Marketing and marketing technology (MarTech) have a lot of terms and acronyms, so here’s our list of the most common – and some not-so-common – terms, complete with definitions. We’ll add to this list when we run across something new, but it should provide a good foundation for anyone new to the marketing field or to MarTech (or who just needs a refresher).

Attribution

Attribution refers to giving credit to a particular advertising campaign or collection of campaigns for conversions. Marketing attribution shows which organic and paid programs are working best to deliver customers at lower costs and higher lifetime value.

LeadsRx Attribution™

Impartial, cross-channel attribution provides marketers with basic conversion tracking to know what’s working and what’s not. Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) lets you see which touchpoints result in lower acquisition costs and higher ROAS.

Any-Touch Attribution

Also known as the “Influencer Attribution”. Assigns credit to all touchpoints giving each one full point. This basically says each marketing touchpoint played a role in “influencing” a consumer to convert… the software does not weight one touchpoint any more importantly than another. In this model, the total number of conversions may be greater than the actual count.

Closer-Touch Attribution

Assigns credit for the conversion to the last touchpoint but only if it occurs within a predefined time period. The default time period is 2 minutes, and this can be changed to any value appropriate for your company.

First-Touch Attribution

Assigns credit for the conversion only to the first touchpoint that the visitor encountered.

Last-Touch Attribution

Assigns credit for the conversion only to the last touchpoint that the visitor encountered.

Linear Multi-Touch Attribution

Assigns each touchpoint a fraction of the attribution. For example, if a conversion path has 5 touchpoints, then each is given 20% credit, or a score of 0.20.

Weighted Multi-Touch Attribution

First and last touchpoints are each given 40% of the attribution credit, and all other touchpoints divide the remaining 20% evenly.

Algorithmic Multi-Touch Attribution

The LeadsRx algorithmic model assigns weights to each of your touchpoints based on past performance of those touchpoints. The system looks at both positive and negative outcomes of touchpoints in terms of contributing to conversions. In addition, the frequency of a touchpoint is taken into consideration in the algorithm making this model particularly well-suited for brand advertising as opposed to direct-response advertising.

Customer Journey Analytics

See the paths-to-purchase and the ways consumers develop trusting relationships with your brand. Optimize conversion paths across marketing programs and content with customer journey analytics. Understand how consumers build relationships with your brand.

LeadsRx Journey™

With built-in identity resolution, LeadsRx captures each touchpoint along the path-to-purchase. Customer journey analytics (CTA) lets you see consumer behavior as they interact with your brand. Grow lifetime value and reduce wasted ad spend.

Average Cost Per Conversion

Calculating average cost per conversion takes into account all the conversions received from paid sources and what those costs were, all conversions that resulted from free groupings such as organic search, and any overhead costs you have entered such as ad agency fees. Using all of this data, LeadsRx calculates an average cost per conversion.

Touchpoints

Touchpoints represent specific marketing efforts like email marketing, online advertisements, social marketing, and even direct mail.

Default Grouping

The default grouping includes all marketing campaigns that are NOT included in another grouping. These usually include direct traffic where a visitor typed your URL directly into the browser, as well as referral traffic where the visitor came through a link on another website directly to your site.

Groupings

Marketing touchpoints can be organized into “groupings” to report results for the grouping as a whole. Examples of groupings could be all Pay-per-Click Advertising, 3rd Party Syndication Programs, or a Fall Promotion. Groupings are totally up to you and should be based on how you want to view performance of marketing efforts.

Conversion Rate

The number of conversions divided by the number of campaign participants. Usually, the higher the conversion rate, the better your website or landing page is working at getting new customers.

Conversions

A “conversion” can be just about anything you want to track as a revenue or customer goal. For example, you could track new account signups, newsletter subscribers, eCommerce purchases, etc. Conversion can also be thought of as business “outcomes”.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

Customer lifetime value (LTV) is the total worth to a business of a customer over the whole period of their relationship. It is a key measurement to determine how valuable a customer is to your brand, not just on a purchase-by-purchase basis.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost related to acquiring a new customer. CAC refers to the resources and costs incurred to acquire an additional customer. CAC is a key business metric that is commonly used alongside the customer lifetime value (LTV) metric to measure value generated by a new customer.

Direct Search Traffic/Direct Visitors

When a visitor typed your URL directly into the browser to reach your website, this is considered direct traffic. They were already familiar with your brand and came directly to you.

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

Return On Ad Spend is calculated by looking at the cost of an advertising grouping compared to the revenue received from conversions attributed to this grouping.

LeadsRx Universal Pixel™

The underlying technology that powers multi-touch attribution and customer journey analytics is the LeadsRx Universal Pixel™, which captures anonymous, first-party data about your prospects and customers. Place the pixel directly on your website or using any tag manager. Once you do, the pixel immediately begins learning about marketing programs without the need to re-tag advertising.

