Glossary

Cold email and B2B sales glossary

The terms you'll meet in B2B prospecting, cold email and deliverability. Each entry opens with a one-sentence definition.

Cold email

Cold email: A first business email to someone you've had no previous contact with, about an offer you have good reason to think suits them.

Unlike a newsletter, it's written for one recipient and their situation. The rules for B2B cold email vary by country: the UK allows it to limited companies if there's an opt-out, Germany generally requires prior consent even from businesses, and Turkey requires İYS registration and an opt-out check.

B2B lead generation

B2B lead generation: How a company that sells to businesses finds the ones likely to need its product and makes first contact with them.

Common sources are Google Maps, trade directories, contact databases, events, partners, content and referrals.

Lead

Lead: A person or business that might buy from you but isn't a customer yet.

In Repmight, a “researched lead” is a new business found and researched (its website read) during the month. Pricing is based on this number.

Ideal customer profile (ICP)

ICP: A description of the customer who gets the most out of your product, in terms of sector, size, location and need.

A useful ICP includes something you can actually spot on a business's website, such as “clinics with no online booking”.

Fit score

Fit score: A score from 0 to 100, with the reasoning behind it, showing how closely a business matches the customers you're after.

Repmight works out the fit score from the business's website and doesn't draft emails for businesses below your threshold.

Evidence-based personalisation

Personalisation: Writing an email around a specific detail that anyone can check on the recipient's own website.

It isn't the same as dropping a first name and company name into a template. The detail should be shown alongside where it came from.

Sequence

Sequence: A first email and the follow-ups sent to the same person at set intervals.

In Repmight, the default sequence is a first email and two follow-ups, 3 and 7 days later. It stops when the person replies.

Follow-up email

Follow-up email: A short reminder sent in the same thread when an earlier email hasn't been answered.

AI SDR (AI sales development representative)

AI SDR: Software that uses AI for the work an SDR would do: research, first emails, follow-ups and sorting replies.

An autonomous AI SDR sends on its own. An approval-first assistant has a person approve each draft before it goes out.

Deliverability

Deliverability: The share of your emails that land in the recipient's inbox rather than in spam.

It depends on authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), the sender's reputation, volume, the quality of your list and the content.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

SPF: A DNS record listing the servers allowed to send email for your domain.

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)

DKIM: A digital signature on outgoing email that shows it came from your domain and wasn't changed on the way.

DMARC

DMARC: A DNS record telling receiving servers what to do with email that fails SPF and DKIM checks, and where to send reports.

The policy can be p=none (monitor only), p=quarantine (send to spam) or p=reject (refuse delivery).

Email warm-up

Warm-up: Raising the daily sending volume of a new or little-used mailbox gradually, so that email providers learn to trust it.

In Repmight, each mailbox starts at 10 emails a day, goes up by 5 a day and stops at 50.

Bounce

Bounce: An email that comes back to the sender because the receiving server couldn't deliver it.

A hard bounce means the address should never be used again. A high bounce rate damages your sender reputation.

Opt-out (unsubscribe)

Opt-out: A request from a recipient to stop receiving marketing messages from a sender.

Every marketing email needs an easy way to opt out, and the request has to be acted on straight away.

İYS (Turkey's message management system)

İYS: Turkey's central register of permissions and opt-outs for commercial electronic messages (İleti Yönetim Sistemi).

Before you send commercial emails to Turkish merchants and tradespeople, the address has to be registered in İYS and checked for opt-outs.

Commercial electronic message

Commercial electronic message: A message sent by electronic means (email, SMS, phone call) to promote goods or services or to sell more of them.

KVKK (Turkish Personal Data Protection Law)

KVKK: Turkey's data protection law, Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data.

PECR

PECR: The UK's Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, which set the rules for electronic marketing.

Marketing emails to corporate subscribers, such as limited companies, don't need prior consent. Sole traders and some partnerships count as individuals, so they do.

UWG (German Unfair Competition Act)

UWG: Germany's unfair competition law. Under §7, advertising emails generally need prior express consent, including when the recipient is a business.

Reply rate

Reply rate: The percentage of first emails that get a reply. For cold email it tells you far more than the open rate does.