Glossary

Here are some terms we use a lot throughout our help site - refer to this page when there is terminology or use cases that are new to you.

Accelerator

The front-end MessageGears application that installs behind your firewall and connects directly to your data. When members of the marketing team log in to MessageGears, they’ll typically be logging in to our accelerator module. We call it the ‘Accelerator’ because directly connecting to your data accelerates your ability to create highly-personalized messages.

Adjusted vs unique open rates

Email opens are detected by placing an “open beacon” (or image) inside of each email that is triggered when a recipient opens the email. However, certain inbox providers will discourage open tracking by automatically fetching images on delivery. At MessageGears, we track opens for jobs, campaigns, and accounts as follows:

• Total Opens or the total number of requests to the open beacon we have received.
• Unique Opens or the unique recipients that requested an open beacon.
• Adjusted Opens or the likely number of ‘real’ opens generated through a mailing. For more information on adjusted opens, see our blog post on How Apple’s MPP is Impacting Open Rates Now.

Audience recording

A feature available to both Marketing and External Campaigns. This feature allows you to record the exact state of your recipients when your Campaign is sent, which helps to make customer data more reliable and actionable.

While some platforms refer to this as "send logging", Audience Recording has the advantage of recording any customer as they flow through a blueprint regardless if they were activated on any channel.

Blueprint

The visual segmentation aspect of MessageGears used to define audience segments and visually understand customers.

We call them ‘blueprints’ because they define the building blocks for how you’ll engage and interact with your audience.

Blueprint snapshot

The ability for MessageGears to store a ‘snapshot’ of audience details in a cloud location to serve as audience data for upcoming campaign sends.

For larger blueprints with dozens of audience segments, Blueprint Snapshots help reduce the overall number of queries on the database by running a query on a schedule that makes sense for the use case (once a day, once an hour, etc.) and using that data for the sends until the next snapshot.

Campaign

A MessageGears campaign refers to a collection of multi-channel messages sent over time that are united under a single marketing message. Examples of campaigns include:

• Welcome series
• Abandoned cart
• Daily deals
• Purchase Confirmation
• Forgotten Password

Campaigns (formerly Engage)

The section of the MessageGears' navigation where you create your campaigns. Campaign types are:

• Marketing
• Experiments (formerly Multivariate Campaigns)
• Transactional
• External (formerly External Destinations)
• Orchestration

Note: Real-time context data (now Hosted data) and external data API capabilities are now located under Content > Data Management.

Campaign trigger

Custom SQL action set to be performed in relation to a campaign launch. This can prevent replication of data in your database by performing actions automatically, such as changing or updating database fields, or simply record campaign launches to empower your internal campaign tracking and reporting.

Campaign Triggers are used within Marketing Campaigns, where users can identify triggers as Pre-Campaign or Post-Campaign.

Content module (Content block)

A singular fungible section of a mailing, created and edited within the drag-and-drop editor.

Experiements (formerly Multivariate testing)

A campaign type that tests multiple versions of creative against a base audience to send the highest performing version of a message to a larger population.

External API data source

Programmatic access to external data sources available when rendering and creating a message. An example of an external data API might be open-source weather data to be used to personalize a message at send time based on how hot the local weather is in an area.

External destinations

Destinations outside of MessageGears to send audiences and other relevant data. Examples are:

• Facebook Audiences
• Google Customer Match
• Airship Mobile Messaging

FastCache

When creating a blueprint, FastCache gives users the ability to store blueprint details in a fast and readily accessible cloud environment. FastCache takes blueprint counting from minutes to seconds, and allows marketers to quickly iterate and understand blueprint details.

FreeMarker

MessageGears uses an open source Web Template Language called FreeMarker to enable personalization of the email content including the HTML, Subject Line, Text, etc. FreeMarker allows you to reference any of your data points in order to personalize your email content.

For a full FreeMaker reference guide, see the Apache FreeMarker Manual.

Global snippets (formerly Shared Content)

Content that is commonly referred to by multiple messaging campaigns. Examples of global snippets could be brand headers and footers, or images and creative that are commonly referred to between emails and mobile messages.

Hero

A large, attention-grabbing picture with text typically shown in the above-the-fold area of the message, directly beneath the header. Typically, a hero image takes up practically the whole pre-scroll full-width area on the page.

