A – Z of Email Campaigns

Creating a new email campaign can sometimes be a minefield to new customers or clients.

Here we’ve accumulated a handy A-Z of keywords on the subject, which will hopefully demystify some of the jargon used and what you may expect from an email campaign project.

A is for…. Attachment

When referring to e-mail, an attachment is a file sent with the an e-mail message. An attachment can be a picture, a word document, a movie, a sound file, an excel document, or any other file that requires another program to open it.

B is for…. BCC

Short for Blind Carbon Copy, BCC sends copies of an e-mail without displaying any of the names or e-mails in the e-mail. Keep in mind that most programs will not display the BCC field; however, anyone familiar with their e-mail program can enable this field to see all e-mail addresses and names.

C is for…. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

In email marketing, CTR is the average number of people who click through a link. It is calculated as the number of unique clicks divided number of emails that where delivered successfully, and is expressed as a percentage. The unique clicks refer to the number of different people who click on links within your email message.

D is for…. Double Opt-In

When an email address signs up to be on a email list, it receives an email message to verify that the address owner intended to be put on the list. The address owner must reply or click on a link within the verification message to be added to the list. This is the gold standard in permission marketing.

Inspiration : Different Projects

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E is for…. Export

Union Room use the popular email management software, Campaign Monitor, to send campaigns and track their progress. An often saught-after step is to Export all reporting data to Excel for offline storage or further analysis.

Inspiration : e-Crime Wales

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F is for…. Forward to a Friend

This option is a great way to encourage your recipients to pass your campaign along to other friends and colleagues. When a recipient clicks your forward to a friend link, they are taken to a simple page where they can specify the names and email addresses of up to 5 friends at a time to send your campaign to.

Inspiration : Fartein Valen

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G is for…. Google Analytics

If you aren’t already aware, Google Analytics is software for tracking your visitors as they move around your site. By placing a small piece of code on each page, you can see great reports about the number of visitors, where they came from, what they did and how long they stayed. You can now track visitors from your email newsletter to your website.

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H is for…. Hard Bounce

An email message that is undeliverable due to an invalid or expired email address. The email is returned to sender as a “recipient unknown.”

I is for…. Inbox

Term used to describe the location or folder that e-mail is received on the computer or a computer program. The Inbox is the default location all mail will be sent to unless rules have been setup to forward incoming e-mail to other locations.

Inspiration : iartInteractive

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J is for…. JPG / JPEG

It is a standard method of compressing photographic images. We also call JPEG the file format which employs this compression. Popular for use online for high quality and detailed images, such as photographs. They can also be used alongside other formats such as GIF and PNG which are usually for smaller images with low-resolution, such as logos or flat colours.

Inspiration : Juggler

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K is for…. Kilobyte

Abbreviated as K, kB, and KB, a kilobyte is equal to 1,024 bytes. Today it is common to be downloading in Gigabytes (equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes) it is essential to keep email file sizes (and images) as low as possible. More so now that potential customers are using their mobile phones for email every day.

Inspiration : Kitchen Buzz

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L is for…. Landing Page

Term used to describe the first web page a visitor visits when entering a website. For example, if this was the first page you visited when visiting Union Room it would be consider the landing page. It is also a page that you may direct potential customers to via your email campaign.

Inspiration : Little Shoppe

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M is for…. Mailbox

Location of storage of electronic mail messages. This location is either stored on a remote server or downloaded to the user’s hard disk drive. Software e-mail programs commonly divide the mailbox into separate folders, notably the inbox, outbox, sent items, and deleted items.

Inspiration : MedHatMovember

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N is for…. New Message

Keyboard shortcuts are quick key combinations that replace mouse navigation. For example, rather than using the mouse to navigate the menu structure to archive a message, you can simply strike the “A” key while a message is highlighted in the message list. Use Ctrl + N to start your new email message!

O is for…. Opt-In

A process when a user signs up to receive email marketing messages via web form, paper signup sheet or other method.

Inspiration : Offscreen

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P is for…. Personalisation

The practice of writing the e-mail to make the recipient feel that it is more personal and was sent with him, or her in mind. This might include using the recipient’s name in the salutation or subject line, referring to previous purchases or correspondence, or offering recommendations based on previous buying patterns.

Q is for…. Q & A

Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions are an integral part of the process, when planning your new email campaign. At a previous agency, we used these sessions to help establish what information or content will be used, the purpose of the campaign, target market, design and deadline dates.

Inspiration : Quatuor

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R is for…. Reports and Results

Our system provides a comprehensive set of real-time reports allowing you to accurately measure the effectiveness of every campaign you send. Go beyond opens and link clicks and measure your campaign related sales, conversions and ROI.

Inspiration : Royal Mail Hotel

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S is for…. Spam Filters

Unsolicited email; also known as “junk email.” Email service providers prevent messages they grade as potential spam from reaching their customers’ inbox. Email recipients also can mark a message as spam, even if it is from a credible source. Alternatively, they can set up a filter, which is a rule in which to sort emails using keywords, often found in spam emails.

T is for…. Template

Templates are pre-designed emails that can be re-used to retain branding or contact details. They allow you to update them with your own content or images, for quick and simple email campaigns.

Inspiration : Tonic Collective

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U is for…. Unsubscribe

An option that allows user not to get further emailings by clicking the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each email sent or by replying to the email with the word “Unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Inspiration : Unlimited

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V is for…. Vector Graphics

In computer graphics, a quantity represented as a line with a start and end point identified by x-y coordinates which indicate both magnitude and direction. See also vector graphics. 2. Items configured in a single column or row; a one dimensional array.

W is for…. WYSIWYG

Pronounced as wizz-e-wig, WYSIWG is short for What You See Is What You Get and is a term coined by Charles Simonyi in 1974 to describe the ability of being able to display a file or document exactly how it is going to be printed or viewed.

Inspiration : Welsh Lamb

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X is for…. XHTML

XHTML is an acronym that stands for e-Xtensible Hypertext Markup Language. This is the computer code we use to build email campaigns. We use versions 1.1 and check this validates against the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Validator. Ensuring your email can be viewed consistenty across all email software and providers.

Y is for…. YGWWYPF

YGWYPF is an acronym, for “You Get What You Pay For”. We like to think at Union Room that you do get value for money. At £5 per campaign + 1pence per email, with no monthly cost, we hope you think so to!

Inspiration : Year 12

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Z is for…. Zip

Zip files are commonly a collection of software files, or programs, compressed into the one zip file. We use this method to collect all the imagery for your email newsletter, to upload into the Campaign Monitor software system.



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Caroline Hagan

Caroline brings over 20 years experience as a Designer and Developer; featured in .NET magazine, the only woman in the UK accredited for Google Mobile Sites. A STEM Ambassador and Google Women Techmaker Ambassador. Previous clients include Blackberry, FIAT, Clark Shoes and Sky.


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