Technology / Email Glossary

Blacklist - Public: A list of IP addresses believed to send spam. Public blacklists are created and maintained by third parties; sometimes used by ISPs as another filtering mechanism to block email delivery.

Block: A refusal by an ISP or mail server not to forward your email message to the recipient. Many ISPs block email from IP addresses or domains that have been reported to send spam or viruses or h . . . View Full Definition

Bonded Sender: A private email-registration service, owned by email vendor Ironport, which allows bulk emailers who agree to follow stringent email practices and to post a monetary bond to bypass email fil . . . View Full Definition

Bounce: A message sent by a receiving system that 'bounces back' to the originating server to alert the sender of the non-delivery.

Bounce Handling: The process of dealing with the email that has bounced. Bounce handling is important for list maintenance, list integrity and delivery. Given the lack of consistency in bounce messaging form . . . View Full Definition

Bounce Message: Message sent back to an email sender reporting the message could not be delivered and why. Note: Not all bounced emails result in messages being sent back to the sender. Not all bounce messa . . . View Full Definition

Bounce Rate: Number of hard/soft bounces divided by the number of emails sent. This is an inexact number because some systems do not report back to the sender clearly or accurately.

Broadcast: The process of sending the same email message to multiple recipients.

Bulk Folder: Where many email clients send messages that appear to be from spammers or contain spam or are from any sender who's not in the recipient's address book or contact list. Some clients allow th . . . View Full Definition

Call To Action: In an email message, the link or body copy that tells the recipient what action to take.

CAN-SPAM: Federal legislation governing unsolicited commercial email that went into effect on January 1, 2004. This law does not prohibit unsolicited commercial email, but it does regulate how it must . . . View Full Definition

Catch-All: An email server function that forwards all questionable email to a single mailbox. The catch-all should be monitored regularly to find misdirected questions, unsubscribes or other genuine live email.

Cell: Aka Test cell or version. A segment of your list that receives different treatment specifically to see how it responds versus the control (regular treatment.)

CGI: Acronym for Common Gateway Interface. It is a specification for transferring information between the Web and a Web server, such as processing email subscription or contact forms.

Challenge Response: Method of approving senders to specific email addresses that asks the email sender to answer a question proving he is a real person and not a 'spam cannon' attempting to send email. Primaril . . . View Full Definition

Challenge-Response System: An anti-spam program that requires a human being on the sender's end to respond to an emailed challenge message before their messages can be delivered to recipients. Senders who answer the c . . . View Full Definition

Churn: How many subscribers leave a mailing list (or how many email addresses go bad) over a certain length of time, usually expressed as a percentage of the whole list.

Click-Through: When a link is included in an email, a click-through occurs when a recipient clicks on the link. Click-through tracking refers to the data collected about each click-through link, such as ho . . . View Full Definition

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