Deliverability Glossary
Here are all the terms and words that you need to understand about deliverability when using AVADA Marketing Automation.
A record: The term "a record" refers to a set of address records. They represent the IP address associated with a domain name's web pages. This is relevant to the local domain for ESPs. The local domain is used to create the links that appear in the emails that are sent. Your email software does not have any records set up. This is done instead through the DNS settings that you or your hosting provider control.
Block: When an incoming email is blocked by the receiving inbox provider, it is called a block. This is usually due to a transitory reason, such as your IP address being blacklisted or a problem with the email's content.
Blocklist: A blocklist is a list of objects that are disallowed access to a system protocol, such as IP addresses, domain names, URLs, or usernames. Email blocklists are real-time databases that use criteria to identify whether an IP address is sending spam email. A sender's reputation and deliverability might be severely harmed if they appear on a blocklist.
A blacklist is another term for this.
Bots: Bots are malicious creations that subscribe to signup forms in large numbers all at once. Bots may appear to be actual email addresses at first glance, but this is a sort of cybersecurity attack known as list bombing.
Bounce: When an email is returned as undeliverable. Hard and soft bounces are the two sorts of bounces. Bounces can be hard or soft for a variety of causes.
CAN-SPAM Act: A US regulation aimed at reducing the distribution of unsolicited emails, sometimes known as spam. CAN-SPAM sets the regulations for commercial email, specifies requirements for commercial messages, allows recipients the opportunity to have you stop emailing them, and spells out harsh consequences for violations.
CASL: CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation) is comparable to the CAN-SPAM Act in that it controls the types of emails that commercial senders can send. Consumers and organizations are protected by CASL from the misuse of digital technology, such as spam and other electronic dangers. It also tries to assist companies in remaining competitive in today's global, digital marketplace.
CCPA: CCPA stands for California Consumer Privacy Act. It's a legislation that goes into effect on January 1, 2020, and it regulates how businesses handle personal information about California citizens
Click Tracking: In an email, this is the URL that is utilized to collect analytics. When recipients hover over a link or click a link within the email, the tracking domain appears.
Clipping: When an email exceeds 102KB in size, it gets "clipped" by Gmail. When this happens, you can see a significant drop in open rates. This is because open events are calculated when a tracking pixel is loaded at the bottom of an email; if the email has been clipped, this open event will not be registered, resulting in underreported open rates.
CNAME: Canonical name is abbreviated as CNAME. This can be used to change the spelling of a name.
When both example.com and www.example.com point to the same application and are hosted on the same server, this is a common example. To avoid having to keep two separate records in this scenario, it's usual to create:
An A record for example.com pointing to the server IP address.
www.example.com has a CNAME record pointing to example.com.
As a result, www.example.com points to the same IP address as example.com. If your IP address changes, you just have to update it once. If you alter the A record for example.com, the changes are automatically inherited by www.example.com.
DDoS: The term DDoS refers to a distributed denial of service attack. The incoming traffic flooding the victim in a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) comes from a variety of sources. This effectively makes stopping the attack by blocking a single source difficult.
A DoS or DDoS attack is similar to a mob of people jamming a shop's front entrance, making it difficult for legitimate customers to enter and disrupting business.
Dedicated IP Address: A dedicated IP address is one that is used by only one account (see also shared IP address).
Dedicated Click Tracking: Dedicated click tracking allows a customer to show their own domain on click tracking links.
Dedicated Sending Domain: Instead of using a shared domain provided by AVADA Marketing Automation, dedicated sending domains use the domain of a company. White labeling is another term for this.
Deferred: An email is deferred when the recipient's inbox provider takes a long time to receive it. This does not mean that your email will not be delivered; rather, it means that it will not be delivered right away. This can occur for a variety of reasons, but the most prevalent ones are excessive spam complaints on the email or technical issues with the receiving server.
Deliverability: When an email successfully reaches the inbox (even tabbed inboxes like Google's Promotions tab), it is said to have deliverability. When an email is delivered unsuccessfully, it winds up in the spam folder or is prevented totally from reaching the inbox.
