SALES.CO
Glossary

COLD EMAIL GLOSSARY

303 terms used in cold email, deliverability, B2B data and outbound sales, A to Z. Updated September 2026.

A

A/B test
Sending two versions of an email (different subject line, opener or call to action) to comparable halves of a lead list and keeping the one with the higher positive reply rate. Needs a few hundred sends per version before the difference means anything.
Account executive (AE)
The salesperson who runs discovery calls and demos, handles negotiation and closes deals, usually with meetings booked by SDRs.
Account manager
The person responsible for an existing customer after the sale: renewals, upsells and keeping the customer happy. At an outbound agency, the client's main point of contact.
Account-based marketing (ABM)
Targeting a defined list of named companies with coordinated outreach and ads, instead of generating leads from a broad market. Outbound email, LinkedIn and retargeting ads are often combined in ABM.
ACV (annual contract value)
The average yearly revenue from one customer contract. Decides how much a company can spend to acquire a customer.
Agency lead generation
Outbound for marketing, design and development agencies, which typically sell services with high ticket sizes to a well-defined set of companies. More →
AI personalization
Using a language model to write parts of each email, such as the opener, from data about the prospect. Scales research-based personalization but needs checks for wrong or generic output. More →
AI SDR
Software that uses language models to research prospects, write outreach and sometimes reply, as a partial replacement for a human SDR. More →
AIDA
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. A copywriting structure where the email opens with something relevant, builds interest in a problem, shows the outcome and ends with one ask. More →
Appointment setting
Booking sales meetings with prospects on behalf of a company's sales team. The vendor handles outreach and replies; the client's reps take the calls. More →
ARC (Authenticated Received Chain)
A header set that records SPF, DKIM and DMARC results each time a message passes through an intermediary such as a mailing list or forwarding service, so the final server can trust results that forwarding would otherwise break.
ARR (annual recurring revenue)
Yearly revenue from subscriptions, not counting one-time fees. The main size measure for SaaS companies.
Attribution
Assigning credit for a deal to the channels and touches that led to it. Outbound is easier to attribute than content or ads because each meeting traces to a specific email.
Auto-reply
Any automated response to an email, such as out-of-office, ticket confirmations or "this person has left" notices. Counted in total reply rate but not positive reply rate.

B

B2B contact database
A searchable collection of business contacts with names, titles, companies and emails. Used to build lead lists; quality and freshness vary widely between providers. More →
BAB
Before, After, Bridge. A copy structure that describes the prospect's current situation, the situation after the problem is solved, and the product as the bridge between them. More →
BANT
Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline. A qualification framework that checks whether a prospect can pay, can decide, has a problem the product solves and plans to act soon.
BDR (business development representative)
A role similar to an SDR. Some companies use BDR for outbound prospecting and SDR for qualifying inbound leads; many use the two titles interchangeably.
Benchmark
A reference value for a metric, such as the average cold email reply rate, used to judge whether a campaign is performing. Check what population and definition a benchmark uses. More →
BIMI
Brand Indicators for Message Identification. A DNS record that shows a company's logo next to its emails in supporting inboxes such as Gmail and Yahoo. It requires DMARC at quarantine or reject, and Gmail also requires a verified mark certificate.
Blocklist
A list of IP addresses or domains reported for sending spam, such as Spamhaus or Barracuda. Mail servers check these lists and reject or filter mail from listed senders. Also called a blacklist. More →
Bounce rate
The share of sent emails returned as undeliverable. A hard bounce means the address does not exist. Keep hard bounces under 2% by verifying every address before it is sent to.
Breakup email
The last email in a sequence, telling the prospect this is the final message. It often gets a higher reply rate than the steps before it.
Bulk sender
Google's and Yahoo's term for a domain that sends more than 5,000 messages a day to their users. Since February 2024 bulk senders must use SPF, DKIM and DMARC, offer one-click unsubscribe and keep spam complaints below 0.3%. More →
Bump
A very short follow-up, often one line such as "any thoughts on this?", sent in the same thread to bring the original email back to the top of the inbox.
Buyer persona
A profile of the person who buys or influences a purchase: role, seniority, goals, problems and objections. Used to pick titles for lead lists and to write copy.
Buying committee
The group of people involved in a B2B purchase, such as the user, their manager, finance and IT. Larger deals often need several of them contacted.

