Key takeaways
- Definitions are written for buyers, not engineers.
- Linked terms have a longer guide.
- Suggest a missing term from the contact page.
- Accept-all (catch-all)
- A mail server setting that accepts email for any address at a domain, so a verifier cannot confirm a specific mailbox exists.
- B2B contact database
- A searchable collection of business people with their company, title and contact details.
- Bounce rate
- The share of sent emails that are rejected. High bounce rates damage your sending reputation.
- Buying group
- The set of people at one company who influence or approve a purchase.
- CAN-SPAM
- The US law that sets rules for commercial email, including honest headers, a postal address and a working opt-out.
- Contact credit
- The unit a data tool charges when you reveal or export a person's details. What triggers a charge differs by vendor.
- Decision maker
- The person with authority to approve a purchase, as opposed to an influencer or a user.
- Direct dial
- A phone number that rings a specific person's line, not a company switchboard.
- Enrichment
- Adding missing fields, such as title, email or company size, to records you already have.
- Firmographics
- Company attributes such as industry, employee count, revenue and location.
- Ideal customer profile (ICP)
- A description of the companies most likely to buy and succeed with your product.
- Intent data
- Signals that a company or person is researching a topic or a purchase.
- NAICS and SIC codes
- Government industry classification codes. Useful, but many companies are filed under codes that do not describe them.
- National Do-Not-Call Registry
- The US list of residential numbers, including mobiles, whose owners have asked not to receive telemarketing calls or marketing texts. Check numbers against it and your own do-not-call list before calling or texting.
- Persona
- A description of the individual buyer: role, goals and objections.
- Sales brief
- A short research document on one account covering what the company does, who decides and what to say.
- Sequence (cadence)
- A planned series of emails or calls to one person over days or weeks.
- Suppression list
- People and companies you must not contact, including opt-outs and existing customers.
- TCPA
- The US law restricting automated and prerecorded calls and texts, especially to mobile phones, without consent. The National Do-Not-Call Registry rules are made under it.
- Technographics
- Information about the software and tools a company uses.
- Verified email
- An address checked against the receiving mail server and confirmed deliverable.
How to use this glossary
Vendors use these words differently, which is where most buying mistakes start. Before comparing tools, ask each one to define "credit", "verified" and "direct dial" in writing.
