Year 1 - UE 04 - Emailing

This vocabulary list may slightly change from one emailing solution to another, but the concept behind stays the same.

• Attribute: in phpList, it corresponds to a caracteristic of a subscriber: first name, gender, center of interests...
  
• Bounce: the fact that the email did not reach its destination.
  
• Campaign: it corresponds to the communication message you will deliver. For example Christmas sales is a campaign, our weekly newsletter is another.
• Clicks: it refers to the number of times someone clicked on a link within your email. In general emailing solutions will talk about total clicks (for example someone clicked on a link 3 times then total clicks equal 3) and unique clicks (for example someone clicked on a link 3 times then unique click equals 1).
  
• Double Opt-in: someone gave you her/his consent to have her/his email within your database and she/he even confirmed it by clicking on a link they received in their mailbox to confirm that they own this email address.
  
• Emailing: in general, it is a promotionnal information letter which has an attractive template to make people act on it. Mostly send to people you don't know that much. Don't be surprise to have a high unsubscription rate here.
  
• Forward: People who forwarded your message to someone else.
  
• GDPR: The General Data Protection Regulation is a set of rules defined by the European Union in order to protect the personal data of EU citizens + EU companies dealing with any human being personal data.
  
• Lists: it refers to the list of contacts to which you are going to send your emailing campaigns. People subscribe to a specific list for a reason and you need to respect the condition on which they decided to give you their email for. (For example to not send promotional offers for people who gave you their emails to be notified about your next blog posts... even if you are desperate).
  
• Newsletter: an information letter, it mostly use the same template all the time to not lose the recepients. Mainly sent to people who know you.
  
• Open rate: number of emails opened / number of emails sent.
  
• Opt-in: it means that owner of the email is explicitely giving you his consent.
  
• PhpList: an emailing Free software under the GNU AGPLv3 license. Compared to most of emailing solutions out there, you own the solution and you are free to do whatever you want with it according to some rules defined within the AGPLv3 license. It does not cost you anything if you have already an email address from which you can send emails from.
  
• Reports: it corresponds to the place where you will measure the performances of your emailing campaigns. In phpList it is called statistics.
  
• Routing: the technological solution you will use in order to send the emailing/newsletter. In general for a small usage it corresponds to your mail server credentials so you don't really bother to understand what is behind as all emails are reaching your targets. When you are sending an emailing/newsletter to thousands of people then you realise that your small email provider is not enough to make the sending correctly. This is where you start to investigate routing providers to send it for you.
• Server: a machine used in order to answer to some requests. In the case of phpList, the software is installed on a machine which is called a server and the emails are sent from this same machine or another one called also a server. We talk about a local server when the software are installed on your own machine, the one in front of you, and web server when it is a remote machine (this definition is oversimplified here).
  
• SMTP: Server Mail Transfer Protocol. The protocol used to send emails. HTTP is the protocol to deliver web pages, SMTP is the one to deliver emails.
  
• Spam: Spam is the result of emails you are sending to people who did not wish to receive it. As a result, they are notifying their email provider about it and your mails are getting in a special mailbox where the recepient has less chances to see it.
  
• Statistics: the place where you will find all the performances of your phpList campaigns.
  
• Subscriber: Refers to someone registered within your database by her/his email.
• Subscription page: the page on which people will give you their consent to be within your database.
  
• Template: it corresponds to the way your email will look like in terms of design.
• Theme: it refers to how the shape of your software, back-end and front-end look like.
  
• Unique views: People who open at least once your message.
• URL campaign tracking: it refers to parameters which are added to links. Thanks to those the page receiving the visit of the subscriber is able to identify things about her/him (first name, origin of the traffic etc). Compared to what people think about those information are coming and controlled by the one sending the newsletter/emailing (there is no secret here).