Delivery: When an email is delivered to the correct email address and the recipient's IP address allows it, it is called a delivery. It qualifies as a delivery even if your email was delivered to the spam folder.
DKIM: Domain keys identified mail (DKIM) is a cryptographic method developed by Cisco and Yahoo that ensures that the message delivered to the inbox provider matches the message sent. DKIM protects messages in transit from malicious alteration. DKIM is a TXT record that is added to a domain's DNS, similar to an SPF record. It's also referred to as "email signing." DKIM protects emails from being forged. DKIM identifies when someone tampers with the content of an email.
DMARC: known as Domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance (DMARC). SPF and DKIM are used in DMARC to determine the authenticity of an email message. A receiving server can use DMARC to determine whether or not to accept an email from a specific sender. In order for DMARC to act on a message, both SPF and DKIM must fail. DKIM and SPF are combined in DMARC, which instructs your server what to do if it receives a suspicious email. Additionally, it ensures that you are notified of any fake email sent in your name.
DNS: The domain name system is abbreviated as DNS. This system might be thought of as the "phone book of the Internet." When you change your DNS records, you're essentially updating your address in the web's phonebook so that your identity can be verified when you send an email. When we refer to a DNS provider, we're referring to a service that hosts your domain name, such as GoDaddy, Cloud Flare, HostGator, Square Space, and so on.
Domain: A domain, such as avada.io, is the registered name from which emails and photos are delivered. Before you can use a domain name, you must first register it. Every domain name is one-of-a-kind. There can't be two websites with the same domain name.
DoS Attack: A denial of service attack is referred to as a DoS attack. It is a cyber-attack in which the offender attempts to render a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by disrupting services of a host connected to the Internet, either momentarily or indefinitely. Denial of service is usually performed by flooding the targeted computer or resource with unnecessary requests in order to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being completed.
Email Engagement: The term "email engagement" refers to the number of times recipients open and/or click on the emails you send them. Inbox providers utilize email engagement to judge whether or not your company is sending in a responsible manner.
ESP: Email service provider (ESP) refers to a system that lets you send commercial and transactional emails to your customers. AVADA Marketing Automation is a such ESP.
GDPR: The General Data Protection Regulation is abbreviated as GDPR. The European Commission passed legislation in 2016 that took effect on May 25, 2018. Its goal is to preserve the privacy of all EU citizens, including when those persons interact with firms outside the EU, by applying personal data privacy legislation.
Hard Bounce: When an email can't be delivered for some reason, such as an invalid email address, it's called a hard bounce. Any email addresses that have hard bounced will be immediately suppressed by AVADA.
Header: The subject line, from address, recipient address, date, and other identifying information about an email are all included in the header or email header.
Inbox Provider: This service, also known as a mailbox provider, is used to manage email correspondence, such as Outlook, Gmail, and others. These are companies that provide servers to their customers for sending, receiving, accepting, and storing email. Some inbox providers entice customers by offering their services for free and advertising them on every message.
IP Address: An IP address is a number that is listed in the domain name system and delivers messages on your behalf. IPs sending emails on behalf of domains are checked for reputation by inbox providers.
ISP: Internet service provider (ISP) is a term that refers to a company that provides internet access. These are businesses that give access to or use of the Internet. Some ISPs also offer email services, however they may lack some of the functionality that providers who specialize in email often offer. This includes companies like Verizon, Xfinity, and others that offer web-based inboxes.
List Bombing: The technique of exploiting and targeting email list signup pages by blasting them with a huge number of fresh email addresses at the same time is referred to as list bombing. It may appear like there has been an increase in signups at first. It is, in fact, a cyber-attack.
List Cleaning: The practice of deleting invalid and/or unengaged contacts from your subscriber list is known as list cleaning. This ensures that you don't email any addresses that will harm your sending reputation by accident.
