Cold Email & Outbound Free tool
A/B Testing
Sending two versions of an email to similar prospects to see which one gets more positive replies.
GTM Glossary
The B2B growth glossary, explained by operators
Plain-English definitions of 163 terms across cold email, deliverability, LinkedIn, SEO, AI search, content, sales and SaaS metrics. Each one comes with formulas, examples, common mistakes and a free tool where we have one.
- 163 terms
- 9 topics
- 51 with a free tool
what is dmarc?
DMARCEmail Deliverability
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is a DNS TXT record that tells receiving servers what to do with email that fails authentication for your domain. A message passes DMARC when SPF or…
Example DMARC record (monitoring)
Host: _dmarc.example.com
Related: SPF Record · DKIM · BIMI DMARC Generator
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)SaaS & Revenue Metrics
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the average amount a company spends on sales and marketing to win one new paying customer. You calculate it by dividing total acquisition spend in a period by the…
Formula
CAC = Total sales and marketing spend ÷ New customers acquired
Related: LTV:CAC Ratio · CAC Payback Period · Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) SaaS CAC Calculator
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)GEO & AI Search
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of improving how often and how accurately a brand, product or page appears in answers from generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google…
Related: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) · AI Citations · LLM Visibility
Reply RateCold Email & Outbound
Reply rate is the percentage of prospects who respond to an email campaign out of all prospects who were contacted. In cold outreach it counts any human reply, positive, neutral or negative, and is…
Formula
Reply rate = (Prospects who replied ÷ Prospects contacted) × 100
Related: Positive Reply Rate · Open Rate · Meeting Booked Rate
163 terms
A
Lead Research & Data
Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
A B2B strategy where marketing and sales target a chosen list of high-value accounts with coordinated, tailored campaigns.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Activation Rate
The percentage of new users who reach a defined first-value milestone in the product.
GEO & AI Search
AI Citations
Links or references to source pages that AI tools show alongside their generated answers.
Cold Email & Outbound
Allbound Marketing
A go-to-market approach that runs inbound and outbound together so each one makes the other convert better.
SEO
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, which tells users and search engines what the linked page is about.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Annual Contract Value (ACV)
The average yearly value of a customer contract, excluding one-time fees.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
The annualized value of all active recurring subscription contracts at a point in time.
GEO & AI Search
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Structuring content so search engines and AI assistants use it as the direct answer to a question.
Sales & GTM Strategy Free tool
Appointment Setting
The work of contacting target prospects and booking qualified sales meetings for account executives.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)
Recurring revenue in a period divided by the average number of users or paying accounts.
B
Content Marketing
B2B Case Study
A story of how a real customer solved a specific problem with your product or service, including the results they got.
Content Marketing
B2B Content Marketing
Creating and distributing useful content that attracts business buyers, builds trust and drives pipeline over time.
Lead Research & Data
B2B Lead List
A list of companies and decision-makers that fit your ICP, with the contact details needed for outbound outreach.
SEO
Backlinks
A backlink is a link from another website to yours, used by search engines as a signal of trust and relevance.
Sales & GTM Strategy
BANT and MEDDIC
Two sales qualification frameworks: BANT checks budget, authority, need and timing; MEDDIC goes deeper for complex deals.
Email Deliverability
BIMI
A standard that displays your verified brand logo next to your emails in supporting inboxes.
Content Marketing
Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU) Content
Content for buyers close to a decision, such as comparisons, alternatives, pricing, case studies and demos.
Cold Email & Outbound
Bounce Rate
The share of sent emails rejected by the receiving server, split into permanent hard and temporary soft bounces.
GEO & AI Search
Brand Mentions
References to your brand on other websites, forums and media, whether or not they include a link.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Break-Even Point
The level of sales at which total revenue equals total costs, so the business neither makes nor loses money.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Burn Multiple
Net cash burned divided by net new ARR, showing how efficiently a startup turns cash into growth.
Lead Research & Data
Buyer Persona
A research-based profile of a specific person involved in buying your product, covering their role, goals, pains and objections.
Lead Research & Data
Buying Signals
Actions, events or comments that suggest a prospect or account is more likely to be ready to buy now.
C
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
CAC Payback Period
The number of months it takes for a customer's gross profit to repay what it cost to acquire them.
