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Deliverability Acronyms: A-Z Part 1

If you’re new to the wonderful world of email marketing and deliverability, or even if you’re a seasoned pro, you’re probably overwhelmed by the alphabet soup of acronyms, jargon, abbreviations and initialisms our trade uses. We’re going to define some key terminology for you here within a series of posts. Before you know it, you’ll be speaking like an Email Pro. This week, we’ll cover A through D.

Check back soon as we roll out the rest of the deliverability defined alphabet!

TERM DEFINITION
API Application Program Interface - A computer programming term describing a set of definitions, protocols and tools for building software.
APWG Anti-Phishing Working Group Inc: APWG is the international coalition unifying the global response to cybercrime across industry, government and law-enforcement sectors and NGO communities.
ASP Application Service Provider - a business/vendor who provides computer-based services to customers over a network, such as access to a software application (similar but not exactly the same as the more commonly used term “SaaS” provider which we’ll define later on).
B2B Business to Business
B2C Business to Consumer
BIMI Brand Indicators for Message Identification: A new email standard that allows email marketers to combat fraudulent emails by inserting their brand logo on every mail.
CAN-SPAM The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003, the first USA national standards law governing the sending of commercial email.
CASL Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation - Canada's version of CAN-SPAM
CAUCE Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email: CAUCE is an all-volunteer Internet end-user advocacy organization. CAUCE has moved beyond its original mission of advocating for anti-spam laws, to a broader stance of defending the interests all users in the areas of privacy and abuse in all its forms on the Internet.
CIDR Classless Inter-Domain Routing - a method of allocating IP addresses & IP Routing.
CNAME CANONICAL NAME record - A DNS record that enables one domain to map to another domain.
COI Confirmed Opt In - an email address verification method. Also known as Double Opt-in and Verified Opt-in. COI eliminates a large amount of deliverability issues.
CRM Customer Relationship Management
CTA Call To Action - A URL link or content copy that influences the reader to take action.
CTO Click-to-Open Rate - Email metric calculated by dividing the total number of unique clicks by the number of unique opens.
CTR Click-Through-Rate - Email metric calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the total amount of delivered emails.
CTT Click Through Tracking - The email metrics obtained by counting all activity related to the recipients clicking on the URL Links in an email message.
DKIM Domain Keys Identified Mail - a standard email authentication protocol.
DMARC Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance - The latest email authentication, policy and reporting protocol that enables companies to protect their brands and their emails from spoofing attacks.
DNS Domain Name System - The internet's invisible phonebook which allows humans to find resources on the internet.
DoS Denial-of-service attack - a cyberattack on computer networks.
DSN Delivery Status Notification - The plain english message transmitted with bounce notifications that explains why the email was bounced.