MBP: MBP is an acronym for mailbox provider, which is also known as an inbox provider. This is a service that allows you to manage your email correspondence, such as Outlook, Gmail, and others. These are companies that provide servers to their customers for sending, receiving, accepting, and storing email.
MX Record: Mailer exchange record is abbreviated as MX. This identifies the mail server that receives email messages on behalf of a domain name. In DNS, it's referred to as a resource record.
Phishing: By impersonating electronic communication from a reputable institution in an automated fashion, a hacker attempts to fraudulently steal a user's sensitive information. Phishing is the word for that act.
Pristine Spam Trap: The goal of a pristine spam trap (PST) is to discover people who are sending spam or are not following appropriate sending practices. Because these emails have never been used in the real world and are brand new addresses, hitting a PST is likely to result in your IP being blacklisted or your emails being sent to spam. In the perspective of mailbox providers, this indicates that you either bought a list or did not follow standard practices, as these addresses are not valid and do not accept emails.
Recycled Spam Trap: A recycled spam trap (RST) is an address that has previously been used as a legitimate address. RSTs are frequently seen as domains supplied by free services like @yahoo or @gmail. You may notice domains that were formerly owned by closed businesses being repurchased with the goal of converting them to RSTs. An out-of-date email does not always result in a RST. After a period of inactivity — for example, if the address stops receiving emails — some email providers may remove the address.
Sending Domain: A sending domain is the internet's registered name (e.g., companyxyz.com). The sending reputation of a domain name is called a domain reputation. This could be a subdomain or a whole domain.
Shared IP Address: An IP address that is used by many senders.
Shared Sending Domain: A root domain is shared across numerous accounts in shared sending domains. AVADA provides a unique element to sending domains by default, making it easier for advanced inbox providers like Gmail and Hotmail to recognize each sender as distinct.
Soft Bounce: A soft bounce occurs when the recipient's inbox is full or the recipient's email server is temporarily unavailable.
Spam: unsolicited bulk email.
Spam Complaint: When an email receiver labels one of your emails as spam, a spam complaint is logged. When an email merely ends up in the spam folder, it is not recorded; only when someone takes action to label your email as spam is it tracked.
Spam Trap: Spam traps are email addresses, or in some cases, entire domains, that are used to capture, collect, and monitor emails sent to them. ISPs and email providers, mail administrators, and/or other comparable groups are usually the ones who create and operate spam traps. Spam traps are primarily used to gather information on who is sending spam in the goal of preventing future incidences.
SPF: Sender Policy Framework (SPF( is like the return address placed on a letter indicating who sent it. If a recipient knows and trusts the person who sent them the letter, they’re more likely to open it. SPF records prevent someone from sending an email on behalf of your organization. SPF checks the sender of an email for authenticity.
Spoofing: The term "email spoofing" refers to a phisher altering the email header of a message to make it appear as though it was sent by someone else. Hackers may use this approach to mimic a firm employee in order to gain login passwords, personal data, or other sensitive information, for example. The "receiver" in this metaphor is a receiving mail server, not a human. The SPF record is a single line of text added to the TXT record of a domain by its administrator. The DNS records the TXT entry.
Suppress: A suppressed contact is one who cannot be contacted any longer. Several factors can cause a contact to be suppressed, including:
Marking one of your emails as spam
Hard bounce
Marking one of your emails as spam
Manually suppressed
TXT Record: Text records are abbreviated as TXT records. These are used to authenticate the validity of emails and hold free form text of any type. They've also been used in the past to store human-readable data about a server, data center, network, and other accounting data.
Many TXT records can be found in a fully qualified domain name. SPF, DK, DKIM, and DMARC are the most popular uses for TXT records.
Warming: When you first start sending emails, the term "warming" refers to the process of developing a solid sending reputation. If you're sending from a dedicated IP address and/or sending domain, the warming process is extremely critical.
The exact warming plan will vary from case to case, but in general, you'll need to turn on high engagement flows, send your first campaigns to highly engaged receivers, regularly monitor your engagement, and adapt accordingly to warm your sending infrastructure.