SEO
Canonical Tag
A canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the main version of a page when similar or duplicate versions exist.
Cold Email & Outbound
Catch-All Email
A mail server setting that accepts email sent to any address at a domain, so verification can't confirm a mailbox exists.
Lead Research & Data
Champion
A person inside the buying company who wants your solution, has influence, and actively pushes the deal forward internally.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Churn Rate
The percentage of customers or recurring revenue lost over a given period.
GEO & AI Search
Claude Skills
Folders of instructions and files, built around a SKILL.md, that Claude loads when a task needs them.
Cold Email & Outbound
Cold Email
A one-to-one style email sent to a relevant prospect who has had no prior contact with the sender.
Cold Email & Outbound
Cold Email Call to Action (CTA)
The single ask at the end of a cold email that tells the prospect what to do next, such as reply or take a call.
Cold Email & Outbound Free tool
Cold Email ROI
The return a cold email program generates, comparing revenue or gross profit won against total program cost.
Cold Email & Outbound Free tool
Cold Email Subject Line
The short line shown in the inbox before a cold email is opened, written to look like a normal work email.
Cold Email & Outbound
Cold Outreach
Contacting prospects who don't know you yet, through email, LinkedIn, phone or other direct channels.
Content Marketing
Comparison Page
A page that compares your product with one or more competitors to help buyers close to a decision choose the right fit.
Content Marketing
Content Distribution
Getting content in front of the right audience through owned, earned and paid channels after it is published.
Content Marketing
Content Repurposing
Turning one piece of content into several formats and versions for different channels, such as posts, emails and clips.
Content Marketing
Content Strategy
A plan that defines who your content is for, which topics and formats you cover, how it is distributed and how success is measured.
Sales & GTM Strategy Free tool
Conversion Rate
The percentage of visitors, recipients or leads who complete a specific goal, such as a form fill or purchase.
SEO
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google's three metrics for real-user page experience: loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS).
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
The direct costs of delivering a product or service to paying customers.
SEO
Crawl Budget
Crawl budget is the number of URLs a search engine will crawl on a site in a given period.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
The total sales and marketing spend needed to win one new paying customer.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Customer Concentration Risk
The risk that comes from a large share of revenue depending on one customer or a small group of customers.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Customer Growth Rate
The percentage change in the number of paying customers over a set period.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
The total gross profit a company expects to earn from one customer over the whole relationship.
D
Lead Research & Data Free tool
Data Hygiene
The ongoing practice of keeping CRM and lead data accurate, complete, consistent and free of duplicates.
Lead Research & Data
Data Waterfall
An enrichment method that queries several data providers in order, moving to the next only when the previous one finds nothing.
Lead Research & Data
Decision-Maker (Economic Buyer)
The person with the authority and budget to approve a purchase and sign off on the final decision.
Sales & GTM Strategy
Discovery Call
The first proper sales conversation, used to understand the buyer's problem and decide if there is a fit worth pursuing.
Email Deliverability
DKIM
An email authentication method that signs messages with a private key verified through a DNS record.
Email Deliverability Free tool
DMARC
A DNS policy that tells receivers how to handle email that fails SPF and DKIM alignment for your domain.
SEO
Domain Authority vs Domain Rating
Domain Authority (Moz) and Domain Rating (Ahrefs) are third-party 0 to 100 scores estimating a site's backlink strength.
Email Deliverability
Domain Reputation
How much mailbox providers trust your sending domain, based on its history of email behavior.
Lead Research & Data Free tool
Duplicate Emails
The same email address appearing more than once in a list or CRM, often with different casing, spacing or records.
E
SEO
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, Google's framework for judging content quality.
Content Marketing
Editorial Calendar
A schedule that shows what content will be created and published, when, on which channel and by whom.
Email Deliverability
Email Blacklist
A real-time list of IP addresses or domains flagged for sending spam, used by receivers to block mail.
Email Deliverability Free tool
Email Deliverability
The ability of your emails to reach the recipient's inbox instead of the spam folder or being blocked.
Cold Email & Outbound Free tool
Email Permutation
Generating likely email addresses from a person's name and company domain, then verifying which one is real.
Cold Email & Outbound
Email Personalization at Scale
Tailoring outreach to each prospect's role, company or situation across hundreds or thousands of emails.