C

CAC (customer acquisition cost)
Total sales and marketing spend in a period divided by new customers won in that period.
CAC payback period
How many months of gross profit from a new customer it takes to recover the cost of acquiring them.
Cadence
The timing and channel mix of a sequence: how many touches, how many days apart, and which are email, calls or LinkedIn.
Call to action (CTA)
The single thing a cold email asks the reader to do, such as reply, book a call or watch a video. Low-commitment asks ("worth a look?") usually get more replies than a calendar link in the first email.
Campaign launch
The start of sending for a new campaign, after lists are verified, copy approved and mailboxes warmed.
CAN-SPAM Act
The US law for commercial email. It allows B2B cold email but requires accurate headers, a non-deceptive subject line, the sender's physical address and a working opt-out honored within 10 business days. More →
Case study
A write-up of how a named customer used a product or service and what changed, with numbers. Used in cold email as a link or one-line result. More →
CASL
Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation. Stricter than CAN-SPAM: commercial email generally needs express or implied consent, though publicly listed business addresses relevant to the offer can count as implied consent.
Catch-all domain
A mail server that accepts email for any address at its domain, so verification tools cannot confirm whether a specific mailbox exists. Sending to unverified catch-all addresses raises bounce risk.
CCPA
The California Consumer Privacy Act, amended by the CPRA. Gives California residents rights over their personal data, including B2B contact data, such as knowing what is held and requesting deletion.
CHAMP
Challenges, Authority, Money, Prioritization. A qualification framework that starts with the prospect's problems rather than budget.
Champion
A person inside the prospect company who wants the deal to happen and argues for it internally.
Churn
Customers who cancel in a period, as a share of all customers. Churn caps how much outbound growth adds up over time.
Clay
A spreadsheet-style tool for building and enriching lead lists by chaining many data providers and AI steps. Widely used in outbound teams for waterfall enrichment and research.
Click tracking
Rewriting links in an email so clicks pass through a tracking server before reaching the destination. Uses a shared tracking domain by default, which can hurt deliverability, so cold emailers often turn it off or use a custom tracking domain.
Click-through rate (CTR)
Clicks divided by emails delivered. Rarely the main metric in cold email, where the goal is a reply and links are often left out.
Closed-lost
A CRM deal stage meaning the prospect decided not to buy or went silent. Recording the reason helps improve targeting and copy.
Closed-won
A CRM deal stage meaning the customer signed.
CNAME record
A DNS record that points one hostname to another. Used in cold email for custom tracking domains and for DKIM keys hosted by an email provider.
Cold calling
Phoning prospects who have not asked to be contacted. Often combined with cold email so the call references an email already sent. More →
Cold email
A one-to-one business email sent to someone with no prior relationship, based on a reason they might care. In the US it is legal under CAN-SPAM when the sender is identified and an opt-out is honored. More →
Cold email agency
A company that runs cold email campaigns for clients. Pricing ranges from about $1,000 to over $10,000 a month depending on scope. More →
Cold email software
Tools that send sequences from many mailboxes, rotate inboxes, handle warmup and collect replies. The tool sends; list building, copy and reply handling still need people. More →
Cold email template
A reusable email structure with placeholders for personalization. Works as a starting point; sent word-for-word to large lists, templates get lower reply rates than researched emails. More →
Cold outreach
Contacting people with no prior relationship by email, phone, LinkedIn or other channels.
Competitor displacement
Targeting customers of a competing product with outreach about why and how to switch.
Connection request
An invitation to connect on LinkedIn, optionally with a short note. LinkedIn limits how many can be sent per week.
Contact data
The details needed to reach a person: name, title, company, email, phone and social profiles.
Content filtering
Spam filtering based on what an email contains: wording, links, attachments, images and HTML structure. Less decisive than sender reputation today, but a message full of links, images or tracking can still be filtered.
Conversion rate
The share of people who move from one stage to the next, such as reply to meeting or meeting to deal.
Cost per lead
What a lead generation program costs divided by the leads it produced. Only comparable when both sides use the same definition of a lead. More →
Cost per meeting
Program cost divided by meetings held. A common way to compare outbound agencies, SDR hires and ads.
CRM
Customer Relationship Management software, such as HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive, where companies track contacts, deals and conversations. Outbound results are usually synced into it.
Cross-sell
Selling an existing customer a different, related product.
Custom tracking domain
A subdomain of your own sending domain used for open and click tracking instead of a sending tool's shared tracking domain, so other senders' reputation does not affect yours.
Custom variable
A per-prospect field beyond name and company, such as a researched opener, recent news or a relevant case study, inserted into the email by merge tag.