A
A record: The term "a record" refers to a set of address records. They represent the IP address associated with a domain name's web pages. This is relevant to the local domain for ESPs. The local domain is used to create the links that appear in the emails that are sent. Your email software does not have any records set up. This is done instead through the DNS settings that you or your hosting provider control.
B
Block: When an incoming email is blocked by the receiving inbox provider, it is called a block. This is usually due to a transitory reason, such as your IP address being blacklisted or a problem with the email's content.
Blocklist: A blocklist is a list of objects that are disallowed access to a system protocol, such as IP addresses, domain names, URLs, or usernames. Email blocklists are real-time databases that use criteria to identify whether an IP address is sending spam email. A sender's reputation and deliverability might be severely harmed if they appear on a blocklist.
A blacklist is another term for this.
Bots: Bots are malicious creations that subscribe to signup forms in large numbers all at once. Bots may appear to be actual email addresses at first glance, but this is a sort of cybersecurity attack known as list bombing.
Bounce: When an email is returned as undeliverable. Hard and soft bounces are the two sorts of bounces. Bounces can be hard or soft for a variety of causes.
C
CAN-SPAM Act: A US regulation aimed at reducing the distribution of unsolicited emails, sometimes known as spam. CAN-SPAM sets the regulations for commercial email, specifies requirements for commercial messages, allows recipients the opportunity to have you stop emailing them, and spells out harsh consequences for violations.
CASL: CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation) is comparable to the CAN-SPAM Act in that it controls the types of emails that commercial senders can send. Consumers and organizations are protected by CASL from the misuse of digital technology, such as spam and other electronic dangers. It also tries to assist companies in remaining competitive in today's global, digital marketplace.
CCPA: CCPA stands for California Consumer Privacy Act. It's a legislation that goes into effect on January 1, 2020, and it regulates how businesses handle personal information about California citizens
Click Tracking: In an email, this is the URL that is utilized to collect analytics. When recipients hover over a link or click a link within the email, the tracking domain appears.
Clipping: When an email exceeds 102KB in size, it gets "clipped" by Gmail. When this happens, you can see a significant drop in open rates. This is because open events are calculated when a tracking pixel is loaded at the bottom of an email; if the email has been clipped, this open event will not be registered, resulting in underreported open rates.
CNAME: Canonical name is abbreviated as CNAME. This can be used to change the spelling of a name.
When both example.com and www.example.com point to the same application and are hosted on the same server, this is a common example. To avoid having to keep two separate records in this scenario, it's usual to create:
An A record for example.com pointing to the server IP address.
www.example.com has a CNAME record pointing to example.com.
As a result, www.example.com points to the same IP address as example.com. If your IP address changes, you just have to update it once. If you alter the A record for example.com, the changes are automatically inherited by www.example.com.
D
DDoS: The term DDoS refers to a distributed denial of service attack. The incoming traffic flooding the victim in a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) comes from a variety of sources. This effectively makes stopping the attack by blocking a single source difficult.
A DoS or DDoS attack is similar to a mob of people jamming a shop's front entrance, making it difficult for legitimate customers to enter and disrupting business.
Dedicated IP Address: A dedicated IP address is one that is used by only one account (see also shared IP address).
Dedicated Click Tracking: Dedicated click tracking allows a customer to show their own domain on click tracking links.
Dedicated Sending Domain: Instead of using a shared domain provided by AVADA Marketing Automation, dedicated sending domains use the domain of a company. White labeling is another term for this.
Deferred: An email is deferred when the recipient's inbox provider takes a long time to receive it. This does not mean that your email will not be delivered; rather, it means that it will not be delivered right away. This can occur for a variety of reasons, but the most prevalent ones are excessive spam complaints on the email or technical issues with the receiving server.
Deliverability: When an email successfully reaches the inbox (even tabbed inboxes like Google's Promotions tab), it is said to have deliverability. When an email is delivered unsuccessfully, it winds up in the spam folder or is prevented totally from reaching the inbox.