Walled Garden

In ad tech, a walled garden is an ecosystem in which a provider doesn’t share information, technology, or other data with other third parties. On the contrary, these stakeholders create a closed platform or “walled garden” that works as an enclosed network. This gives providers full control over everything that occurs on their digital property and brings many benefits that range from better data protection to the collection of exclusive audience insights. Using our Universal Pixel™, you have the ability to capture consumer data using first-party, server-based control, without relying on third-party cookies. Our purpose-built identity graph safely stores information you share in your own virtual “walled garden.” Data won’t be shared across domains.

LeadsRx Privacy Studio™

LeadsRx Privacy Studio™ is a framework that establishes a Data Clean Room and puts IT teams in control of where and how collected data is stored. Corporate policy for privacy, user consent, and access become cornerstones of the system with IT squarely at the helm.

Unique Cookies

Visitors to your site within the specified time period are unique visitors only on their first visit. This number is often different from “total visitors” since that number usually counts visitors who leave and then return as two visitors.

Addressable TV

Targeted TV ads delivered on a home-by-home basis via cable, satellite, and telco boxes. It includes both linear and video-on-demand (VOD) delivered in this way but excludes connected TV (CTV), smart TV, and OTT.

Linear TV

Television programming distributed through cable, satellite, or broadcast networks; includes TV Everywhere, on-demand content.

Connected TV (CTV)

A TV set connected to the internet through built-in capabilities or through another device such as a Blu-ray player, game console, or dedicated streaming device (e.g., Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Roku).

Over-The-Top (OTT)

Any app or website that provides streaming video content over the internet and bypasses traditional distribution; examples include HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube.

Automatic Content Recognition (ACR)

Technology that tracks what people watch on internet-enabled TVs. Marketers use this data to measure which programs and ads viewers see.

Programmatic

Ads transacted via an application program interface (API), including everything from publisher-erected APIs to more standardized real-time bidding (RTB) technology.

Deterministic

For attribution, a “deterministic” approach simply means that a unique identifier is used to unify customer activity across ad campaigns, browsers, devices and apps. Anonymity is maintained, and the key benefit to deterministic approaches is that marketers have a great degree of confidence knowing all activity has been correctly unified to the same individual.

Probabilistic

Probabilistic attribution is a form of attribution based on probabilities, not ID or device matching. It relies on machine learning and statistical modeling techniques to identify probable conversions across various marketing touchpoints.

Out-of-Home (OOH)

Out-of-home (OOH) covers any form of outdoors advertising (billboard, bench, side of a bus).

Digital Marketing

Any form of communication aiming to persuade people to purchase a product or service that occurs through some form of digital device.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

An approach to marketing that flips traditional marketing on its head. Rather than developing buyer personas and then casting a wide net to attract those personas to your brand, account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on finding ways to engage with people from targeted accounts based on your ideal customer profile.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are used to track progress towards marketing goals. By setting the right KPIs for your business, you can continuously evaluate performance and make adjustments to optimize your marketing strategy.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score measures how likely someone would be to recommend your company to others on a 1–10 scale. Using this customer satisfaction metric, you can easily identify how loyal your customers are and divide them into three categories: promoters (9+), passives (7–8), and detractors (0–6).

Tech Stack

A tech stack, also called a software stack, is the set of technology and software an organization uses to run their business. For most businesses, that probably involves having a CMS, CRM software, sales acceleration tool, marketing automation platform, project management program, and – of course – an attribution software solution for measuring marketing performance.

Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a plan specifying how you will present your product’s unique value proposition so you can reach your customers and achieve a competitive advantage.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of positioning your content and website so it can rank well on and draw traffic from website pages and landing pages.

Paid Search

Paid search is the practice of displaying ads on search engines based on the terms, or keywords, individuals search for. Paid search works on a pay-per-click basis, meaning you only pay when someone clicks your ad for a given keyword.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of identifying the search terms that your prospective site visitors are looking for online. It is critical to ensuring your content can be found on search engine results pages.

Bounce Rate

The number of people who land on a page of your website and leave without clicking on anything before moving on to another page on your site.

Business-to-Business (B2B)

Describing a business that markets – or sells – to other businesses.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

Describing a business that markets and sells to consumers.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

This number shows the people that move through your website or marketing campaigns. It’s actually the “clicks” or actions prospects take, divided by the total number of actions people could take. Hence, the name “clickthrough rate.”

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

The total cost marketing pays to acquire a lead. It is an important metric to keep track of and it influences your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

Cost Per Click (CPC)

An advertising metric that marketers use to determine the amount they will pay for ads based on how many clicks the ad receives.

Landing Page

A page on your website that houses a form that prospects will fill out and exchange their personal information for a lead magnet or free offer (such as an ebook, demo or consultation).

Pay Per Click (PPC)

A method of advertising on the internet where you only pay when someone “clicks” on your ad.

Call To Action (CTA)

This tells your audience what action you want them to take. “Click on this button to make a purchase, get a quote, see a demo.”