D

Data decay
Contact data going out of date as people change jobs and companies change domains. B2B email data decays by roughly a fifth or more per year, so lists need re-verifying.
Data enrichment
Adding missing details to company or contact records, such as headcount, industry, technology, email or phone, from outside data sources. See email enrichment and waterfall enrichment.
Data hygiene
Keeping contact data accurate: verifying emails, removing duplicates, fixing formatting and removing people who left or opted out.
Data processing agreement (DPA)
A contract that sets how a vendor handles personal data on a client's behalf. Required under GDPR when an agency processes EU contact data for a client.
Data provider
A company that sells or licenses contact and company data. Waterfall enrichment combines several providers to raise coverage.
Decision maker
The person with authority to approve a purchase, often a founder, department head or executive. In small companies it is usually the founder or CEO.
Dedicated IP
An IP address used by one sender only, so its reputation depends on that sender's behavior alone. Useful for high-volume senders; for cold email at low volume per mailbox, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 shared infrastructure is more common.
Deduplication
Removing repeated contacts or companies from a list or across campaigns so no one gets the same outreach twice.
Deliverability
The share of sent emails that land in the inbox rather than spam or nowhere. It depends on authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), domain reputation, list quality, volume and content. More →
Deliverability audit
A check of a sender's DNS records, blocklist status, mailbox settings, sending volumes, bounce and complaint rates and inbox placement, done to find why emails land in spam. More →
Delivery rate
The share of sent emails accepted by the receiving server, whether they land in the inbox or in spam. Different from inbox placement, which counts only messages that reach the inbox.
Demand generation
Marketing that creates awareness of and interest in a problem and product over time, so buyers seek out the company later. Contrasted with lead generation, which captures contact details or meetings now. More →
Demo
A walkthrough of a product for a prospect. In outbound, often the meeting that SDRs book. More →
Direct dial
A phone number that reaches a specific person rather than a switchboard, often a mobile number. The main input for cold calling.
Direct mail
Sending physical letters or gifts to prospects. Expensive per contact, used for high-value accounts.
Discovery call
The first sales call with a prospect, used to understand their situation, problems and buying process before pitching.
DKIM
DomainKeys Identified Mail. A cryptographic signature added to each email that lets the receiving server check the message came from the domain it claims and was not altered. Google and Yahoo require it for bulk senders since February 2024. More →
DMARC
A DNS record that tells receiving servers what to do with mail that fails SPF or DKIM checks (nothing, quarantine or reject) and where to send reports. Required by Google and Yahoo for senders of 5,000+ emails a day. More →
DMARC alignment
The requirement that the domain in the visible From address matches the domain verified by SPF (the Return-Path) or DKIM (the d= tag). A message can pass SPF or DKIM and still fail DMARC if the domains do not align. More →
DMARC policy
The p= value in a DMARC record. p=none only collects reports, p=quarantine sends failing mail to spam and p=reject blocks it. Google and Yahoo accept p=none for bulk senders. More →
DNS
Domain Name System. The internet's directory that maps domain names to servers. Email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), mail routing (MX) and tracking domains are all set up as DNS records.
Do Not Call Registry
The US national list of phone numbers whose owners do not want telemarketing calls. It mainly covers consumer numbers; business-to-business calls are largely exempt.
Domain age
How long a domain has been registered. Brand-new domains get little trust from mailbox providers, which is one reason new sending domains need warmup before campaigns.
Domain forwarding
Redirecting a sending domain's website to the company's main site, so a prospect who types in getacme.com lands on acme.com. Standard setup for lookalike sending domains.
Domain reputation
A mailbox provider's score for a sending domain, built from spam complaints, engagement, bounces and spam-trap hits. It follows the domain across IP addresses, so it matters more than IP reputation for cold email sent through Google or Microsoft. More →
Domain warmup
Gradually raising the daily send volume of a new domain or mailbox over two to four weeks so mailbox providers build a positive reputation for it before full-volume campaigns start.
Done-for-you outbound
A service where the vendor runs the full outbound process, from list building and copy to sending and reply handling, and the client receives meetings. More →
Do-not-contact list
A client's list of companies or people to exclude from outreach, such as current customers and active deals. See suppression list.

E

Economic buyer
The person who controls the budget for a purchase and signs off on spending. Part of the MEDDIC qualification framework.
Email authentication
The set of DNS-based checks (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) that prove an email came from the domain it claims. Missing authentication is one of the most common reasons cold email lands in spam. More →
Email copywriting
Writing the words of a sales email: subject line, opener, value proposition and call to action. In cold email the goal is a reply, not a click. More →
Email enrichment
Adding missing data to a contact record, such as a verified email, phone number, job title or company size, by querying data providers.
Email finder
A tool that finds a person's work email from their name and company, usually by testing common address patterns against the company's mail server and known data.
Email header
The metadata at the top of every email: From, To, Subject, Date, Message-ID, authentication results and routing information. Useful for diagnosing why a message landed in spam.
Email pattern
The format a company uses for addresses, such as first.last@company.com or f.last@company.com. Email finders guess addresses from patterns, then verify them.
Email service provider (ESP)
A company that sends email on your behalf, such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or a bulk-mail platform. Cold outreach normally uses mailbox providers rather than newsletter ESPs, whose terms usually forbid unsolicited mail.
Email signature
The block at the end of an email with the sender's name, title and company. In cold email it is usually kept short, text only, without images or many links.
Email verification
Checking whether an address exists and accepts mail before sending, without actually sending a message. Removes invalid addresses that would bounce.
Email volume
How many emails a program sends per day or month. Volume grows with mailboxes and domains, but only helps if lists stay accurate and relevant.
Emails per mailbox per day
How many emails each sending mailbox sends daily. Cold email programs commonly keep this to a few dozen per mailbox and add mailboxes to scale.
Engagement signals
Recipient behavior that mailbox providers use to judge a sender: opens, replies, moving mail out of spam, adding to contacts, deleting unread and marking as spam. Replies are the strongest positive signal.
Envelope sender
The address used in the SMTP conversation between servers, also called Return-Path or MAIL FROM. Bounces go to it and SPF checks it. It can differ from the From address the recipient sees.