Email Deliverability Free tool
Email Sending Limits
The maximum number of emails or recipients a mailbox provider lets one account send in a set period.
Cold Email & Outbound
Email Sequence
A planned series of emails sent automatically on a schedule, stopping when the recipient replies.
Email Deliverability Free tool
Email Verification
Checking whether email addresses are valid and able to receive mail before you send to them.
Email Deliverability Free tool
Email Warm-Up
Gradually increasing sending volume on a new mailbox or domain to build a trusted sending reputation.
GEO & AI Search
Entity Optimization
Making your brand, people and products clearly identifiable to search engines and AI as distinct entities.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Expansion Revenue
Additional recurring revenue from existing customers through upgrades, extra seats, add-ons or price increases.
F
SEO
Featured Snippet
A featured snippet is a highlighted answer pulled from a web page and shown near the top of Google's results.
Lead Research & Data
Firmographic Data
Descriptive data about companies, such as industry, employee count, revenue, location and ownership, used to segment B2B markets.
Cold Email & Outbound
Follow-Up Email
An email sent after an earlier message got no reply, to restate the reason for writing or add something new.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
Founder-Led Content
Content published from a founder's own profile, sharing their views and experience to build trust and demand.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Freemium Conversion Rate
The percentage of free-plan users who upgrade to a paid plan within a set period.
G
Content Marketing
Gated Content
Content that visitors can only access after filling in a form, usually with their name and email address.
GEO & AI Search
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Optimizing content and brand presence so AI tools like ChatGPT and AI Overviews mention and cite you.
Sales & GTM Strategy
Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy
The plan for which market you sell to, what you offer, how you price it and which channels you use to reach buyers.
Email Deliverability Free tool
Google & Yahoo Bulk Sender Requirements
Authentication, unsubscribe and spam rate rules Gmail and Yahoo enforce for high-volume senders since 2024.
GEO & AI Search
Google AI Overviews
AI-generated summaries Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to source pages.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)
The share of recurring revenue kept from existing customers after churn and downgrades, excluding expansion.
Sales & GTM Strategy
GTM Engineering
Building automated systems that find, research and contact the right prospects, using data, APIs and code instead of manual work.
I
Cold Email & Outbound
Icebreaker
The personalized opening line of a cold email that shows the prospect why you are writing to them.
Lead Research & Data
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
A description of the type of company that gets the most value from your product and is most likely to buy, stay and grow.
Sales & GTM Strategy
Inbound vs Outbound
Inbound brings buyers to you through content and search; outbound means you contact chosen prospects first.
Email Deliverability
Inbox Placement Rate
The percentage of your delivered emails that land in the inbox rather than the spam folder.
SEO
Indexing
Indexing is when a search engine stores and organizes a crawled page so it can appear in search results.
Lead Research & Data
Intent Data
Behavioral data showing which people or companies are actively researching a topic, problem or product category.
SEO
Internal Linking
Internal linking is linking from one page on your site to another, guiding users and search engines through your content.
Email Deliverability
IP Reputation
The trust rating of the IP address that sends your email, based on its sending history.
K
SEO
Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty is a tool's estimate of how hard it is to rank in the top organic results for a keyword.
SEO
Keyword Research
Keyword research is finding and prioritizing the search terms your buyers use so you know which pages to create.
L
Sales & GTM Strategy Free tool
Lead Conversion Rate
The percentage of leads that turn into customers, or into a defined next stage such as opportunity.
Lead Research & Data Free tool
Lead Enrichment
Adding missing or extra information to lead and account records, such as job title, email, company size, tech stack or signals.
Content Marketing
Lead Magnet
A free, useful resource offered in exchange for a prospect's contact details, such as a template, tool or guide.
Lead Research & Data
Lead Scoring
A method of ranking leads with points for fit and engagement so sales knows who to contact first.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn Acceptance Rate
The percentage of LinkedIn connection requests you send that recipients accept.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn Automation
Using software to send LinkedIn invites, messages or profile visits without doing each action by hand.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn Connection Request
An invitation to join someone's first-degree network on LinkedIn, sent with or without a short note.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn Engagement Pods
Groups of LinkedIn users who agree to like and comment on each other's posts to boost reach.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn Ghostwriting
A writer drafting LinkedIn posts that publish under an executive's or founder's own name and voice.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn InMail
A paid LinkedIn message you can send to members you are not connected with.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn Profile Optimization
Improving a LinkedIn profile so the right buyers find it, trust it and want to connect or reply.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn's paid prospecting tool for finding, filtering, saving and messaging B2B buyers.
