Accreditation: a process in which certification of competency, authority, or credibility is presented. In marketing, two forms of accreditation are important.
- Accredited in Public Relations (APR) is a voluntary certification program for industry professionals, and is considered the mark of distinction for those who demonstrate commitment to the profession and to its ethical practice.
- Sender accreditation is a third-party process of verifying email senders and requiring them to adhere to certain accreditee usage guidelines in exchange for being listed in a trusted listing that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) reference to allow certain emails to bypass email filters.
Affiliate: Affiliate marketing typically refers to an electronic commerce version of the traditional agent/referral fee sales channel concept. An e-commerce affiliate is a website which links back to an e-commerce site such as Amazon.com.
Algorithms: A set of rules (software application) that a search engine uses to rank the listings contained within its index, in response to a particular query.
Anchor Text: The anchor text or link label is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the Anchor text can determine the ranking that page will receive by search engines.
ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), is a character encoding based on the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that work with text.
Auction Site: An auction site is a website where an item can be purchased through an online bidding process. The most popular version of this type of website is eBay.
Audioblog: An audioblog is a type of blog in which the creator makes music files, normally in the MP3 format, available for download. They are also known as "musicblogs" or "audioblogs". These can also be known as "podcasts."
Authentication: Authentication is the process of attempting to verify the digital identity of the sender of a communication such as a request to log in. The sender being authenticated, often referred to as the principal, may be a person using a computer, a computer itself or a computer program.
Autoresponder: An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it. They can be very simple or quite complex. Common examples include bounce messages such as "your e-mail could not be sent because..." or automated responses for individual e-mail addresses, such as vacation or leave notifications. Autoresponders are often used as e-mail marketing tools, to immediately provide information to their prospective customers and then follow-up with them at preset time intervals.
Backend Products: A backend product is usually a more expensive product or service you sell that helps increase your profits. But the main thing a "Back End" product does is to help pay for the cost of your advertising.
Bandwidth: Bandwidth often refers to a data rate measured in bits/s, for example network throughput.
Banner Ads: A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking them to the web site of the advertiser. The advertisement is constructed from an image (GIF, JPEG, PNG), JavaScript program or multimedia object employing technologies such as Java, Shockwave or Flash, often employing animation or sound to maximize presence.
Black Hat Tactics: Search Engine Optimization tactics that are considered unethical or illegitimate. They are used to "trick" search engines into giving a high page rank. These tactics may increase traffic in the short-term, but when detected often result in a site being banned or penalized for using them. These tactics include the following: keyword stuffing, hidden text, cloaking, doorway pages, redirects, duplicate sites and interlinking.
Blacklist: A blacklist is an access control mechanism that means, allow everybody, except members of the blacklist. The opposite is a whitelist, which means, allow nobody, except members of the white list.
Blog: A website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Blogs are increasingly used as news and marketing sources, with regularly updated blogs generating increased search engine traffic for their associated sites.
Bookmark: Bookmarks are Web page locations that can be retrieved. As a feature of all modern web browsers, their primary purpose is to easily catalog and access web pages that a user has visited or will visit, by name rather than by address. With the advent of social bookmarking, shared bookmarks have become a means for users sharing similar interests to pool web resources, or to store their bookmarks in such a way that they are not tied to one specific computer or browser.
Bounce back: A second promotion offer made to consumers in order to encourage additional purchases; eg a coupon for a second purchase placed within a product package, or a second offer of a different premium enclosed when the first premium is mailed.
Brick-and-mortar business: Brick and mortar businesses are companies which have a physical presence (for example, a building made of bricks and mortar) - which offer face-to-face consumer experiences. This term is usually used to contrast with a transitory business or an internet-only presence.
Browser: A user interface on a computer that allows navigation of objects. For example, a web browser allows for navigation across the Internet (or internet-like networks). A file browser is used to manage files and related objects. A code browser is used for navigating source code.
Call-to-action: A call to action in advertising and marketing refers to a copy designed to encourage a potential customer to take action, such as purchasing a product or requesting a quote. The goal is to compel the customer to take that next step towards making a sale.
CAN-SPAM: CAN-SPAM defines a "commercial electronic mail message" as "any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service (including content on an Internet website operated for a commercial purpose)." It exempts "transactional or relationship messages."
CGI Script: Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard protocol for interfacing external application software with an information server, commonly a web server.
Chat room: A chat room or chatroom is a term used primarily by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology ranging from real-time online chat over instant messaging (i.e. AOL or Gtalk) and online forums to fully immersive graphical social environments (i.e. Second Life). The most widely known form of chat rooms are real-time, text-based conferencing between two or more people.
Click-and-mortar business: A business model by which a company integrates both offline (bricks) and online (clicks) presences. It is also known as bricks-and-clicks or clicks-and-bricks, as well as bricks, clicks and flips, flips referring to catalogs.
Click fraud: Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link.
Click-through or Click-through rate: Click-through rate or CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if your banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and one person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1 percent.
Code: A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another object or action, not necessarily of the same sort. In computing, there are different coding languages that are used to present information or objects in different ways. Common coding languages include HTML, JavaScript and C++.
Confirmed opt-in: A new subscriber asks to be subscribed to the mailing list, but unlike unconfirmed opt-in, a confirmation e-mail is sent to verify it was really them.
Copy: The written material contained in a published document, whether that is a brochure, a newspaper or website.
Cost-per-action: Cost Per Action or CPA (sometimes known as Pay Per Action or PPA) is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for each specified action (a purchase, a form submission, and so on) linked to the advertisement.
Database: A database is a collection of records, files or information stored in a computer system.
Directory: A way of organizing files and other directories. A web directory is an organized collection of links to other websites.
Discussion Forum: Web application for holding discussions and posting user generated content. Internet forums are also commonly referred to as Web forums, message boards, or simply forums. Messages within these forums are organized as "threads," or chronologically ordered posts under one particular heading.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM): A method for E-mail authentication. It offers almost end-to-end integrity from a signing to a verifying Mail transfer agent (MTA).
Domain Name: A name that identifies a computer or computers on the Internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site's URL, e.g. en.wikipedia.org. This type of domain name is also called a hostname.
Download: To download is to receive data from a remote or central system, such as a webserver, FTP server, mail server, or other similar systems. A download is any file that is offered for downloading or that has been downloaded.
Dynamic Content: Content which changes over time or as a result of user interaction. This content can either be changed manually, by a human user, or automatically, pulling data from
Dynamic IP address: A temporary IP address assigned by a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol from a pool of IP addresses. When the Internet was first conceived, the architects didn't foresee the need for an unlimited number of IP addresses. Consequently, there are not enough IP numbers to go around. To get around that problem, many Internet service providers limit the number of static IP addresses they allocate, and economize on the remaining number of IP addresses they possess by temporarily assigning an IP address to a requesting Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) computer from a pool of IP addresses.
eBook: An e-book is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. They are read through a device called an e-book reader, usually utilizing technology called e-paper.