Hosted data (formerly Real-Time Context Data)

Always-available data from any data source that can be used programmatically for a variety of purposes.

Examples of hosted data use cases include:

• Holding a large amount of anonymized recipient information available for third-party vendors to access, such as open-time personalization through Movable Ink
• Powering website visits and experiences through website access to Real-Time Access Data
• Personalizing messages sent through MessageGears with additional real-time data stored outside of your database held in Hosted Data.

Jacquard (Phrasee) React

The ability to personalize and test subject lines through a MessageGears send using the Jacquard service. For more information about using Jacquard to create personalized messages, see our Jacquard Integration guide.

Job

A single, point-in-time delivery of messages to users. A job can be either transactional, or marketing-related:

• A Transactional Job is going to be a programmatic one-time delivery of information to a person (e.g. a forgotten password email or receipt delivery)
• A Marketing Job is going to consist of many messages sent to your audience, typically as part of a marketing campaign (e.g. daily deal, weekly newsletter, flash sale)

Labels

Supplemental information about your audience created and appended to your data during the execution of a blueprint. It can be difficult to apply marketing logic on top of existing data, so labels make it easy for marketers to append semantic information to your audience for use in sending to third parties or recording data back to your database.

Labels are flexible and can be used for dozens of use cases. For an example of common usage, see our blog post, MessageGears Segment Labels Create Opportunities for Marketers.

Litmus/Email client test

When sending to a large audience size of millions of users, marketers will use MessageGears email client testing (aka Litmus) to ensure that the message looks right in a variety of email clients and devices.

MAU

Monthly Active Users, or the number of users in your database that are ‘active’ in a given month.

Depending on your use of the product, ‘Active’ can mean one of two things:

• When messaging or segmenting your users, an ‘active’ user is a user that is sent a message during a given month
• When using MessageGears AI-Powered Insights, any user with any prior activity within your database will be considered active, as their engagement history is used in creating the next-best actions.

Merge tags

Recipient attributes that can be entered into the template and personalized at the time of message delivery. Because of MessageGears lack of pre-defined data model, marketers can use any recipient information as merge tags - from basic data like ‘first name’ to more in-depth use cases, like ‘last purchased item’.

Node

Nodes are intermediate segments within a blueprint that operate on your audience in order to better target (or label) your data.

Examples of nodes include:

• Split nodes
• Merge Nodes
• Filter Nodes
• Target Nodes

People (formerly Segment)

The section in the platform where you'll find MessageGears' segmentation and activation capabilities. People includes Audience, Blueprints, and user Profile lookup.

Portal

The technical administration site for MessageGears products, where users can configure IP selectors and see account-wide analytics.

Sending profile

The collection of deliverability headers stored together to create a cohesive marketing-friendly profile to send from. Sending profiles can contain:

• From Name
• From Address
• Reply-To (Address)

Snippets

Different versions of Content and creative that are utilized by a single campaign. Example of snippets are:

• Localization data, so a single multichannel campaign can be sent to different brands and languages
• Different hero and product images to allow for detailed personalization for your audience

Supplemental data (formerly Context Data)

The “Context” of a marketing campaign — that is, the offers, deals, or content that can be pulled into any part of a message using Freemarker.

Supplemental data is expected to change from day to day, as your offers, deals, and other information such as the weather outside or stores you are featuring change as well.

Target/Target node

The ‘ends’ of the blueprint, or the nodes that contain a finalized set of audience members to be activated through campaigns. You can find target nodes at the very bottom and edges of your blueprint.

Throttling

Setting a predefined limit of how many messages maximum can be sent per hour when messaging an audience. Message throttling can be useful from both an email reputation standpoint to monitor deliverability, but also to ensure IT resources don’t get overwhelmed if the entire audience tries to access a specific webpage all at once.

URL append

Additional information appended to each link in a mailing. Use URL appends to identify where traffic to your website (or other destinations) originated from, and the campaigns they were a part of. URL appends can be static (for example, utm_source=email) or dynamic (user_id=123).

Variables

Values within audience queries that can be changed or updated by the marketer. Variables help savvy database users create a single parameterized query that can be updated and changed by marketers in different campaigns to create tailored audience segments. Variables can additionally be used within campaign triggers to capture relevant data about each campaign to be recorded back in your database.