Delivery: When an email is delivered to the correct email address and the recipient's IP address allows it, it is called a delivery. It qualifies as a delivery even if your email was delivered to the spam folder.
DKIM: Domain keys identified mail (DKIM) is a cryptographic method developed by Cisco and Yahoo that ensures that the message delivered to the inbox provider matches the message sent. DKIM protects messages in transit from malicious alteration. DKIM is a TXT record that is added to a domain's DNS, similar to an SPF record. It's also referred to as "email signing." DKIM protects emails from being forged. DKIM identifies when someone tampers with the content of an email.
DMARC: known as Domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance (DMARC). SPF and DKIM are used in DMARC to determine the authenticity of an email message. A receiving server can use DMARC to determine whether or not to accept an email from a specific sender. In order for DMARC to act on a message, both SPF and DKIM must fail. DKIM and SPF are combined in DMARC, which instructs your server what to do if it receives a suspicious email. Additionally, it ensures that you are notified of any fake email sent in your name.
DNS: The domain name system is abbreviated as DNS. This system might be thought of as the "phone book of the Internet." When you change your DNS records, you're essentially updating your address in the web's phonebook so that your identity can be verified when you send an email. When we refer to a DNS provider, we're referring to a service that hosts your domain name, such as GoDaddy, Cloud Flare, HostGator, Square Space, and so on.
Domain: A domain, such as avada.io, is the registered name from which emails and photos are delivered. Before you can use a domain name, you must first register it. Every domain name is one-of-a-kind. There can't be two websites with the same domain name.
DoS Attack: A denial of service attack is referred to as a DoS attack. It is a cyber-attack in which the offender attempts to render a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by disrupting services of a host connected to the Internet, either momentarily or indefinitely. Denial of service is usually performed by flooding the targeted computer or resource with unnecessary requests in order to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being completed.
E
Email Engagement: The term "email engagement" refers to the number of times recipients open and/or click on the emails you send them. Inbox providers utilize email engagement to judge whether or not your company is sending in a responsible manner.
ESP: Email service provider (ESP) refers to a system that lets you send commercial and transactional emails to your customers. AVADA Marketing Automation is a such ESP.
G
GDPR: The General Data Protection Regulation is abbreviated as GDPR. The European Commission passed legislation in 2016 that took effect on May 25, 2018. Its goal is to preserve the privacy of all EU citizens, including when those persons interact with firms outside the EU, by applying personal data privacy legislation.
H
Hard Bounce: When an email can't be delivered for some reason, such as an invalid email address, it's called a hard bounce. Any email addresses that have hard bounced will be immediately suppressed by AVADA.
Header: The subject line, from address, recipient address, date, and other identifying information about an email are all included in the header or email header.
I
Inbox Provider: This service, also known as a mailbox provider, is used to manage email correspondence, such as Outlook, Gmail, and others. These are companies that provide servers to their customers for sending, receiving, accepting, and storing email. Some inbox providers entice customers by offering their services for free and advertising them on every message.
IP Address: An IP address is a number that is listed in the domain name system and delivers messages on your behalf. IPs sending emails on behalf of domains are checked for reputation by inbox providers.
ISP: Internet service provider (ISP) is a term that refers to a company that provides internet access. These are businesses that give access to or use of the Internet. Some ISPs also offer email services, however they may lack some of the functionality that providers who specialize in email often offer. This includes companies like Verizon, Xfinity, and others that offer web-based inboxes.
L
List Bombing: The technique of exploiting and targeting email list signup pages by blasting them with a huge number of fresh email addresses at the same time is referred to as list bombing. It may appear like there has been an increase in signups at first. It is, in fact, a cyber-attack.
List Cleaning: The practice of deleting invalid and/or unengaged contacts from your subscriber list is known as list cleaning. This ensures that you don't email any addresses that will harm your sending reputation by accident.
M
MBP: MBP is an acronym for mailbox provider, which is also known as an inbox provider. This is a service that allows you to manage your email correspondence, such as Outlook, Gmail, and others. These are companies that provide servers to their customers for sending, receiving, accepting, and storing email.
