another visit to a site and the site owner wants a different page or information to be displayed, such as a different banner ad.
• Redirection – 
  • When a visitor clicks on a URL, but is then taken to a different URL.

• Reengagement – 
  • A way to get subscribers that have not been engaging with your emails or site to become active again. Normally this is an email campaign with offers or a form of interaction for the subscriber.
• Referral Period –  
  • The time that an affiliates cookie is active after a visitor clicks on the affiliates link. 30, 60, and 90 days are common. Other affiliate programs have longer and shorter time periods.
• Referring Domain – 
  • A website that has a backlink to another website.  Google loves websites that have a lot of backlinks pointing toward them. 
• Referring URL –  
  • A website that has a link to another website. The first website that directs a visitor to a second website is the referring URL.

• Rendering – 
  • How an image appears in an email or on a website.
• Reputation – 
  • The status of an email marketer.  If there are a lot of spam complaints your reputation go’s down. If you follow good email practices and have happy subscribers your reputation go’s up.
• Responsive Email – 
  • An email that automatically adjusts to a device’s screen size.
• Responsive Website – 
  • A website that automatically adjusts to a device’s screen size.
• Retention – 
  • The ability to keep a visitor on a website for a longer amount of time, or keeping an email subscriber interested in the content they are receiving and not unsubscribing from a list.
• ROI – 
  • Return On Investment. The amount of gain vs the amount of investment. Normally this is in terms of cost. For each dollar put into ads how much did you get back? There can also be other measurements. Was the amount of time invested worth the return?
• Revenue Per Email Sent (RPE) – 
  • How much money was earned divided by the number of emails sent in a campaign.
• Revenue – 
  • The amount of money earned before costs are subtracted.
• ROAS –  
  • Return On Advertising Spend. This is how much money was made from the ads that were paid for. You want the return to be more than the spend.

S

• Safelist – 
  • A list of senders that a subscriber has marked as trustworthy. 
• Sale –  
  • When products or services are purchased.
• Search Engine Marketing – 
  •  This is a method of using SEO practices to drive traffic to a webpage that has the intent to sell a product or service, or collect information for future marketing.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – 
  • Optimizing a website in a way that the search engines rank the site higher in the search results.  This is the best way to get free traffic to a website. 

• Search Keywords –  
  • These are the words and phrases that a person enters into a search engine to find results.  Understanding keywords and how to research, find, and use them is extremely important in the affiliate marketing world. 
• Search Policy Guidelines –  
  • The guidelines set by an advertiser and publisher as to what types of search policies and tactics are allowed to attract visitors.
• Secondary Language –  
  • Having a website, emails, or advertising content in other languages different from the primary language.

• Segmentation – 
  • This is dividing a group by any criteria to better target the users that are wanted.  A subscriber list can be segmented, for example, past buyers and non buyers. Or in paid advertising, segmenting a location, age, and gender to promote a product to increase the possibility of sales.
• Sender Name – 
  • The name or address that is displayed in the inbox.
• Sender Score – 
  • A score of your Sender Reputation that describes the overall health of your email marketing program, normally a score between 1-100.
• Session Duration –  
  • The amount of time a visitor stays on a webpage.

• Shared IP – 
  • An IP address or server that multiple senders can use to send email. 
• Shared Server – 
  • See Shared IP.

• Shopper ID – 
  • An identification number that is given to a registered user on a site.
• Simple Conversion Tracking Integration –  
  • This type of integration gives the advertiser more flexibility within the tracking. It allows the advertiser to create sale programs for pay-per-lead transactions and pay-per-sale transactions with various publisher. The functionality is somewhat limited, and it doesn’t allow special commission or itemizations.
• Single Opt-In – 
  • This is when a new subscriber to an email list does not need to confirm their address through a confirmation link that was sent to them.
• SKU –  
  • Stock Keeping Unit, a unique code given to every product. This number makes it able to track inventory of physical products, and a revision of a digital product.

