Online Marketing Glossary

This is used to compare 2 versions (or more) of an email or banner campaign to determine which one performs better in terms of Open Rate (OR), Click Through Rate (CTR) or Conversion rate. The majority of A/B testing we are doing on behalf of our Customers is about sending variants of emails with different images, subject lines, Call To Action (CTA) or messages in order to use the most performing campaign when targeting a larger audience.

The number of times viewers of a banner ad click on it to view the full offer. Ad clicks will be shown in the post-campaign report that we sent for any banner ad displayed on the TraceParts CAD platform or on the monthly TraceParts newsletter.

A software installed on a server which is used for the delivery of banner campaigns placed on websites. This software is used for reporting as well as defining the banner add display rules (for exemple duration, place, frequency and number of impressions).

You may have already received emails where a picture went missing… Some email client servers may decide to simply block images contained within email messages. While the Alt tag can not prevent images to be blocked from client servers, it allows to display a text where the image should have been displayed. Note that this text will only appear if the picture does not appear so it is always good practice to use alt tag for an image when creating a HTML file of your email campaign.

Part of online marketing that includes graphics, animations or video-content. Clicking on a banner usually leads to a landing page of the campaign.

Banner ads can be created in different sizes and formats. However, there are standardized formats which are accepted by all ad servers and agencies as well as the Ad Technology Standards. As standards evolve, please refer to our banner ad section to see what formats are accepted on the TraceParts CAD-content platform and on the TraceParts newsletter

A metric used to quantify the display of banner ads on a web page or on a website. Banner ads are usually based on a per impression basis using Cost Per Mille (CPM), where mille refers to 1,000 impressions for pricing.

Behavioural targeting (also known as behavioural or interest based advertising). Behavioural Targeting offers the possibility to target an internet user based on his browsing history. In the case of  TraceParts users, you can select them for your digital marketing campaigns based on the category(ies) of products they have downloaded.

A Bounce happens when an e-mail is not able to reach its intended recipient. One has to differentiate between a Soft Bounce, meaning Mails which are not deliverable because the mailbox is full, as well as Hard Bounces. The latter happen when the mail address is invalid or doesn’t exist at all. Generally the number of bounces should be as low as possible so that mail providers won’t mark the sender as spam. This factor is very critical for us, therefore we take the utmost effort to maintain a database of high quality and valid mail addresses which are constantly being monitored.

Brand Awareness describes the amount of people within a target group that know this brand. TraceParts offers outstanding possibilities via Banner Ads and Newsletter Ads on our CAD-plattform and through other online-marketing services to strenghten the awareness of brands to its users.

A call to action aims to persuade a visitor to perform a certain act immediately. “Buy Now!” and “Register Today!” are some common examples. The call to action is intended to improve the market’s response rate to the ad copy, as its absence may cause a visitor to forget about the ad and move on to other things.

A campaign describes a timely limited activity to reach a certain goal. In regards to online-marketing there are five steps to a campaign: Planning, Concept Phase, Content Creation, Execution and Reporting.

The simplest definition is that Click-Through Rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing your ad.

Conversion is when a visitor to your website or a recipient of your email campaign takes an action that you want them to take. It could be signing up for an email newsletter, creating an account with a login and password, making a purchase, downloading your app, or something else entirely. Whatever it is you want your visitors to do, this action is what you are going to measure and what you are looking to optimize

The conversion rate is the percentage of people who took an action that you wanted them to take versus the people who didn’t. It is usuually calculated in relation to the number of marketing medium impressions (banners) or number of sent mails (e-mail marketing).

The terms pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-click (CPC) are sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes as distinct terms. When used as distinct terms, PPC indicates payment based on click-throughs, while CPC indicates measurement of cost on a per-click basis for contracts not based on click-throughs.

Costs for when a banner ad is displayed 1,000 times.

The combination of different communication channels that are used to communicate a marketing message.

The sum of all clicks generated by an email-campaign. These are all the clicks combined instead of the single-clicks triggered by a recipient.

The sum of all visits to a website or a landing page.

The capability of an email-marketing software to send a high number of mails and actually deliver them to the intended recipients inbox.

All sales processes that are done via the internet.

All marketing activities which are done via the sending of emails.

The technical element of email marketing is the email-marketing software. This software is either Desktop or cloud-based and is used for the technical realisation of the e-mail-marketing campaign. Ideally the software covers the complete process of the campaign. Starting with the selection of the email addresses, content creation, sending, management of blacklists and bounces up to the reporting at the end.

Offers the possibility to select a target group via e-mail-marketing software or an ad-server based on the geographical location of the users. The selection can be a certain country up to postal codes of cities.

