A/B test | Sending two variations of part of an email, such as subject lines, From names, and sections to different audiences to see which performs better. |
activities | Actions the system performs as part of a step in an automation. |
activities | The things that happen after a subscriber enters a journey and travels down its paths, such as sending messages and updating subscriber data in the system. |
AMPscript | Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s proprietary scripting language. You use it mainly to customize and automate the content in your marketing messages. |
app switcher | The toolbar in Salesforce Marketing Cloud that users use to navigate between apps. It appears when you pause your mouse pointer over the Salesforce Marketing Cloud logo. |
attribute group | A group of related data that you keep about your contacts. |
audience | The group of contacts who receive a message. In the strictest sense, an audience is a data extension created by Audience Builder, but the term is sometimes used more generically. |
automation | A program that runs on a schedule. |
beacon | A piece of hardware that uses Bluetooth technology to detect when a subscriber’s mobile device is nearby. |
bounce | Emails that were returned to you undelivered. It might not be worth continuing to maintain information about subscribers who bounce. |
business unit | A sub-account to your main parent account. For example, you might have multiple business units to represent different departments in your company, sister companies owned by the same parent company, or different locations of a retail corporation. |
campaign | A set of related marketing activities, such as a series of emails, text messages, and websites related to one another (for example, a President’s Day sale). |
canvas | The right side of the screen, below the toolbars. Several apps in Marketing Cloud use a canvas to be your work space in that app. |
cardinality | The relationship between two database tables. If each record in one table has a corresponding record in another table, the cardinality is one-to-one. Alternately, if each record in one table has any number of corresponding records in the second table, the cardinality is one-to-many. |
channel | A group of apps, all available from the same menu in the app switcher. |
clickthrough rate, or CTR | The percentage of people who were sent an email message and who went on to click an email in that message. |
collection | Similar to a folder that you create on your computer’s hard drive to contain related files, a collection is a place to pull together related text, images, and other content in the CloudPages app. |
contact | A person about whom you collect information. A contact is not necessarily a subscriber, who has given you permission to send them messages. |
content block | A tool in Marketing Cloud that lets you create a reusable block of content of a message. A content block might contain text, images, or multimedia content. |
customer journey | Customers’ total experience with your brand. |
customer key | A unique value that you assign to a piece of content and then use to refer to the content from API scripts that you write. |
data extension | Marketing Cloud’s proprietary name for a relational database table. |
delivery profile | The IP address from which the email is sent, as well as the header and footer. |
dynamic content | A section in an email where one of several different pieces of content may appear, depending on the attributes of the subscriber. |
email blast | An imprecise group message with no targeting or personalization. |
email service provider | A delivery mechanism for your email marketing efforts. May include tools to assist with design and execution of complex email programs. |
engaging | Communicating with the community on social networks, especially by responding to questions or complaints. |
entry source | Something that feeds subscribers into a journey, such as an audience that starts a subscriber in a journey as soon as the subscriber joins the audience. |
geofencing | Defining a region within which you will send a message, and then identifying subscribers who enter that region by using their mobile device. |
group | A subset of a subscriber list based on either a data filter or a number of randomly selected subscribers. You use groups with the subscriber-and-list data model, not the relational data model. |
IP warm | A period of methodically controlled sending from an IP address to establish a good reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs). |
join | Merging multiple branches of a journey. |
journey | A path for a subscriber to move through, where different branches can be followed depending on actions (or inactions) of the subscriber. |
journey | A process flow that controls how and when Marketing Cloud sends messages to your subscribers. |
keyword | The word a subscriber texts to your shortcode. |
landing page | A web page with a special objective that stands apart from the rest of your corporate website |
listening | Monitoring the discussion of your brand or industry on social media without necessarily contributing to the discussion. |
lookalike audience | A group of social media users who have things in common with your current customers. |
marketing send | A message whose primary purpose is to promote your business. |
microsite | A tool for publishing web page outside the larger context of your corporate web presence. |
MMS | Multimedia Messaging Service. Similar to SMS messages but can include images, sound, and video and has no character limit. |
mobile-originated campaigns | A mobile marketing campaign in which you publish a short code and wait to see who texts you. |
mobile-terminated campaigns | A mobile marketing message that you send to a subscriber’s mobile device. |
one-to-many marketing messages | Messages to an entire list of customers, such as a monthly newsletter. |
one-to-one marketing messages | Messages to just one customer at a time, such as a thank-you message after an order. |
open rate | The percentage of people who open an email. |
persona | Composite, fictional characters that marketers create based on information about the actual client base. |
personalization | A simple tool to add subscriber-specific data, such as a first name, to the content of a messages. |
personalized URL | Also called PURL (pronounced “pearl”). A URL that includes a variable that the system replaced with a subscriber-specific value so that each subscriber who clicks the link goes to a personalized web page. |
preference attributes | When using the subscriber-and-list data model, preference attributes contain yes/no choices that subscribers communicate to you about how they want to hear from you. |
preference center | A website where subscribers can update the information that you have about them, including their subscriptions to your different types of messages. |
preheader text | Any text that appears visually above the header in the body of your email. |
preview text | A snippet of copy from the body of your email that appears below the sender name and subject line in your subscriber’s inbox. |
profile attributes | When using the subscriber-and-list data model, profile attributes contain demographic data about the subscriber. |
profile center | For each subscriber, Marketing Cloud automatically generates a web page that you can link to in the footer of your email. When subscribers click the link, they go to a form where they can update their attribute values and change the lists to which they are subscribed.. |
proximity | How close two words must be in the same post to meet the criteria of your topic profile. |
publishing | Initiating a discussion on social media by posting original content. |
real time | Actions that occur immediately following another action, such as when a customer makes a purchase and receives a confirmation email immediately. |
relational data model | An approach to storing data in Marketing Cloud in which data is stored in relational database tables called data extensions. |
rendering | How an email looks in different contexts: Different email applications, operating systems, screen sizes, and other factors affect how an email renders. |
role | Set of permissions assigned to a group of users that perform a specific function. |
send classification | The tool you use to categorize email content as commercial or transactional. Commercial messages are more tightly regulated under the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) act. |
sendable data extension | A data extension that contains the contact information of subscribers so you can use it to send a message. |
sender profile | The From name and email address that appears in your subscriber’s inbox. |
short code | A six-digit code that your customers use to send you text messages. |
single send | The sending of an individual email by the API, such as a confirmation message after a person fills out a form on your website. |
SMS | Short Message Service. Text-only messages sent to a mobile device that are limited to 160 characters. |
spam | Unwanted marketing messages. Spam is the digital equivalent of all the junk mail you receive in your physical mailbox. Sending spam can have legal repercussions. |
split: | A decision point in a journey. Splits can be based on the value of a subscriber attribute, based on whether a subscriber engaged with a previous message, or just random. |
subscriber/list model | An approach to storing data in Marketing Cloud where everything is stored in fields in a subscriber record. Lists group subscribers together for sending. |
tags | Descriptive keywords that you add to something in Marketing Cloud, such as a campaign, to help categorize it. |
topic profile | A collection of keywords or phrases that you want to monitor on social media. |
transactional send | A message whose primary purpose is not promotional, such as order confirmation messages. |
welcome campaign | A series of communications that you have with new clients right after they make a purchase or sign up for a communication from you. Also called an onboarding campaign.. |
wisdom of the crowd | The idea that the aggregate opinion of a large group of people is better than the opinion of any individual member of the group. |
workspace | A tool in Social Studio that limits user access to only certain accounts to ensure that the user doesn’t accidentally post in the wrong place. |