MX Record: Mailer exchange record is abbreviated as MX. This identifies the mail server that receives email messages on behalf of a domain name. In DNS, it's referred to as a resource record.
P
Phishing: By impersonating electronic communication from a reputable institution in an automated fashion, a hacker attempts to fraudulently steal a user's sensitive information. Phishing is the word for that act.
Pristine Spam Trap: The goal of a pristine spam trap (PST) is to discover people who are sending spam or are not following appropriate sending practices. Because these emails have never been used in the real world and are brand new addresses, hitting a PST is likely to result in your IP being blacklisted or your emails being sent to spam. In the perspective of mailbox providers, this indicates that you either bought a list or did not follow standard practices, as these addresses are not valid and do not accept emails.
R
Recycled Spam Trap: A recycled spam trap (RST) is an address that has previously been used as a legitimate address. RSTs are frequently seen as domains supplied by free services like @yahoo or @gmail. You may notice domains that were formerly owned by closed businesses being repurchased with the goal of converting them to RSTs. An out-of-date email does not always result in a RST. After a period of inactivity — for example, if the address stops receiving emails — some email providers may remove the address.
S
Sending Domain: A sending domain is the internet's registered name (e.g., companyxyz.com). The sending reputation of a domain name is called a domain reputation. This could be a subdomain or a whole domain.
Shared IP Address: An IP address that is used by many senders.
Shared Sending Domain: A root domain is shared across numerous accounts in shared sending domains. AVADA provides a unique element to sending domains by default, making it easier for advanced inbox providers like Gmail and Hotmail to recognize each sender as distinct.
Soft Bounce: A soft bounce occurs when the recipient's inbox is full or the recipient's email server is temporarily unavailable.
Spam: unsolicited bulk email.
Spam Complaint: When an email receiver labels one of your emails as spam, a spam complaint is logged. When an email merely ends up in the spam folder, it is not recorded; only when someone takes action to label your email as spam is it tracked.
Spam Trap: Spam traps are email addresses, or in some cases, entire domains, that are used to capture, collect, and monitor emails sent to them. ISPs and email providers, mail administrators, and/or other comparable groups are usually the ones who create and operate spam traps. Spam traps are primarily used to gather information on who is sending spam in the goal of preventing future incidences.
SPF: Sender Policy Framework (SPF( is like the return address placed on a letter indicating who sent it. If a recipient knows and trusts the person who sent them the letter, they’re more likely to open it. SPF records prevent someone from sending an email on behalf of your organization. SPF checks the sender of an email for authenticity.
Spoofing: The term "email spoofing" refers to a phisher altering the email header of a message to make it appear as though it was sent by someone else. Hackers may use this approach to mimic a firm employee in order to gain login passwords, personal data, or other sensitive information, for example. The "receiver" in this metaphor is a receiving mail server, not a human. The SPF record is a single line of text added to the TXT record of a domain by its administrator. The DNS records the TXT entry.
Suppress: A suppressed contact is one who cannot be contacted any longer. Several factors can cause a contact to be suppressed, including:
Marking one of your emails as spam
Hard bounce
Marking one of your emails as spam
Manually suppressed
T
TXT Record: Text records are abbreviated as TXT records. These are used to authenticate the validity of emails and hold free form text of any type. They've also been used in the past to store human-readable data about a server, data center, network, and other accounting data.
Many TXT records can be found in a fully qualified domain name. SPF, DK, DKIM, and DMARC are the most popular uses for TXT records.
W
Warming: When you first start sending emails, the term "warming" refers to the process of developing a solid sending reputation. If you're sending from a dedicated IP address and/or sending domain, the warming process is extremely critical.
The exact warming plan will vary from case to case, but in general, you'll need to turn on high engagement flows, send your first campaigns to highly engaged receivers, regularly monitor your engagement, and adapt accordingly to warm your sending infrastructure.
Updated on: 29/07/2021
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