F

Feedback loop
A service where a mailbox provider reports back to a sender each time a recipient marks a message as spam. Yahoo and Microsoft offer them; Gmail shows aggregate complaint data in Postmaster Tools instead.
Firmographics
Company attributes used for targeting: industry, headcount, revenue, location, founding year and ownership. The B2B equivalent of demographics.
Fit score
A rating of how closely a company matches the ICP, separate from how interested it currently is.
Follow-up
Any email after the first in a sequence, sent when the prospect has not replied. A large share of replies in cold email come from follow-ups rather than the first message.
Funding stage
Where a startup is in venture funding: pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B and later. Newly funded companies are a common outbound target because they have fresh budget. More →

G

Gatekeeper
A person, such as an assistant or receptionist, who screens contact with the decision maker. More relevant to cold calling than to email.
GDPR
The EU's data protection law. B2B cold email to EU contacts is possible under legitimate interest if it is relevant to their role, the data is handled properly and opt-outs are respected.
Google Postmaster Tools
A free Google dashboard that shows a sending domain's spam complaint rate, domain and IP reputation, and authentication results for mail sent to Gmail users. Data appears only above a certain daily volume.
Google Workspace
Google's paid business email and apps suite. The most common mailbox provider for sending cold email, with per-user daily sending limits and strict enforcement of its sender rules.
Greylisting
A spam defense where the receiving server temporarily rejects mail from an unknown sender and accepts it only when the sending server retries. Legitimate servers retry; many spam tools do not.

H

Handoff
Passing an interested prospect from the outbound team to the person who will run the sales call, with context about the conversation so far.
Hard bounce
A permanent delivery failure, usually because the address or domain does not exist. The address should be removed at once; repeated hard bounces damage sender reputation.
Headcount
The number of employees at a company. The most common size filter in B2B targeting; Sales.co's clients mostly have 1 to 50 employees. More →
Hiring signal
A job posting that suggests a company needs something, such as a first SDR role signaling investment in outbound. One of the most used intent signals.
HTML email
An email formatted with HTML code for layout, images and styling. Cold emails usually work better as plain text or minimal HTML because they look like one-to-one messages and trigger fewer filters.
Hyper-personalization
Writing emails that reference several specific details about the individual and company. High reply rates, but costly per email, so usually reserved for high-value accounts.

I

ICP interview
A conversation with existing customers or the sales team to learn who buys, why and how, used to define the ICP and write copy.
Ideal customer profile (ICP)
A description of the companies most likely to buy and stay: industry, size, location, tech stack, funding stage. Lead lists are built by filtering for the ICP.
Image personalization
Inserting a picture customized for each prospect, such as their name on a whiteboard or their website in a mockup. Adds HTML and images, which can reduce deliverability.
Image-to-text ratio
How much of an email is images versus text. Emails that are mostly images are filtered more often; cold emails usually contain no images at all.
Inbound
Leads who come to the company on their own, through search, content, ads or referrals, and make contact first. More →
Inbox placement
Whether an email lands in the primary inbox, a tab such as Promotions, the spam folder, or nowhere. The number that decides whether anyone reads the message. More →
Inbox placement test
Sending a campaign to a panel of seed mailboxes across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and other providers to see where it lands before sending to real prospects. Also called a seed test.
Inbox rotation
Spreading a campaign's sends across many mailboxes and domains so each one stays within a safe daily volume. Standard practice in cold email once volume goes beyond a few dozen emails a day.
InMail
A LinkedIn message sent to someone you are not connected with, using paid credits from Premium or Sales Navigator.
Intent data
Signals that a company is researching a purchase now, such as hiring for a role, raising funding, adopting a tool or visiting competitor pages. Used to prioritize accounts. Sales.co's Intent Takeover plan is built on it. More →
Intent Takeover
Sales.co's $1,000/month plan: up to 1,000 high-intent accounts a month, each contacted five or more times across email and optional ads, LinkedIn and calls. More →
Interest-based CTA
A call to action that asks whether the prospect is interested rather than asking for a meeting, for example "want me to send the numbers?". Easy to say yes to and moves the conversation into a reply thread.
Interested reply
A reply showing interest in the offer, such as asking for pricing or agreeing to a call. The basis of positive reply rate.
IP reputation
A mailbox provider's score for the IP address that sends a message. Matters most for senders on dedicated IPs; on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, domain reputation carries more weight.

J

Job change signal
A contact starting a new role. New leaders often review vendors in their first months, and past customers who move bring familiarity with a product.

L

Lead
A person or company that might buy. In outbound, anyone on a lead list; in inbound, anyone who shows interest, such as filling in a form.
Lead generation
Finding and producing potential customers for a sales team, whether as contact lists, form fills or booked meetings. More →
Lead list
A set of contacts (name, role, company, verified email) that match an ICP, used as the input for an outbound campaign. More →
Lead magnet
Something useful offered for free in exchange for a reply or contact details, such as a report, audit, benchmark or template. In cold email, often offered in the CTA instead of a meeting.
Lead scoring
Ranking leads by how likely they are to buy, using ICP fit and engagement or intent data, so the best leads are contacted first.
Leads contacted
The number of new prospects who received the first email in a period. Together with positive reply rate, it predicts meetings.
Lead-to-meeting rate
Meetings booked divided by leads contacted. Combines reply rate and booking rate into one number.
Legitimate interest
A GDPR lawful basis that allows processing personal data without consent when the business need is real, the processing is necessary and it does not override the person's rights. The usual basis for B2B outreach in the EU.
LinkedIn outreach
Contacting prospects on LinkedIn through connection requests, messages and InMail, often alongside email.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn's paid prospecting product with advanced search filters for people and companies, lead lists and InMail credits. A common source for building B2B target lists.
List building
Creating a lead list: defining the ICP, finding matching companies, finding the right people, then enriching and verifying their contact data.
List-Unsubscribe header
An email header that lets mailbox providers show their own unsubscribe button. The one-click version defined in RFC 8058 is required by Google and Yahoo for bulk marketing mail. More →
Local business data
Contact data for small local businesses such as dentists, plumbers or salons, often built from maps listings and business directories rather than LinkedIn. More →
Lookalike companies
Companies similar to existing best customers in industry, size, tech stack or business model. Used to expand a target list from known winners.
Lookalike domain
A domain that closely resembles a company's main domain, such as acmehq.com for acme.com, bought for cold outreach so the main domain's reputation stays protected.
LTV (customer lifetime value)
The total gross profit a company expects from one customer over the whole relationship.