GEO & AI Search
LLM Visibility
How often and how accurately large language models mention, cite and recommend your brand.
GEO & AI Search Free tool
llms.txt
A proposed Markdown file at a site's root that points AI models to its most useful content.
SEO
Local SEO
Local SEO is optimizing a business to appear in map results and local searches in the areas it serves.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
LTV:CAC Ratio
Customer lifetime value divided by customer acquisition cost, showing the return on acquisition spend.
M
Email Deliverability Free tool
Mailbox Rotation
Spreading cold email sends across many mailboxes so each one stays under a safe daily volume.
Sales & GTM Strategy
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
A lead that fits your target profile and has engaged enough for marketing to pass it to sales.
Cold Email & Outbound Free tool
Meeting Booked Rate
The percentage of contacted prospects, or of positive replies, that turn into a booked sales meeting.
Cold Email & Outbound
Merge Tags
Placeholders like {{first_name}} that a sending tool replaces with each contact's data when the email is sent.
SEO
Meta Description
A meta description is an HTML tag summarizing a page, which search engines may show as the snippet under the title.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
The normalized monthly value of all active recurring subscriptions.
Email Deliverability
MX Record
A DNS record that tells other servers where to deliver email sent to your domain.
N
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
The share of recurring revenue kept from existing customers after expansion, downgrades and churn.
O
SEO
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is building signals outside your site, mainly backlinks and mentions, that show search engines it can be trusted.
SEO
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is optimizing the content and HTML of individual pages so they rank for the queries they target.
Cold Email & Outbound
Open Rate
The share of delivered emails recorded as opened, measured with a tracking pixel and now heavily inflated.
Cold Email & Outbound
Outbound Sales
A sales motion where the seller picks target accounts and starts the conversation through email, LinkedIn or calls.
P
SEO
People Also Ask
People Also Ask is a Google results box of related questions that expand to show short answers from web pages.
Content Marketing
Pillar Page
A comprehensive page covering a core topic broadly, linking out to more detailed articles on each subtopic.
Sales & GTM Strategy Free tool
Pipeline Velocity
How much revenue your pipeline produces per day, based on deal count, deal size, win rate and cycle length.
Cold Email & Outbound
Positive Reply Rate
The percentage of contacted prospects who reply with genuine interest, such as asking for details or a call.
Sales & GTM Strategy Free tool
Product-Led Growth (PLG)
A growth strategy where users find, try and adopt the product themselves, and the product drives conversion to paid.
SEO
Programmatic SEO
Programmatic SEO is creating many search-targeted pages from a template and a dataset instead of writing each one by hand.
R
Cold Email & Outbound
Reply Rate
The percentage of contacted prospects who reply to a cold email campaign, positive or not.
GEO & AI Search
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
An AI technique where a model retrieves relevant documents first, then writes an answer based on them.
Sales & GTM Strategy
Revenue Operations (RevOps)
The function that runs the shared systems, data and processes behind marketing, sales and customer success.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
Rule of 40
A SaaS benchmark stating that revenue growth rate plus profit margin should total at least 40%.
S
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
SaaS Gross Margin
The percentage of revenue left after subtracting the direct costs of delivering the product.
SaaS & Revenue Metrics Free tool
SaaS Magic Number
A sales efficiency ratio comparing annualized new revenue with the prior quarter's sales and marketing spend.
Sales & GTM Strategy
Sales Accepted Lead (SAL)
A marketing lead that sales has reviewed and formally agreed to follow up, sitting between MQL and SQL.
Sales & GTM Strategy
Sales Cycle
The steps and time it takes to turn a new opportunity into a signed customer.
Sales & GTM Strategy Free tool
Sales Funnel
A model of how prospects narrow from first awareness to paying customer, usually split into top, middle and bottom stages.
Sales & GTM Strategy Free tool
Sales Pipeline
A visual view of all open deals, organized by the stage each one has reached in your sales process.
