Marketing & CRM Terms Explained
A plain-English reference for the terms and concepts used across customer engagement, marketing automation, SMS, email, and CRM — so your whole team is speaking the same language.
Attrition Rate
The percentage of customers who stop doing business with a company over a given period. Often used interchangeably with churn rate. A high attrition rate signals problems with retention, product fit, or customer experience.
Automated Journey
A pre-built sequence of messages or actions triggered by customer behavior — such as signing up, making a purchase, or going inactive. Automated journeys remove manual follow-up and ensure every customer gets a timely, consistent experience.
Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)
Total revenue divided by the number of active customers over a period. A key metric for subscription businesses and fitness studios tracking membership value.
Behavioral Data
Information collected about how customers interact with your brand — pages visited, emails opened, purchases made, classes attended. Used to trigger personalized marketing and predict future actions.
Bounce Rate (Email)
The percentage of emails that could not be delivered to the recipient's inbox. Hard bounces (invalid addresses) should be removed immediately; soft bounces (temporary issues) can be retried.
B2C CRM
A customer relationship management platform built for high-volume, direct-to-consumer businesses. Unlike B2B CRMs focused on deals and pipelines, B2C CRMs prioritize customer profiles, lifecycle stages, and automated engagement at scale.
Churn Rate
The percentage of customers who cancel or stop purchasing within a given time period. Calculated as (customers lost ÷ customers at start of period) × 100. Reducing churn by even 1–2% can dramatically increase lifetime value.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of people who clicked a link in an email, SMS, or ad out of those who received or saw it. A key indicator of message relevance and offer appeal.
Conversational AI
AI technology that enables natural, two-way dialogue between businesses and customers — through chatbots, voice assistants, or automated messaging. Goes beyond scripted responses to understand intent and respond contextually.
Conversational Marketing
A marketing approach centered on real-time, one-on-one conversations with prospects and customers — via live chat, SMS, or AI chatbots — to qualify leads, answer questions, and move people through the funnel faster.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
Software that centralizes customer data, tracks interactions, and enables businesses to manage relationships at scale. A good CRM connects marketing, sales, and support into a single view of each customer.
Customer Data Platform (CDP)
A system that unifies customer data from multiple sources (website, POS, email, SMS, apps) into a single customer profile. Unlike CRMs, CDPs are built for marketers and designed for real-time activation across channels.
Customer Engagement
The depth and frequency of interactions between a customer and a brand across all touchpoints. High engagement correlates with higher retention, more referrals, and greater lifetime value.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
The total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account throughout their relationship. Increasing LTV through retention and upsells is typically more cost-effective than acquiring new customers.
Customer Retention
The ability of a business to keep its existing customers over time. Measured as retention rate = ((customers at end - new customers) ÷ customers at start) × 100. Retention is the foundation of sustainable growth.
Customer Segmentation
The process of dividing customers into groups based on shared characteristics — demographics, behavior, purchase history, or lifecycle stage — so you can send more relevant messages to each group.
Deliverability
The ability of an email or SMS to actually reach the recipient's inbox (or phone) rather than being filtered as spam. Deliverability depends on sender reputation, list hygiene, content quality, and authentication setup.
Drip Campaign
A series of pre-written messages sent automatically on a schedule or triggered by customer actions. Common for onboarding, nurturing leads, or re-engaging inactive customers.
Dynamic Segmentation
Audience segments that update automatically as customer data changes — so a customer moves from "new member" to "at-risk" to "loyal" without manual intervention. Enables always-accurate targeting.
Email Automation
Using software to send emails automatically based on triggers, schedules, or customer behavior. Ranges from simple welcome sequences to complex multi-step journeys based on real-time data.
Email Deliverability
See Deliverability. Specifically for email, key factors include SPF/DKIM/DMARC authentication, sender score, list hygiene, and engagement rates on previous sends.
Engagement Rate
A measure of how actively customers interact with your content or messages. For email it's opens and clicks; for SMS it's replies and link taps; for fitness studios it's class attendance and check-ins.
First-Party Data
Data you collect directly from your customers with their consent — purchase history, form fills, email opens, app activity. More reliable and privacy-compliant than third-party data, and increasingly important as cookies disappear.
Funnel
A model representing the stages a customer moves through — from awareness to purchase to loyalty. Marketing automation helps move customers through the funnel faster with the right message at each stage.
Lead Nurturing
The process of building relationships with potential customers who are not yet ready to buy — through educational content, personalized follow-ups, and timely touchpoints across email, SMS, and other channels.
Lead Scoring
A system that assigns points to leads based on their behavior and profile data, indicating their likelihood to convert. High-scoring leads get prioritized for sales outreach; low-scoring leads continue to receive nurture content.