M

Mail Privacy Protection
An Apple Mail feature, introduced in 2021, that preloads remote images including tracking pixels. It marks many emails as opened whether or not a person read them, which makes open rates unreliable.
Mailbox
A single email account, such as jane@getacme.com, used to send outreach. Cold email programs spread volume across many mailboxes, each sending a limited number of emails a day.
Mailbox provider
The company that hosts the recipient's inbox and decides where a message lands: Google (Gmail and Workspace), Microsoft (Outlook and 365), Yahoo, Apple and others.
MEDDIC
Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion. A qualification framework for complex B2B deals.
Meeting booked
A confirmed calendar slot between a prospect and the seller's team. The main output of most outbound programs.
Meeting booking rate
The share of positive replies that turn into a booked meeting. Replying fast matters: Sales.co answers positive replies in under 10 minutes and measures a 2.6x higher booking rate from it.
Meeting-to-opportunity rate
The share of held meetings that become qualified opportunities. Measures lead quality more than volume.
Merge tag
A placeholder such as {{first_name}} or {{company}} that a sending tool replaces with each prospect's data. Also called a variable or merge field.
Micro-segment
A small, tightly defined group of prospects, such as dental clinics in Texas with three or more locations, that can be addressed with very specific copy.
Microsoft 365
Microsoft's business email and apps suite (Exchange Online). Used as a sending platform for cold email; since May 2025 Outlook.com also requires SPF, DKIM and DMARC from high-volume senders.
Microsoft SNDS
Smart Network Data Services. Microsoft's free dashboard that shows how Outlook.com rates mail from IP addresses you control. The Microsoft equivalent of parts of Google Postmaster Tools.
Month-to-month contract
An agreement that renews monthly and can be cancelled with short notice, with no minimum term. More →
MQL (marketing qualified lead)
A lead that marketing judges ready for sales follow-up, usually based on engagement such as downloads or pricing page visits.
MRR (monthly recurring revenue)
Monthly revenue from subscriptions. ARR divided by twelve.
Multichannel outreach
Contacting prospects through several channels in one sequence, such as email, phone, LinkedIn and ads. Increases the chance of reaching busy buyers.
MX record
The DNS record that says which servers receive email for a domain. Checking a prospect's MX record shows whether their company uses Google, Microsoft or another provider.

N

NAICS code
A North American Industry Classification System code that assigns every business an industry number. Used to filter company databases by industry.
Negative reply
A reply that declines or asks to stop, such as "not interested" or "remove me". Should be removed from the sequence and, for removal requests, added to the suppression list.
Neutral reply
A reply that is neither interested nor a refusal, such as "not right now" or "send more info". Often worth a tailored follow-up or a reminder at a later date.
Newsletter sponsorship
Paid placements in email newsletters. A common outbound target: Sales.co runs campaigns that sell sponsorships for newsletters and media companies. More →
No-show
A booked meeting the prospect does not attend. Common in cold outbound; a same-day reminder and a reschedule email recover some of them.
Nurture
Keeping in touch with leads who are not ready to buy, through periodic emails or content, until timing changes.

O

Objection
A reason a prospect gives for not moving forward, such as price, timing, an existing vendor or no need. Common objections can be answered in follow-ups before they are raised.
Objection handling
Answering a prospect's objection in a way that keeps the conversation going, usually by acknowledging it, asking a question and giving a short relevant fact or example.
Offer
What the email proposes: the product, service, result or free resource, and the terms. A clear, specific offer matters more than copy technique.
One-click unsubscribe
An unsubscribe method defined in RFC 8058 where the recipient clicks the provider's unsubscribe button and is removed without visiting a page or confirming. Required for bulk marketing mail by Google and Yahoo since 2024. More →
Open rate
Opens divided by emails delivered. Unreliable since Apple's Mail Privacy Protection auto-opens messages and some corporate filters open links and images, so reply rate is the better measure.
Open tracking
Placing a tiny invisible image (tracking pixel) in an email so the sender is notified when it loads. Adds HTML and a tracking link to the message, which is why many cold emailers switch it off.
Opener
The first line of a cold email, which also shows in the inbox preview. A specific, researched opener about the prospect or their company decides whether the rest gets read. Also called the icebreaker or first line. More →
Opportunity
A qualified deal being actively worked in the CRM, with an expected value and close date.
Opt-in
A recipient's consent to receive email, for example by signing up on a website. Required for marketing email in the EU and Canada in many cases, but not for B2B cold email under US CAN-SPAM.
Opt-out
A recipient's request to receive no more emails. Under CAN-SPAM it must be honored within 10 business days, and the address should go on a suppression list for every future campaign.
Outbound
Sales activity where the company contacts prospects first, through cold email, calls, LinkedIn or ads, instead of waiting for them to arrive. More →
Outbound campaign
One defined outreach effort: a lead list, a sequence and a goal, such as booking meetings with fintech CFOs.
Out-of-office reply
An automatic reply saying the recipient is away. Often includes a return date and sometimes a colleague to contact, both useful for follow-up.
Outsourced SDR
A sales development rep employed by a vendor and assigned to a client's account to prospect and book meetings. Priced per rep, usually from several thousand dollars a month. More →