Sales & GTM Strategy
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
A lead that sales has vetted and confirmed has the need, authority and timing to become a real opportunity.
Sales & GTM Strategy
Sales-Led Growth
A growth strategy where salespeople drive acquisition through outreach, demos, proposals and negotiation.
SEO
Schema Markup
Schema markup is structured data added to a page that tells search engines exactly what its content represents.
Sales & GTM Strategy
SDR vs BDR
Two early-stage sales roles: SDRs usually follow up inbound leads, BDRs usually prospect outbound. Usage varies by company.
SEO
Search Intent
Search intent is the goal behind a search query: what the person actually wants to find or do.
Email Deliverability Free tool
Secondary Domains
Extra domains similar to your main brand, used to send cold email and protect your primary domain's reputation.
Email Deliverability
Sender Reputation
The trust score mailbox providers assign to a sender, based on domain, IP and recipient behavior.
SEO Free tool
SEO
SEO is the practice of improving a website so it earns more relevant, unpaid traffic from search engines.
GEO & AI Search
Share of Model
The percentage of relevant AI-generated answers that mention your brand compared with competitors.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
Social Selling
Using social networks, mostly LinkedIn, to find buyers, build relationships and start sales conversations.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
Social Selling Index (SSI)
LinkedIn's 0 to 100 score of how actively and effectively a member uses the platform to sell.
Email Deliverability
Spam Complaint Rate
The percentage of delivered emails that recipients report as spam.
Email Deliverability
Spam Trap
An email address used by providers and blocklists to identify senders with poor list hygiene.
Cold Email & Outbound Free tool
Spam Trigger Words
Words and phrases common in spam, such as 'free money' or 'act now', that make emails look promotional or suspicious.
Sales & GTM Strategy
Speed to Lead
How quickly a sales team makes first contact with a new inbound lead after it comes in.
Email Deliverability Free tool
SPF Record
A DNS TXT record listing which servers are allowed to send email on behalf of your domain.
Cold Email & Outbound
Spintax
Syntax like {Hi|Hello|Hey} that tells a sending tool to pick one variant per email, so messages aren't identical.
T
SEO
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is making a website easy for search engines to crawl, render, index and understand.
Lead Research & Data
Technographic Data
Data about the software, platforms and technologies a company uses, such as its CRM, website platform or cloud provider.
Content Marketing
Thought Leadership
Content that shares original insight, experience or a clear point of view from a real expert, rather than generic advice.
SEO
Title Tag
A title tag is the HTML element that sets a page's title, shown as the clickable headline in search results.
Content Marketing
Topic Cluster
A group of interlinked pages on one core topic, with a pillar page at the center and detailed articles on each subtopic.
SEO
Topical Authority
Topical authority is how strongly search engines see a site as a trusted, thorough source on a specific subject.
Lead Research & Data
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
The total annual revenue you could earn if every company or person who could use your product bought it.
Lead Research & Data
Trigger Events
A change at a company, such as funding, a new leader or expansion, that creates a fresh need and a reason to reach out.
U
Cold Email & Outbound
Unsubscribe Link
A link or option in an email that lets the recipient stop receiving future messages from the sender.
SEO Free tool
URL Slug
A URL slug is the readable part of a web address that identifies a specific page, such as /what-is-cold-email/.
W
LinkedIn Lead Generation
Warm Outreach
Contacting prospects who already know you, were referred, or have shown interest in your company.
Sales & GTM Strategy Free tool
Win Rate
The percentage of qualified sales opportunities that end as closed won deals.
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Our team of GTM operators, who run cold email, LinkedIn, SEO and AI search campaigns for B2B companies every week. We write each entry the way we'd explain it to a new teammate: what it means, how to measure it and what to watch out for.
Every entry goes past the definition. You get the formula where there is one, a worked example, step-by-step how-to, common mistakes and links to free tools that calculate or generate the thing for you.
Short quotes with a link back to the term page are fine. Please don't copy whole entries.
We review entries when platforms change their rules, for example Gmail and Yahoo sender requirements or LinkedIn limits, and add new terms as they come up in client work. Suggest a term through our contact page.
GTM stands for go-to-market: the plan and the work that take a product to its buyers, from choosing the market and message to the channels that create pipeline, such as outbound, SEO and content.
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