Direct Marketing Database Terms
As promised, we have listed below some of the Direct Marketing Terms used regularly in our industry. In addition, we have included various levels of additional explanation, which we hope you will find useful.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
When looking for a direct marketing database, remember these terms:
A/B split – to test a campaign, sending out a percentage split of two versions is sensible, often to test responses to different messages.
Affiliate – a person or company linked to a campaign as a referrer or sales agent.
Append – if you already own a database, you may wish to append additional fields to your existing bases, such as telephone number or email address.
Campaign – an individual mail/email/telemarketing programme. Each campaign should be measured and judged separately.
Data Cleansing – removing inaccuracies and out-of-date contact information and updating with relevant details.
Click-through – a positive response to a link in an email. Click-through is a crucial measurement in judging the success of a campaign, as there is a strong indication of the level of interest in an email campaign.
CTPS – Corporate Telephone Preference Service – this is the central opt-out register allowing corporate subscribers to register their preference not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing telephone calls to either all their organisation’s telephone numbers or to certain numbers. It is a legal requirement that companies do not make such calls to numbers registered.
De-dup – De-duplicate or de-duplication of a B2B data list, removing any unnecessary duplicates.
Fold – The fold or more than likely referred to as – above the fold. The most important part of your message needs to be displayed at the top of a direct mail or email marketing piece to engage with recipients and encourage them to read further.
Follow-up – the most neglected part of the process. After the flush of creating and dispatching a campaign, the most crucial element is following up on interest to clinch the sale.
Fulfilment – the dispatch of your direct mail data or email marketing campaign, completion of your order or any action taken as a result of your campaign.
GAS – Gone Away Suppression – It is vital to screen your contact base against various national suppression files immediately before launching your campaign. This checks your data against files such as Royal Mail to ensure that you no longer mail contacts at an address, saving you time and money.
HTML email – Email formatted using Hyper Text Mark-up Language, as opposed to plain english text email. Basically, any email that incorporates pictures and logos normally formatted in a narrower style on the page is an HTML email. It’s one of the ways to help your message to stand out.
Hybrid – A pricing model which is based on a combination of CPM and performance-related prices.
Landing Page – the specific destination for click-throughs from a campaign, often produced as a temporary site or page specifically related to a particular campaign.
List – refers to a data list that is made up of a specific set of segmented contacts.
LTV – Lifetime Customer Value – Judging the value of a customer’s potential spending across their life and not just from a single transaction.
Mail sort – a Royal Mail service offering discounted postal rates for mail which is, to varying degrees, pre-sorted by the sender.
MC – Multi-Channel – A style of the campaign with a co-ordinated use of several different direct marketing techniques, which can include email, direct mail and telemarketing
Microsite – a website set up for a particular campaign, including a carefully planned landing page that often includes individuals’ ability to sign up for special offers or a newsletter.
Data Mining – data mining is a technique used regularly to source variables that are important to your campaigns, including the what, where, when, why, who and how.
Open Rates – As with click-throughs, a key measure of the response to any campaign. Whether an email has been opened can be tracked and is a key initial signifier of interest.
Seed – To monitor the correct use of a rented direct marketing database, i.e. single use only, ‘seeds’ are placed in the database. These are ordinary-looking contacts which, when contacted, a notification is sent to the data provider.
Segmentation includes choosing criteria specific for your campaign, i.e. splitting your direct mail lists by geographic location and industry, to target genuinely interested businesses in your products/services.
SIC Codes – These are national standard classifications of industries or market sectors, with each industry designated a 4-digit SIC code, i.e. 2750 Commercial Printing; 3570 Computer and office equipment. Data can be segmented using these codes to target just the market sector(s) you wish to reach.
Solo – A one-off campaign with a strong promotional offer and the intention of building a customer list rapidly.
Solus – no other client promotional items will be used within the campaign, and the focus will remain on the main advertising of a single client.
Subject Line – this is the title line of an email campaign that entices the recipient to open the email and read further.
Suppression – the removal from data lists of, principally, deceased or gone away.
Telemarketing – not to be confused with telesales. This is a joined-up approach to your marketing, using the phone as an integral part of prospecting and follow-up.
Have we missed anything?
We have also detailed further information in our marketing abbreviations insights too. Is there a subject that you would like to know more about? For example, what is data-driven marketing?
Send us a direct message on Twitter, and our team will investigate further and any updates too.
We would be happy to help further and maybe even add to our ever-growing blog piece. So if you need any further explanation or help in implementing any of these concepts, please talk to us – at BDP, we are here to help.