P

Pain point
A specific problem the prospect has that the offer solves, such as slow hiring, high churn or empty pipeline. Cold emails built on a pain point the reader recognizes get more replies than feature lists.
Parallel dialer
Software that calls several numbers at once and connects the rep to whoever answers first. Raises conversations per hour.
PAS
Problem, Agitate, Solution. A cold email structure that names a problem the prospect likely has, shows what it costs them, then presents the offer as the fix. More →
Pattern interrupt
Copy that breaks the reader's expectation of a sales email, such as an unusual subject line or an honest admission, to get attention in a crowded inbox.
Pay per lead
A pricing model where the client pays for each qualified lead or reply delivered. More →
Pay per meeting
A pricing model where the client pays for each booked or held meeting. Rewards volume, so the qualification and no-show terms need to be written down. More →
PECR
The UK's Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. Marketing email to corporate addresses is allowed without consent, but sole traders and some partnerships are treated like individuals and need consent.
Permission-based email
Email sent to people who opted in to receive it, such as newsletter subscribers. The opposite of cold email, which is sent without prior consent.
Personal email
A private address at Gmail, Yahoo or similar. B2B cold outreach generally targets work addresses instead, and privacy laws treat personal addresses more strictly.
Personalization
Writing parts of each email from research on the specific person or company, such as a recent hire, product launch or customer. Sales.co measures a 3.2x reply rate for unique per-prospect emails against templates. More →
Physical address requirement
CAN-SPAM's rule that commercial email must include a valid postal address for the sender, such as a street address or registered PO box.
Pipeline coverage
Pipeline value divided by the sales target for a period. Teams often aim for three to four times coverage because many deals do not close.
Pipeline value
The total potential revenue of all open deals, sometimes weighted by each deal's probability of closing.
Plain text email
An email with no HTML formatting, images or tracking code. Looks like a normal one-to-one message and is the default format for cold outreach.
Positioning
How a company describes what it does, for whom and how it differs from alternatives. Cold emails built on clear positioning are easier to write and to answer.
Positive reply rate
Interested replies divided by prospects contacted. A more useful measure than total reply rate, which also counts unsubscribes, out-of-office messages and "not interested" replies. More →
Postmaster
The person or role responsible for a domain's mail systems. Also the name of the tools mailbox providers offer senders, such as Google Postmaster Tools.
Power dialer
Software that dials numbers from a list one after another automatically, so reps spend less time dialing.
Preview text
The snippet of the email body that inbox apps show after the subject line. In plain-text cold email it is simply the first line, which is why the opener matters so much.
Product-led growth (PLG)
A go-to-market model where users try the product themselves, often free, and convert to paid with little sales involvement.
Prospect
A lead that has been researched and fits the ICP, or who is actively being contacted. Often used interchangeably with lead.
P.S. line
A postscript at the end of an email. Readers often notice it, so cold emailers use it for social proof, a second reason to reply or a low-pressure alternative ask.
PTR record
A reverse DNS record that maps an IP address back to a hostname. Receiving servers check that the sending IP has one and that it matches; a missing PTR record is a spam signal.

Q

Qualified lead
A lead confirmed to fit the target profile and to have a real need, budget or interest. The definition should be agreed in writing with any outbound vendor.
Question hook
An opener that starts with a question about the prospect's situation. Works when the question is specific; generic questions such as "are you looking to grow revenue?" read as spam.
Quota
The sales target a rep or team must hit in a period, measured in revenue, meetings or deals.

