Here is a brief explanation of commonly
used terms in Marketing Campaigns
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used terms in Marketing Campaigns
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ACTION DEVICES (Also know as Call to Action):Copy planted throughout a direct mail package that urges the reader to respond immediately — typically by calling a telephone number or completing and returning the response form or email link.
ACTIVES: 1) Members or subscribers who have not yet expired. 2) Customers who have made purchases within a given time frame. In many companies, active customers are defined as customers who have made a purchase in the preceding 12 months. 3) Clients who have “opted-in” via email, letter or telephone confirmation
ACQUISITION COST: The cost associated with generating a new customer. Example: If we spend £500 to mail 1000 pieces and get a 1% return that's 10 customers— our Acquisition Cost is £50 per customer.
ATTRITION: A reduction in response to a promotion or mail list due to repeated use.
AVERAGE UNIT OF SALE: also, Average Sale (AS) Total revenue divided by the number of orders generated by a promotion. Also abbreviated as “AUS,” this number is often used by marketers to gauge the effectiveness of copy in selling prospects on placing larger orders.
BANGTAIL ENVELOPE: An envelope with an extended flap or extra flap containing the response device. (Call to Action)
BILL ENCLOSURE: Promotional material enclosed with a bill, an invoice or a statement.
BINGO CARD: Reply card inserted in a publication. Used by readers to request literature from companies whose products and services are either advertised or mentioned in editorial columns.
BOUNCE BACK: A flyer or other promotional material designed for insertion into a package in which products are delivered.
BRC: Business Reply Card.
BRE: Business Reply Envelope.
BREAK-EVEN: The amount of revenue a promotion must generate in order to offset marketing costs. In some cases, direct marketers may also include fulfillment costs in the break-even calculation.
BROCHURE: A booklet designed to introduce a company to prospective clients of your services, and or products.
BURST: A graphic device often used next to photographs of products or premiums, containing value or offer statements: “A £39 Value, FREE!”
CALL-TO-ACTION: The copy used to encourage and explain in detail how the reader should respond to any campaign offer, for example to complete an email reply, fill in a response form, dial a specific telephone number. (See Action Devices)
CELL(S): A portion of a promotion used for testing purposes. When testing several headlines for example, each headline is mailed to a set number of names. These names are referred to as a cell.
CODING: A series of letters and or numbers printed on response devices that tell the marketer which list and/or creative test cell generated each order.
COPY: The sales message used by direct response marketers to compel prospects to purchase their products and services.
COPYWRITER: A person whose job it is to write copy (see Copy)
COST PER ENQUIRY (C.P.E): Total cost of a lead generation promotion divided by the number of leads or enquiries generated.
COST PER ORDER (C.P.O): Total cost of promotion divided by the number of orders generated.
COST PER THOUSAND (C.P.M): 1)Total cost of a promotion divided by how many thousands of prospects were reached. A mailing costing £100,000 that mails to 200,000 prospects has a CPM of £500/M (£500 per thousand). 2) CPM is also applied to components of total promotion cost, such as mailing list rental, printing costs, postage costs, etc.
CROSS-SELLING: Selling a promotion across the board to other demographic lists within the company's database.
CUSTOMER RECORD: A computerised record of a customer's name, email, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, buying history, etc.
DATABASE: A collection of customer records containing vital information about each customer or prospect.
DATABASE MARKETING: Also known as House File Marketing. Promotions that are sent to existing customers and prospects.
DE-DUPE: A process by which duplicate names are removed from a mail list prior to mailing. De-duping is also called a “merge-purge,” as names from all lists to be used are merged into one large file and then the duplicates are purged in order to cut postage costs.
DEMOGRAPHIC: The characteristics of human populations and population segments that contain key facts such as age, education, income and sex in order to identify consumer markets.
DIRECT MARKETING: Promotions that target a specific audience based upon demographic and/or psychographic traits.
DIRECT RESPONSE MARKETING: Promotions that solicit an immediate, measurable response from recipients.
DOUBLING DATE: The date at which a marketer typically has received half of the total revenue a promotion will produce. Doubling dates are used to predict the final result of each list and creative test cell in a mailing, thus enabling marketers to plan subsequent promotions more quickly.
DUMMY NAME: A name inserted into a mailing list that enables marketers to track how the list is being used. Marketers will typically plant dummy or “seed” names on their own customer files to ensure that list renters are using the file in accordance with list rental agreements. Marketers will also plant dummy names on competitors' files in order to monitor how competitors are promoting to their customers as well as the promotions sent to the file by other list renters.
EXCHANGE: An agreement between mailers to exchange an equal quantity of mailing list names.
EXPIRE: A customer or subscriber who is no longer active.
FULFILLMENT: The delivery of the product or service to the customer.
GEOGRAPHIC: Selection or division of a mail list or other advertising medium along geographic lines. Geographic selects may be by country, county, , city or post code.
GUARANTEE: Typically a promise to refund a customer's money if he or she is less than satisfied.
HOUSE FILE: A mailing list containing records of all active customers, expired customers and inquirers.
INBOUND TELEMARKETING: The process of handling incoming calls from customers or prospects.
ENQUIRER: A prospect who has requested more information about a product or service.
INSERT: Promotional piece placed in an outgoing package or invoice.
INSTALLMENT BUYER: A person who has ordered goods or services, but pays for them in periodic instalments.
INTEGRATED MARKETING: A combination of two or more forms of marketing used to sell a product or service (e.g. a direct mail campaign combined with a series of television commercials).
INTERNET SERCH ENGINES:Websites such as Google, Yahoo, Lycos where you type a search phrase, keyword or query and it will bring up a list of relevant web pages.
KEYWORDS: Words typed into a web search engine relevant to the information required
KEY CODE (KEY): Group of letters and/or numbers, colours, or other markings, used to measure the specific effectiveness of media, lists, advertisements, offers, etc.