Lifecycle Marketing
A strategy that delivers different messages and offers to customers based on where they are in their relationship with your brand — from first visit through active customer to at-risk and win-back stages.
Marketing Automation
Software that automatically executes marketing tasks — sending emails, texts, updating CRM records, triggering workflows — based on customer behavior or predefined rules. Enables personalization at scale without manual effort.
MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)
Text messages that include media — images, GIFs, videos, or audio — in addition to text. MMS messages have higher engagement than plain SMS and are effective for promotions, announcements, and brand storytelling.
Multi-Channel Marketing
Reaching customers across multiple platforms — email, SMS, social, in-app — using separate strategies for each. Different from omnichannel, which integrates all channels into a unified experience.
Multi-Location Marketing
Managing and executing marketing campaigns across multiple business locations — with the ability to run both global brand campaigns and localized promotions from a single platform.
Omnichannel Marketing
A customer experience strategy that integrates all channels — email, SMS, in-store, app, social — into a single seamless experience. Customers can move between channels without losing context or continuity.
Open Rate
The percentage of email recipients who opened your message. Industry averages vary by sector; fitness and wellness typically see 20–30%. A low open rate usually signals a weak subject line or poor list hygiene.
Opt-In
Explicit consent from a customer to receive marketing communications. SMS marketing requires opt-in by law (TCPA in the US). Double opt-in — confirming via a second action — produces higher-quality lists.
Opt-Out
A customer's request to stop receiving marketing messages. SMS opt-outs are typically triggered by replying STOP. Honoring opt-outs immediately is legally required and protects your sender reputation.
Personalization
Tailoring messages, offers, and experiences to individual customers based on their data — name, purchase history, behavior, preferences. Goes beyond inserting a first name; true personalization uses behavioral signals to deliver the right content at the right time.
Predictive Analytics
Using historical data and machine learning to forecast future customer behavior — who is likely to churn, upgrade, or purchase again. Enables proactive marketing rather than reactive responses.
Reactivation Campaign
A targeted campaign designed to re-engage customers who have gone inactive. Typically triggered after a set period of no activity, with a compelling offer or personalized message to bring them back.
Retention Rate
The percentage of customers a business keeps over a given period. The inverse of churn rate. Improving retention by 5% can increase profits by 25–95%, according to Bain & Company research.
Review Management
The practice of monitoring, responding to, and generating online reviews across platforms like Google, Yelp, and Facebook. Proactive review management builds trust, improves local SEO, and surfaces customer feedback.
ROI (Return on Investment)
A measure of the profitability of a marketing campaign or channel. Calculated as (Revenue - Cost) ÷ Cost × 100. Email marketing consistently delivers some of the highest ROI of any channel, averaging $36–42 for every $1 spent.
Sender Score
A reputation score (0–100) assigned to an email sending IP address, reflecting how mailbox providers view your sending practices. A low sender score means more emails land in spam. Maintained through good list hygiene and consistent engagement.
SMS Marketing
Using text messages to communicate with customers for promotions, reminders, alerts, and two-way conversations. SMS has a 98% open rate and most messages are read within 3 minutes of delivery, making it one of the most effective marketing channels.
SMS Short Code
A 5–6 digit phone number used for high-volume SMS marketing. Short codes are easier to remember and faster to send from than standard 10-digit numbers, making them ideal for opt-in campaigns and mass sends.
Static Segmentation
Audience segments defined once and not updated unless manually changed. Contrast with dynamic segmentation, which updates automatically. Static segments are useful for one-time campaigns but become stale quickly.
TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act)
US law governing SMS and phone marketing. Requires prior written consent before sending marketing texts, mandatory opt-out mechanisms, and restrictions on send times. Non-compliance can result in fines of $500–$1,500 per message.
Two-Way Messaging
SMS communication that allows customers to reply and have a real conversation — not just receive broadcasts. Two-way messaging enables appointment confirmations, survey responses, and real-time support via text.
Win-Back Campaign
A targeted marketing sequence aimed at customers who have lapsed or churned — offering incentives, personalized messages, or new value propositions to bring them back. Most effective when triggered at defined inactivity thresholds.
Workflow Automation
A series of automated actions — sending messages, updating records, assigning tasks — triggered by specific events or conditions. Workflow automation eliminates manual tasks and ensures consistent follow-through across your entire customer base.
Ready to Put These Concepts Into Practice?
Gleantap brings together CRM, marketing automation, SMS, and email in one platform — so you can stop managing tools and start building customer relationships that last.
Ready to Put These Concepts Into Practice?
Gleantap brings together CRM, marketing automation, SMS, and email in one platform — so you can stop managing tools and start building customer relationships that last.