R

Ramp time
How long a new sales hire takes to reach full productivity. For SDRs, often around three months, during which output is low.
Reading level
How easy a text is to read, often measured as a school grade. Cold emails written at a lower reading level, with short sentences and common words, are read faster and answered more often.
Re-engagement campaign
Outreach to old leads, past prospects or former customers who went quiet, often with a new offer or reason to talk.
Referral ask
Asking the prospect to point to the right person, such as "who handles hiring on your team?". Useful when the exact decision maker is unknown.
Relevance
How clearly an email connects to the recipient's role, company and current situation. The main driver of reply rates in cold email, ahead of copy style.
Reply classification
Tagging each reply as interested, not interested, out of office, referral, wrong person and so on, by hand or with software, to route it and measure positive reply rate.
Reply handling
Reading and answering replies to a campaign: answering questions, booking meetings, removing opt-outs and routing referrals. Fast handling of positive replies raises the meeting booking rate.
Reply rate
All replies divided by prospects contacted or emails sent (check which one a benchmark uses). Includes negative replies and auto-responses. More →
Response time
How long it takes to answer a reply. Answering positive replies within minutes books more meetings than answering hours later.
Retainer
A fixed monthly fee for an agreed scope of work, regardless of results. More →
Retargeting
Showing ads to people or companies who visited a website or were contacted in a campaign. In outbound, used so prospects see the brand again between emails.
Return-Path
The address where bounce messages are sent, set in the SMTP envelope. SPF is checked against its domain. See envelope sender.
Revenue band
A range of annual company revenue, such as $1M to $10M, used to filter lead lists. Often estimated for private companies.
Reverse IP lookup
Finding the company behind an IP address, used to identify which businesses visited a website.
Risky email
An address that verification cannot confirm, usually on a catch-all domain or a server that blocks checks. Sending to many risky addresses raises bounce rates.
ROI (return on investment)
The revenue or profit a program produced compared with its cost. For outbound, usually measured on closed deals attributed to booked meetings.
Role-based email
An address tied to a function rather than a person, such as info@, sales@ or support@. Usually excluded from cold email lists because replies are low and complaint risk is higher.

S

SaaS lead generation
Finding and booking meetings with buyers for software companies, often targeting a specific role at companies using a related tool. More →
SAL (sales accepted lead)
A lead passed from marketing that the sales team has accepted for follow-up, between MQL and SQL.
Sales cycle
The time from first contact to a closed deal. Short for small, low-priced deals; months for large enterprise purchases.
Sales engagement platform
Software that runs sequences across email, calls and LinkedIn, tracks activity and syncs with the CRM.
Sales forecast
An estimate of revenue a team will close in a period, based on open pipeline and win rates.
Sales funnel
The stages a buyer passes through from first contact to purchase, with fewer people at each stage. Top of funnel is awareness, bottom is the decision. More →
Sales pipeline
All open deals and the stage each one is in, from first meeting to closed. Outbound programs are often judged by how much pipeline they add.
Sales-led growth
A go-to-market model where salespeople drive acquisition through calls, demos and negotiation, as opposed to users signing up and paying on their own.
SAM (serviceable available market)
The part of the TAM a company can actually serve given its product, geography and channels.
Sample size
How many emails or prospects a test includes. Small samples give noisy reply rates, so a few hundred sends per variant are needed before calling a winner.
SDR (sales development representative)
A salesperson who finds and qualifies new prospects and books meetings, then hands them to an account executive. Most SDR work is outbound email, calls and LinkedIn. More →
Seed list
A set of test inboxes at different mailbox providers used to check where a campaign lands. See inbox placement test.
Segmentation
Splitting a lead list into groups by industry, size, role or situation so each group gets copy written for it.
Sender reputation
The overall trust a mailbox provider gives a sender, combining domain reputation, IP reputation, complaint and bounce history, and engagement. It decides inbox or spam more than the content of any single email. More →
Sending domain
A separate domain (for example getacme.com instead of acme.com) used only for cold outreach, so any reputation damage does not affect the company's main domain.
Sending limit
The maximum number of emails a mailbox or domain can send in a day. Google Workspace allows about 2,000 per user per day, but cold emailers typically stay far lower per mailbox to protect reputation.
Sequence
A series of emails (often three to five) sent to the same prospect over days or weeks, each sent only if the prospect has not replied.
Setup fee
A one-time charge at the start of an agency engagement for onboarding, domains and infrastructure. Sales.co charges none. More →
Show rate
The share of booked meetings the prospect actually attends. Confirmation emails and a clear agenda raise it.
SIC code
Standard Industrial Classification. An older industry coding system that NAICS replaced in most uses, but many data providers still offer it as a filter.
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. The standard servers use to send and relay email. Sending tools connect to a mailbox over SMTP (or an API) to send, and over IMAP to read replies.
SMTP check
An email verification method that connects to the recipient's mail server and asks whether a mailbox exists, without sending a message.
Social proof
Evidence that others like the prospect use and value the offer: named customers, results, reviews or case studies. In cold email, one relevant example usually beats a list of logos.
Social selling
Building relationships with prospects on social networks, mainly LinkedIn, by posting, commenting and messaging, usually alongside email outreach.
Soft bounce
A temporary delivery failure, such as a full mailbox or a server that is down. The sending system usually retries; repeated soft bounces to the same address should be treated as hard bounces.
Soft CTA
A low-commitment ask such as "worth a quick chat?" or "open to seeing how?" rather than a request to book a specific time. Usually gets more replies in a first cold email.
SOM (serviceable obtainable market)
The part of the SAM a company can realistically win in a given period.
Spam complaint rate
The share of recipients who mark a message as spam. Google requires bulk senders to stay below 0.3% and recommends under 0.1%. More →
Spam filter
Software at the mailbox provider or company mail gateway that decides whether a message goes to the inbox, spam or is rejected, based on authentication, reputation, content and recipient behavior.
Spam trap
An email address that exists only to catch spammers. Pristine traps were never used by a person; recycled traps are abandoned addresses reactivated. Hitting either damages reputation and signals poor list sourcing.
Spam words
Words and phrases that were once strongly associated with spam, such as "free", "guarantee" or "act now". Modern filters weigh them far less than reputation, but heavy salesy wording still lowers reply rates.
Speed to lead
The time between a lead showing interest and the first response from sales. Shorter is better for both inbound and outbound replies.
SPF
Sender Policy Framework. A DNS record listing the servers allowed to send email for a domain. Receiving servers use it to reject spoofed mail. More →
SPF lookup limit
SPF allows at most 10 DNS lookups when a record is evaluated. Each include: counts, and a record that exceeds the limit fails with a permerror, so adding too many tools to one domain can break SPF.
Spintax
A syntax for writing alternative phrases, such as {Hi|Hello|Hey}, that a sending tool picks from randomly for each email so messages are not word-for-word identical.
Spoofing
Sending email with a forged From address so it appears to come from someone else. SPF, DKIM and DMARC exist largely to stop it.
SQL (sales qualified lead)
A lead that sales has confirmed is a real potential buyer, usually after a first conversation.
Step
One message in a sequence. A four-step sequence sends up to four emails to each prospect who does not reply.
Subdomain
A domain under the main one, such as mail.acme.com. Some companies send marketing mail from subdomains; for cold email a separate lookalike domain gives more reputation separation.
Subject line
The line that shows in the inbox before the email is opened. Short, lowercase, internal-looking subject lines of two to four words tend to work better in cold email than marketing-style ones. More →
Suppression list
Addresses and domains that must never be emailed: opt-outs, existing customers, competitors, partners and open deals. Applied to every campaign before sending.

