Glossary of Terms

Welcome to our glossary of key terms, designed to help you navigate the platform with confidence. Whether you are new to email marketing or just need a refresher, this guide gives clear definitions of the essential terms and concepts. Getting to know this terminology will help you use our tools effectively and reach your marketing goals.

Contacts

Subscription Status: In email marketing, subscription preferences are tools that let businesses give subscribers control over the types and frequency of emails they receive. This improves engagement, satisfaction and retention by delivering more relevant content.

Active: Active contacts are individuals who are eligible to receive emails, SMS or direct mail communications.

Delete: This removes the contact from the platform, but they can be uploaded again at another time if necessary.

Erase: Erasing a contact means their information is permanently deleted, and you will not be able to upload the same contact information again.

Query search glossary: All relevant definitions can be found in our Contact Search, Make Decision Query Glossary article.

Bounces

Hard Bounce: A permanent delivery failure, meaning an email cannot be delivered to the recipient's address for reasons such as an invalid or non-existent email address.

Soft Bounce: A temporary delivery failure, often caused by something like a full inbox or a server problem. The email could not be delivered this time but may succeed later. Six soft bounces in six months will result in a contact's status being set to hard bounce.

Spam Bounce: This happens when an email is rejected because the recipient's server identifies it as spam, which often leads to the sender being blocked or flagged.

Email content

Subject Line: The brief text that summarises the main idea of an email, shown in the recipient's inbox.

Preheader: The short summary text that follows the subject line in an email, giving a preview of the email's content.

From Name/Reply Address: The name and email address shown in the sender information, indicating who the email is from and where replies will be directed.

Snippet: A small section of an email or Landing Page.

Domains and Landing Pages

Landing Pages: Personalised pages you can create on a dedicated subdomain. You can include these in your emails to drive traffic without sending people to your main website. These were previously called Microsites.

Landing Page subdomain: A specific web address created for hosting Landing Pages. It lets businesses direct email traffic to a dedicated space that is separate from their main website.

Email subdomain: A separate domain used to send emails, which improves deliverability and protects the reputation of the sender's primary domain.

DNS records: A set of records for your email or Landing Page subdomain that need to be applied with your DNS provider, for example GoDaddy or 123Reg.

Tracking

Tracking Script: A code snippet embedded in your website to monitor user interactions and gather data on email performance and engagement.

Cookies: Small data files stored on a user's device by websites to remember preferences, track activity and improve the user experience.

Forms

External form: A form hosted on your website, with submissions tracked into Force24.

Embedded form: A form created in Force24 that is hosted on your website.

Journeys

Journey Components: These are defined in our How to Build a Journey article.