Email marketing glossary

An aria-label is an attribute that extends HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to enable email developers to define accessibility text for non-textual elements. It impacts the way HTML elements are “translated”...

Brand image refers to a business’ visual identity and is an integral component of a business’ overall brand identity. It depends on customers’ perception of and opinions about a brand...

In email development, bulletproof buttons and backgrounds refer to buttons and backgrounds coded in HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Instead of relying on email clients to properly render image-based buttons or...

In emails, a citation refers to text sourced from another email while crediting the original sender. For example, if a brand uses a selection of text from an email it...

Color contrast is the difference between the background and foreground color in an email’s content. While this is important from a design perspective, it’s also crucial for creating accessible emails....

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology that facilitates the management of brand-customer interactions. CRM software enable brands to manage their relationships with the subscribers who frequently engage with their...

Customer relationship management (CRM) software allows brands to manage the data and experiences of existing and potential customers while tracking customers’ digital behavior. Brands maintaining customer records use CRMs to...

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a style sheet language that describes the presentation of a document written in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or Extensible Markup Language (XML). In other...

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is software that pulls data from multiple marketing tools to generate a single customer database. The platform may house customer data such as demographics, psychographics,...

The domain name system (DNS) is a way to name and identify computers that companies can reach through the internet or other IP networks. As far as DNS for email...

Email attachments are files sent within (or attached to) emails. These attachments could be PDF files, images, and more. However, some inbox service providers (ISPs) flag large email attachments as...

The email’s body is part of a HyperText Markup Language (HTML) email that contains most of the content visible to recipients. It often consists of a header or hero section...

Email components are the elements of an email. The five main parts of an email are the subject line, to and from email addresses, header, body, and footer. Email components...

Email frameworks take on all the heavy lifting of the email development process. In other words, they take on difficult tasks such as workarounds for tricky email clients, optimizations for...

An email marketer is responsible for creating and monitoring email marketing campaigns, optimizing email design and layouts, and generating email content. While email marketers are just one link in the...

Email performance is a metric that allows brands to measure the performance of their marketing emails at each stage of the email cycle. It pulls together multiple email marketing metrics...

An email recipient is an individual who owns the “to” email address in the “from” and “to” fields (found on the top of an email). The “from” address is of...

In emails, exporting is the process of moving content around from platform to platform, like bringing email templates to an email service provider (ESP) or exporting template code to be...

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language like the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The main difference between the two languages is that XML stores and transfers data, while HTML...

Eye tracking is used to test and observe an individual’s eye movements and monitor their visual attention. Email professionals use it to gauge customer interaction with their content and gain...

A font is a style of readable typography or text. They come in multiple styles and sizes and users can often personalize their font styles with colors and highlights. However,...

The from address in an email is a human-readable address. It indicates the sender’s name or email address in the “from” field of an email header. The from address helps...

A GIF, short for graphics interchange format, is a digital file format that’s often displayed as an animated image. It promotes user engagement by catching their attention and encouraging them...

HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, is a standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web app or email. It’s the coding language that defines the basic...

An HTML doctype (document type declaration) tells your reader’s email client they should expect an HTML document, written in a particular version of HTML that contains specific coding languages or...

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) padding is the space between the content and border in an HTML element. It’s crucial for design elements to look professional in an email marketing campaign....

HTML snippets are reusable pieces of code that make the creation of an HTML email template easy. A snippet either consists of text or an HTML tag and can be...

Image blocking occurs when recipients’ email clients block images in emails, which is usually done for security reasons. Recipients can also choose to block images from automatically downloading because of...

An image carousel is a rotating set of images brands include in their emails, websites, and social media channels to add flair to content and boost engagement rates. Image carousels...

JavaScript, or JS, is a programming script that’s commonly used in web development to add interactivity and animation. However, at Email on Acid, we don’t recommend using it in email...

Media queries are a feature of CSS (cascading style sheets) that allow brands to specify particular viewport sizes at which their email or web app content should resize to fit...

Modular email design is a way of creating an HTML email template to have moveable chunks that can be rearranged to create custom email designs, responsive email templates, and more....

Personalized product recommendations are a collection of products created on the basis of a customer’s prior purchases or browsing history. They’re useful in an email marketing program, as subscribers are...

Product differentiation is the process of advertising a product so it appears to have a competitive edge over others in the same category. Different types of product differentiation include vertical,...

A promotion code, or coupon code, is a piece of text containing letters and numbers that lead to discounts or promotions like free shipping. In email marketing, these codes promote...

A responsive email design is all about coding HTML emails in a way that adjusts the email layout to different viewport or screen sizes. This enables the layout to render...

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a way to subscribe and access recently published content in one place. Instead of having to open and navigate to various blogs, podcasts, and videos,...

Schema markup, also known as structured data, is code used to provide clear information to search engines, like Google, so they can parse senders’ content. Brands use it to boost...

Semantic HTML, also known as semantic markup, is a way of writing HyperText Markup Language (HTML) code that makes it easily human- and machine-readable. Brands use HTML tags to label...

A Short Message Service (SMS) is a mobile text message of up to 160 characters. Brands use SMS in marketing in similar ways to email communication. They even personalize follow-up...

SMTP, which stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, is an internet standard responsible for getting emails from one place to another. It takes an outgoing message via an SMTP port...

A wireframe is a two-dimensional mock design of a web page, website, or email design. It’s a minimalist, lightweight “sketch” that demonstrates how an end product should look. Typically, it...