T

TAM Takeover
Sales.co's $2,000/month plan: personalized email to up to 20,000 ICP-matching leads a month, covering the full addressable market every 30 to 90 days. More →
Target account list
The named companies a sales team has chosen to pursue, usually filtered from the TAM by ICP fit and intent signals.
TCPA
The US Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Restricts autodialed and prerecorded calls and texts to mobile phones without consent, which affects cold calling and SMS outreach.
Technographics
Data about which software and tools a company uses, collected from website code, job posts and other sources. Used to target, for example, companies that run a specific CRM or ecommerce platform.
Throttling
Deliberately limiting how many emails go out per hour or day, or a receiving server slowing acceptance from a sender it does not yet trust.
Timeline hook
An opener that ties the email to something happening now at the prospect's company, such as "saw you're hiring three SDRs". Tends to outperform problem-first openers.
TLS
Transport Layer Security. Encryption for email in transit between servers. Gmail flags messages that arrive unencrypted, and Google requires TLS for bulk senders.
Total addressable market (TAM)
Every company that fits the ICP. In outbound, reaching the full TAM means contacting all of them on a cycle, for example every 30 to 90 days in Sales.co's TAM Takeover plan. More →
Trigger event
Something that happens at a company and makes an offer timely, such as a funding round, new executive, job posting, product launch or office move. Used to time and personalize outreach.
TXT record
A DNS record that holds text. SPF, DMARC and domain verification codes are all published as TXT records.

U

Unified inbox
A single view of replies from all sending mailboxes in a campaign, so replies across dozens of mailboxes can be read and answered in one place. Also called a master inbox or unibox.
Unsubscribe rate
Opt-outs divided by emails delivered. A rising rate means the targeting or copy is off.
Upsell
Selling an existing customer a larger plan or more of the same product.

V

Value proposition
A short statement of what the offer does for the prospect and why it is better than their current option. In a cold email, usually one sentence in the second or third line. More →
Variant
One version of an email step in an A/B test. Each variant goes to a share of the list and the one with more positive replies is kept.
Verified email
An address that an email verification check has confirmed exists and accepts mail.
Video prospecting
Sending prospects a short recorded video, often a screen recording of their website or product, as part of outreach. Used in follow-ups or for high-value accounts.
Voicemail drop
Leaving a pre-recorded voicemail with one click when a call goes to voicemail.

W

Warm introduction
An introduction to a prospect by someone both parties know. Converts better than cold outreach but does not scale.
Warm lead
A lead who already knows the company or has shown some interest, such as a past conversation or website visit.
Warm-up email
An email sent during domain warmup to build a mailbox's reputation before cold campaigns begin. See domain warmup.
Warmup network
A pool of mailboxes that send to and reply to each other automatically to build a new mailbox's engagement history. Common in cold email tools, though Google and Microsoft can detect and discount some of this activity.
Waterfall enrichment
Querying several data providers in order and taking the first valid result, so contacts one provider misses can still be found. Sales.co's waterfall finds 42% more valid contacts than standard sources.
Web scraping
Collecting data from websites automatically, for example company details from directories or maps listings. A common source for lists of local and niche businesses.
Website visitor identification
Matching anonymous website visits to companies, and sometimes to individuals, using IP and cookie data. Used as an intent signal for outreach.
Win rate
Deals won divided by deals closed (won plus lost) in a period. Also called close rate.
Word count
The length of an email body. Cold emails usually run 50 to 125 words; longer emails tend to get fewer replies.
Work email
An address at the person's company domain, such as jane@acme.com. The standard target for B2B cold email.
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