LETTERSHOP/MAILING HOUSE: Company which performs the mechanical details involved with mailing including addressing, imprinting, collating, inserting materials into envelopes, etc.
LIFETIME VALUE: The total revenue a customer will generate for a company during the period they continue to buy. (May be over many years). May be expressed as total gross revenue or total net revenue.
LIFT LETTER: Usually a smaller note or letter inserted along with the main sales letter as a way of emphasising a particular sales point.
LIST SELECTS: Process of segregating smaller groups within a list. Typical list selects might be by sex, geographic selects, or other selects based upon the amount customers have spent, largest purchase, etc.
MAIL DATE: The date a mailing is delivered to the post office for processing.
MAIL ORDER BUYER: Someone who orders and pays for a product through the mail.
MAILING PREFERENCE SCHEME (MPS): A service where consumers can request to have their names taken off or added to lists.
MARGIN: The gross profit on sales derived by subtracting the cost of goods sold from gross revenue.
MARKET POSITIONING: How your business is perceived within the marketplace. i.e as budget, high quality, most knowledgable authority, family friendly, fastest service, widest range etc.
MATT FINISH: Dull paper finish without gloss.
MERGE-PURGE: See “De-Dupe.”
NEGATIVE OPTION: A buying plan in which a club member or customer agrees to accept and pay for products or services announced in advance at regular intervals. The customers can stop the company shipping the products only if they notify them, within a reasonable time after announcement, not to ship the merchandise.
NESTING: Placing one enclosure within another before inserting them into a mailing envelope.
NET NAME ARRANGEMENT: An agreement where the list owner agrees to accept adjusted payment for less than the total names supplied to the list user. (e.g. pay for total names mailed after duplicates are eliminated).
NEW CUSTOMER ACQUISITION: Promotions designed to attract new customers.
NIXIE: Undeliverable names on a mailing list.
NTH NAME: Method of selecting names from a larger file to create a smaller but geographically similar file. If a large file has 100,000 names and a mailer wants to test only 20,000 of them, the list would be sorted by post code and every fifth name would be selected for testing.
OFFER: All of the factors included in the proposition being made to a prospect or customer — including price, quantity, length of subscription or membership, discounts, free gifts, guarantees, etc.
OUTBOUND TELEMARKETING: Calls that are placed by a marketer, as opposed to inbound telemarketing where the customer calls in first.
PACKAGE: A direct mail promotion piece. Can refer to an envelope containing several components or a self-mailer.
PACKAGE INSERT: Any promotional piece included in a mailed offer. It may be for different products from the same company, or for products and services from other companies.
PACKAGE TEST: A test of one or more elements of a promotion piece against another.
PERSONALISATION: The use of the prospect's name, address or other information in the text of a promotion.
PIGGY-BACK: An offer that hitches a free ride with another offer.
POLY-BAG/POLY-WRAP/PLASTIC WRAP: See through plastic bag used instead of an envelope for mailing.
POP-UP: A web page that pops up on top of the page a prospect is viewing.
POP-UNDER: A web page that appears beneath the page a prospect is viewing and become visible when that page is closed.
POSITIVE ACCEPTANCE STATEMENT: A re-stating of the product's most compelling benefits, often used at the beginning of response device copy.
PREMIUM: A free item offered to a potential buyer.
PROSPECT: A potential buyer for a product or service who has yet to make a purchase.
PSYCHOGRAPHICS: While demographics describe objective facts about customers such as age, educational level, marital status, etc., psychographics describe preferences, interests, hobbies, and buying patterns.
PURGE: The process of removing duplicates and other unwanted names and addresses from a list or lists.
RECENCY: The latest recorded information about a company or customer on a customer list, in relation to purchasing or other recorded activity.
RENEWAL: A subscription that has been renewed prior to it expiring or within six months after that date.
RESPONSE RATE: Number of responses received as a percentage of the total number of advertising impressions or pieces mailed.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI): Total net profit of a promotion divided by the cost of the promotion. An ROI of 100% indicates that the promotion broke even.
RFM: Acronym for Recency, Frequency and Money Amount. RFM codes are used to select small groups of buyers on a larger file. A marketer may choose, for example to mail only to customers who have bought within the last 90 days (Recency), have bought three times in the last year (Frequency) and who have spent a certain amount of money with the company or on each sale (Money Amount).
ROLLOUT: After testing a campaign, to decide to continue it. Rollouts are typically larger than the test mailing and include promotion to larger list segments or entire list universes.
ROYALTIES: A fee generally paid to give incentives to copywriters, based on number of direct mail packages mailed. Typical royalties vary between £10/M and £50/M.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO): Methods used to ensure a website is easily searchable by internet search engines. (see internet search engines)
SEED: A name inserted deliberately into a list to monitor list usage. See also “dummy”
SELF-MAILER: Any promotion that is mailed without a carrier envelope.
SPLIT TEST: Representative samples from the same list, used for package tests, or to test homogeneity of the list.
STATEMENT STUFFER: Printed piece inserted in an envelope carrying a customer's statement of account.
STEP UP: Special premiums used to get a mail order buyer to increase his unit of purchase.
TEST PANEL: A term used to identify each of the parts or samples in a split test.
TILL FORBID: An order by a customer which is to continue until the customer advises you to stop. Till forbid can also be abbreviated to "TF”
UNIVERSE: Total number of those who might be able to be included in a mailing list; all of whom fit a single set of specifications.
UNSUBSCRIBE:Usually an option at the bottom of any mailing piece, either printed or in electronic form to remove yourself from the database
WHITE MAIL: A response to a promotion, complaint, comment or other mail that does not contain a key code and therefore the test panel is not known.