CRM Buzzwords And What They Mean

Blacklist – THE LIST you don’t ever want your email to be on. If you are on the blacklist (bit like being blackballed at a club), you aren’t coming in. Quite literally. Your emails will be blocked from getting to your recipient by the internet spam filters. You’ll never find out you are on the ‘blocked emails’. You only guess because your response rates fall off a cliff. How you get off and onto a ‘Whitelist’ it is an interesting one (see ‘whitelist’ which is the opposite of blacklist, funnily enough).

Campaign – Often referred to as sending an ‘Email’. Incorrectly. A campaign is a series of actions, like a email, letter, press releases, blogs and adverts – all saying the same thing (bit like a warm up to an exhibition)

CRM – It’s a way of managing a relationship. Hence a CRM database allows you to manage your contact relationships with your contacts. Whether you call them ‘Clients’, ‘Customers’ or just contacts (luckily they all start with ‘C’).

Client Relationship Management – Often shortened to CRM (see CRM), originally started as ‘Customer’, but it all depends on which industry you work in as to which ‘C’ you use.

Contact Relationship Management – Enshortened to CRM (see CRM), originally started as ‘Customer’, but it all depends on which industry you work in as to which ‘C’ you use.

Customer Relationship Management – Often shortened to CRM (see CRM)

Cross-Selling – Selling your other services to existing customers (also see up-selling)

De-duplication – Combining two or more records into one

Direct Marketing – The flash name for ‘mailing and emailing’ activity.

eBusiness – Doing business and website type things on the internet (see also eCommerce)

eCommerce – Trading on the internet (e.g. That craft business selling stuff on eBay)

eMail Preference Service – A list of people who have registered not to be sent emails – check it before you send your eMarketing

Fax Preference Service – A list of people who have registered their desire not to be sent faxes – check it before you send faxes to these eMarketing. Who uses faxes these days. Plenty apparently.

Hybrid Mail – It’s posted letters. And you don’t print it yourself. So you don’t have to get letterhead, envelopes, printer toner, someone to press print and load the hopper, stuff and folder the letters, and lick the stamps (OK, they are self seal these days). You get a massive discount (usually the total cost of sending a colour double page letter is less than the price you can get a 2^nd class stamp for). BUT, the printer puts funny barcodes on your letters or flyers.

Junk Mail – Anything your contacts don’t find useful – even if you do. It’s stuff that lands on your doormat. SPAM is the online version of junk mail

Mail Sort – Only relevant if you send absolutely loads of letter via the Royal Mail. If you use very large amounts of postal marketing, the royal mail will give you a discount if you batch your envelope into sacks for each region of the country (so they don’t have to sort it – hence the little discount) (see also Hybrid mail, which is a cheaper way of sending letter still)

Mailing Fulfilment – the stuffing of the letters and flyers into envelopes and sending

Marketing Automation – Simply making your CRM system (or PC) do stuff instead of a human doing it (e.g. new person added into your CRM database – it emails them a welcome message)

Merge Purge – Combining two or more records into one (also known as de-duplication)

Mailing Preference Service (MPS) – A list of people who have registered their desire not to be sent mailings – check it before you send material or you’ll get a slapped hand

New Media – Who uses this term these days? It was from the old days when ‘e’ everything was still very new. Your younger workforce won’t have heard of this, much like tipex, real carbon copies, typewriters and phones with round bits on the front that you have to put your finger in and turn to get a ‘9′. Unsure about what I’m talking about. Ask your Granny.

Outbound Email – the emails you send FROM your company in a marketing capacity usually

Postal Address File (PAF) – A list of correct addresses (from the Royal Mail) which you can check you address details against.

Profiling – the information you hold about a contact, for instance their job responsibility area (rather than just job title) and business interests allows you to build quick and accurate mailing lists

SPAM – Anything your contacts don’t find useful – even if you think it more than important. Usually referred to stuff that’s arrived by email (also see JUNK MAIL, which is the hard copy letter equivalent of SPAM)

Telephone Preference Service (TPS) – A list of people who have registered their desire not to be contacted by phone – check it before you call them

Tele-Marketing – Doing you marketing activity by phone. Can also be referred to as ‘tele-research / tele-sales’ / appointment setting

Up-Selling – selling higher value services / products to existing customers / clients

Whitelist – This is where your sending email address is on the list of approved email addresses that your clients and prospects accept – the reverse of ‘blacklisting

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