• SMTP – 
  • Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. The standard protocol for sending email messages.
• Spam – 
  • Any unwanted email, regardless of whether or not an individual subscribed to it.
• SPF – 
  • Sender Policy Framework. One of the major authentication protocols in use. Works by detecting forged sender addresses and in concert with DKIM and DMARC to authenticate senders.
• Split Testing – 
  • Also called “A/B testing”. The practice of testing several different versions of content, copy and/or ads to understand which one works best for the target audience.
• Spy Pixel – 
  • A made up term used to sell people on yet another service. Email tracking requires consent and is one of the least invasive forms of online tracking.
• Subject Line – 
  • This is displayed in an inbox.  It is the area where a sender is supposed to tell the receiver what the message is about.
• Subscriber – 
  • An individual that has signed up to receive emails from you.
• Super Affiliates –  
  • The affiliates that generate most of the sales for a particular program.
• Suppression List – 
  • A list which is specifically used to prevent emails being sent to recipients. Typically refers to lists used to suppress unsubscribed people from getting emails, can also refer to lists used to prevent still-subscribed people from getting certain sends.

T

• Tag –  
  • A label put on a website for tracking.

• Targeted Marketing – 
  • Directing marketing materials to a specific group of people.  
• Template – 
  • A predesigned layout for content from an email to a webpage.
• Text Link –  
  • Text in an email or on a website that if clicked links to another page.
• Third party cookies – 
  • A cookie is placed on a website by someone other than the owner (a third party) and collects user data for the third party.
• Throttling – 
  • Limiting the number of emails a sender can send or that an ISP will receive. 

• Time-Delay Model –  
  • Another type of accreditation model for publishers, affiliates and advertisers. This gives an affiliate more credit for actions that are taken closer to the time of the sale of the product than first-click actions.
• Tracking Code –  
  • When signing up with an affiliate program each person will be given a code that identifies that person.  This code is what is tracked in the affiliate system and how commissions are paid.
• Tracking Method – 
  • The way in which tracking is done. This will depend on the software being used to do the tracking and what things are being tracked.

• Tracking Software – 
  • A software that does the tracking and analyzes the results of links that are setup with parameters that want to be tracked.
• Tracking – 
  • Collecting data from emails, websites, hyperlinks, etc. that are used to analyze what visitors or users are doing and where improvements can be made.
• Traffic source – 
  • A traffic source is the way visitors use to find a website.  It can be from search engines, other websites, email, advertisements, etc.

• Traffic –  
  • The number of visitors that visit a website in a time frame.  Most time frames are 1 month, or 30 days.  
• Transaction Fee – 
  • Most often this is a fee that a bank or credit card processor charges to transfer money.
• Transaction –  
  • The tracking of money that transfers from one account to another account. 
• Triggered Email – 
  • Any email that is automatically sent in reaction to a subscriber or user action.
• Two-Tier – 
  • An affiliate program that allows affiliates to earn commissions from their own sales and from the second-tier affiliates they recruited to participate in the program.

U

• Unique Clicks –
  • The number of clicks on a link by individual users, not repeat clicks. 
• Unique Opens – 
  • The number of first time opens by individual users, not repeat opens. 
• Unique Visitors –  
  • The number of visitors that are visiting a website or webpage for the first time.

• Unsubscribe – 
  • When a subscriber removes themselves from an email list.
• URL Parameter – 
  • Code that is added to the URL after the “?” symbol. This allows items like tag and track actions, trigger actions, and trackbacks to be used.

• URL –  
  • Uniform Resource Locator. This is a unique address of each website on the internet.
• User Interface – 
  • A device that allows a human to operate a machine or program. A device such as a computer, tablet, cell phone, etc.

V

• Value-Added Service – 
  • VAS, Is an option that a marketing team can offer clients to help increase profits. 
• Version – 
  • The current state that an item is at. A web page or email that has been changed is now version 2 or 3 or 4……

• View Through –  
  • After a user views an ad but does not click on the ad to go through to the ad page, this action is called a view through. This type of metric to determine which ads are not working.
• Visitor –  
  • A user who visits a web page. 

W

• Web View – 
  • A link to a version of an email that is on a server.  If an email is not being displayed properly a link to a web-view version should work to display the email body properly.

• Web-Based –  
  • A program that is accessed online and does not need to be downloaded to your computer to use it.
• Webpage –  
  • One page of an entire website. This could be: landing page, homepage, blog page or other page that is part of one website.
• White Hat SEO – 
  • The opposite of Black Hat SEO – This is using ethical methods of search engine optimization to improve search ranking and performance of a web page. To keep a website from being blacklisted always use White Hat SEO practices.