Hypertext Markup Language is a collection of commands (tags) which are used for the layout and formatting of elements placed on a website or an HTML email. When developing an email in HTML one has to know that not all tags are displayed equally by the recipients mail-client, therefore it can differ from a website in a web browser. To provide the best possible experience for our users the campaign manager test all mailing HTML-templates in different email clients and operating systems to ensure that your marketing message is delivered with the highest quality.

A landing page is a website that a user reaches once he/she clicks on a link in a marketing medium (e-Mail, Banner). The landing page should then provide a Call-to-Action for example subscribing to your newsletter or registration to a seminar.

A Lead is a contact that came to you via an online-marketing campaign and was then qualified to be used for further business actions.

Lead Generation is a generic term to describe all marketing actions aiming at generating leads which will later translate in gaining new customers.

Online-Marketing or Digital-Marketing is a generic term that includes all marketing activities which are done via online-technology and online-media.

Surveys that are exclusively realised using online-technologies. Starting with the target group, the creation of the invitation email, the survey itself and also the reporting of the survey. We are able to provide a survey to match your specific needs.

Open rate is a measure of how many people on an email list open (or view) a particular email campaign.

Opt-in email advertising or permission marketing is a method of advertising by email wherein the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it.

Opt-out describes the process of clicking a special link within an e-mail campaign to unsubscribe from the mailing list to no longer receive marketing emails.

This is the percentage of unique email addresses that ‘bailed’. They didn’t have an interest in your message so they unsubscribed.

Page Impression shows the total number of times a web page was loaded.

Permission Marketing is about recipients explicitly giving their consent to receive information or advertisement in written or digital form. Our e-mail marketing for example is permission marketing, since all recipients give their expressed consent (via Opt-In) to receive our email campaigns.

A prospect in regards to marketing is defined as a potential customer.

Occurs after the sending of an e-mail campaign and is the same mail (with possibly small changes) being sent again. Often the Subject or content of the mail is slightly changed. The Resend includes only recipients which have not opened the first mail, this raises the chance of a much better conversion for our customers.

The Retention Rate or customer loyalty rate shows the percentage of customers which are still customers of a company after a defined period of time. Online-Marketing offers perfect tools like email marketing to have special targeted campaigns to increase customer loyalty.

SEA (Search Engine Advertising) is part of Search Engine Marketing. It will display paid ads within search engine results that were previously defined via Keywords.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) includes all marketing tools and activities which have the goal to raise the visits to a website with the use of search engines.

The Sending Time is the time when an email marketing campaign is being sent to the recipients of such a campaign. The sending time plays an important role in the success of a e-mail campaign and should be chosen wisely. Generally to differentiate between a B2B- and B2C-campaign. At TraceParts, we usually send B2B-campaigns from Tuesdays to Thursdays between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. A B2C-campaign should be sent in the late afternoon or weekend. Extensive test regarding the best sending time for your target groups is an important part of a successful campaign.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) include all activities to optimize a website both technically and from an editorial point of view to ensure a high ranking in search results.

Spam are messages (e-mail, short messages, etc)  sent to a recipient without them having requested or given their prior consent to receiving such messages.

The Squeeze Page is a single website page designed to reinforce a Call To Action (CTA) such as opt-in for a newsletter, watching a video or get more information about a product. Squeeze Pages are often used as Landing Pages in email marketing or banner campaigns.

The Subject Line in an email-marketing campaign plays an important role in regards to the opening rate. Length of a Subject Line, description of the message content are one of the many factors which will directly impact the opening rate (and therefore the Click Through Rate!)

A Suspect is a person you have not contacted yet but is considered to be a potential user of your products or services.  All customers were suspects once and the conversion rate of your marketing campaigns will highly depend on how your target your suspects.

Targeting describes the process of delivering information to a pre-defined target group to maximize your conversion rate. TraceParts eMail marketing campaigns for example can be targeted by country, activity, position, type of product downloaded, company size, industry and much more.

Text ads are text-based advertisements which are usually distinguished by an increased performance in terms of perception and click-through rate compared to banner ads. One of the main reasons for this increased performance is that text ads are not perceived as advertisements. At TraceParts, for instance, text ads are positively received by users as they are placed in the newsletter section and they do not interrupt the read flow due to their seamless integration.

Tracking includes the recording of a user’s interaction with an online medium. This can range from surfing on a website to clicking within an e-mail. The aim of the analysis of the data thus obtained is to optimize websites and online marketing campaigns.

Visit of a website which can be assigned to exactly one person. If a website is visited by one unique visitor more than once within one month it is still one single unique visit.

Viral Marketing describes the distribution of admessages of products or services via mouth to mouth, without the need of a specific action to the target group. Usually viral marketing happens in social media networks. Usually a viral campaign, if done in a good way, develop their own dynamic, therefore it is important to plan these types of campaigns reasonably.

A Visitor is a person who visited a website.