In the morning, I spend about 20-minutes catching up on email (making sure there are no emergencies) before I leave for my fitness class. This morning one email, in particular, jumped out at me.

It was a thank-you message from  ‘Rosemary’ (one of my clients). She was writing to excitedly share that the new idea we recently implemented into her business had boosted sales dramatically! And she’s planning a Christmas trip to see the Rockettes in NYC with her daughter to celebrate. (I LOVE hearing stories like this –so sweet!)

But as an aside she asked:

“This may sound like a silly question but would you please explain – What exactly is an “affiliate”?

So I thought I’d take a moment and define a few things you might hear when people are talking about a work-from-anywhere online business. (Yeah, even that’s too much.)

Let’s focus on basic terms you’ll hear from those using email marketing.

First, people use email for marketing to potential clients for one reason: It works.

In any discussion around email marketing, you might need to be familiar with the following terms:

1. Your List: All the names and email addresses that you have collected since you started.
2. Lead or Prospect: A person that you have reason to believe may have an interest in you or your product
3. Lead Magnet: An offer designed to attract those that might have an interest in you or your product. Usually this is something you offer for free, or for a low price, (perhaps even at a loss) to entice someone’s interest.
4. Number of Clicks: The number of people that received your email and “took action” (ie. clicked on a link you sent them)
5. Optin Page or Leadpage: This is a web page (or Facebook page) where you collect names and email addresses to add to your list
6. Thank you page: Anyone submitting their contact info on an Optin Page will be sent to a Thank You page (thanking them and letting them know that the action they just took was successful.)
7. Optins or Subscribers: These are the people that give you their name and email on an optin page (showing an interest in you or what you provide them)
8. Autoresponder: This is a sequence of email messages that are automatically sent to subscribers (in whatever order and frequency you decide). For instance, when someone registers for a webinar, you could set an autoresponder email to go out to them immediately to let them know they are registered and give further instructions for how to attend.
9. Segment or Bucket:  These are the people on your list that you can identify as having a particular characteristic or interest.If your products are targeted to Working Women, but your optin page specifically deals with women who have children, then you can identify a segment or bucket of your list that you can further define as “Working Women with Children.”
10. Affiliate: When you find someone that offers a product that is aligned with the interests of your customers, you can partner with that person to sell products and share the profits. Then you and that person are affiliates.

Knowing these 10 terms will definitely help you better understand the lingo being used to describe and chat about email marketing. And remember, there’re no silly questions, so please ask if there is ever a term that is new to you.

BTW, if you’d like to download a copy of the list click the button below 🙂

Any terms or concepts that you feel fuzzy on? If so, please feel free to bring them up with us in the comments below. Or, if you simply want to share the love, share that. That’s really the point of all of it anyway. 🙂