The business world is its own special place with a unique language. If you've ever felt lost in the jargon, you aren't alone! That's why we've pulled together this glossary.
Here you'll find all the business terms HubSpot Academy uses on a regular basis along with their definitions. If you want to go deeper into a particular concept, each entry includes a link to a lesson where you can learn more.
To access the training content linked to from this glossary, click here to create a free HubSpot account. The account is free, and the trainings are free, too!
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
A
A/B Testing: A method of comparing two versions of a webpage or app against each other to determine which one performs better. Learn more in our Converting Your Visitors lesson! ^
Advise Phase: The part of your sales strategy where you advise an opportunity on the ways your offering is uniquely positioned to address their goals and challenges. Learn more in our Closing Your Leads lesson! ^
Agile: A term used to describe approaches to project management that emphasize collaboration, incremental delivery, and continual learning. Learn more in our Building a Launch Pad Website lesson! ^
Analysis: The detailed examination of anything complex in order to understand its nature or to determine its essential features. Learn more in our Creating a Conversion Optimization Strategy lesson! ^
Analytics: The process of using analysis. Learn more in our Creating a Conversion Optimization Strategy lesson! ^
Authority: In SEO, authority is your website's ranking strength for search engines. Search engine bots rank your content in search results based on your site's authority. Learn more in our How to Find the SEO Strategy that Fits Your Business lesson! In sales qualification, authority is your prospect's ability to implement the changes you recommend. Learn more in our Understanding the Buyer's Context lesson! ^
B
Backlink Profile: A list of all the sites currently linking to your site, including how they're linking to it and which pages they're linking to. Learn more in our How to Find the SEO Strategy that Fits Your Business lesson! ^
Backlinks: Links to your website from other sites. Backlinks signal to Google that your site is a high-quality resource that people want to reference. Learn more in our Link Building for SEO: Scaling Your Backlink Strategy lesson! ^
Behavioral Email: The practice of sending automated, targeted emails to your contacts based on the historical interactions they've had with your company across channels. Learn more in our Understanding Email Marketing lesson! ^
Benchmark: A performance metric that allows you to compare your business results to other businesses in the industry. Learn more in our Introduction to Social Media lesson! ^
Blog: A place to regularly publish and promote new content related to your business and industry. Learn more in our Introduction to Blogging lesson! ^
Bounce Code: When an email bounces, the server sending the email receives a three-digit code that begins with either a four or a five. Codes that start with a four mean that the bounce is temporary and you can try the send again later. Codes that start with a five are permanent and mean the email should not be tried again (see content bounce, recipient, and temporary). Learn more in our The Essentials of Email Deliverability lesson! ^
Bounce Rate: In the context of websites, bounce rate is the number of single-page visits or users that leave your website without navigating to another page. Learn more in our Designing the User Experience lesson! In the context of email, bounce rate is the percentage of email addresses that didn’t receive your message because it was returned by a recipient mail server. Learn more in our Measuring Success With Email Analytics lesson! ^
Budget: In sales qualification, the budget is how much money a prospect is willing to invest against achieving a goal or overcoming a challenge. Learn more in our Understanding the Buyer's Context lesson! ^
Buyer Persona: A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on real data and some select educated speculation about customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. Learn more in our Introduction to Buyer Personas lesson! ^
Buyer's Journey: The active research process someone goes through leading up to a purchase. Learn more in our Inbound Sales Fundamentals lesson! ^
C
Call-to-Action: Any element on your website or blog that prompts your visitors to take action. Learn more in our Understanding Conversions lesson! ^
CGP, TCI, BA: A lead qualification framework used to guide conversations during exploratory sales calls. It stands for Challenges, Goals, Plans, Timelines, Consequences, Implications, Budget, and Authority. We promise it isn't as complicated as it sounds. Learn more in our Understanding the Buyer's Context lesson! ^
Challenges: The problems a lead is facing that you can help them overcome. Learn more in our Understanding the Buyer's Context lesson! ^
Click-Through Rate: The percentage of people who clicked on a link in your email after opening it. Learn more in our Measuring Success With Email Analytics lesson! ^
Common Connection: Any person you and a lead both know. Learn more in our Earning the Attention of Today's Empowered Buyer lesson! ^
Company Property: Stores information about a group of contacts from a single company, like the company’s name, size, location, and website URL. Learn more in our Creating a Contact Management and Segmentation Strategy lesson! ^
Connect Phase: The part of your sales strategy where you connect with leads to help them decide whether they should prioritize a particular goal or challenge. Learn more in our Closing Your Leads lesson! ^
Consequences: Bad things that result from inaction or making the wrong decision. In sales, it's important to help your leads understand the consequences of not taking the actions you recommend. Learn more in our Understanding the Buyer's Context lesson! ^
Consistency: The usage of repetition and design patterns, which help users quickly learn how an interface works. Learn more in our Designing a Journey-Driven User Experience lesson! ^
Constraints: Purposeful limitations placed on an interface or device. Learn more in our Designing a Journey-Driven User Experience lesson! ^
Contact: Anybody your company communicates with in the course of doing business. This includes subscribers, leads, and customers, but it also might include partners, competitors, employees, or anyone else your company is in contact with. Learn more in our Creating a Contact Management and Segmentation Strategy lesson! ^
Contact Database: A place to keep track of your contacts. Learn more in our Contact Management and Segmentation lesson! ^
Contact Management: A strategy that focuses on using a software program to easily store and source a contact’s information, including their name, contact history, email information, and so much more. Learn more in our Creating a Contact Management and Segmentation Strategy lesson! ^
Contact Property: Stores information about an individual contact. This includes information like their first name, last name, and email address but also other information that’s important for your company to know, like location, products or services of interest, when customers purchased, and much more. Learn more in our Creating a Contact Management and Segmentation Strategy lesson! ^
Content Bounce: An email bounce code of 571 or 554, meaning the mail server, anti-spam service, or software protecting the mail server determined that your content was bad. Learn more in our The Essentials of Email Deliverability lesson! ^
Content Marketing: Strategic marketing and business process focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. Learn more in our Understanding Content Marketing lesson! ^
Content Pillar: A website page that covers a broad topic in depth and is linked to from a cluster of related content. Learn more in our Creating Topic Clusters and Pillar Pages lesson! ^
Content Republishing: The act of reposting your content, mainly blogs, on other websites with proper credit given to the original author. Learn more in our Extending the Value of Your Content Through Repurposing lesson! ^
Contextual Marketing: Contextual marketing takes into account the user’s needs, habits, and goals to create a personalized website experience. Learn more in our Fundamentals of Contextual Marketing lesson! ^
Continuous Improvement: A repeatable, agile process for the team to continuously collect real-user data, build high-impact items, and generate momentum as they go. Learn more in our Implementing Continuous Improvement lesson! ^
Controller: In the context of GDPR, a controller is usually a company that obtains a data subject's information. Learn more in our Create a GDPR Strategy lesson! ^
Conversation: An oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas between two or more parties. Learn more in our Developing a Conversational Growth Strategy lesson! ^
Conversion: A moment when a website visitor takes a desired action. Once a visitor converts, they become a lead. Learn more in our Understanding Conversions lesson! ^
Conversion Optimization: The process of testing hypotheses on elements of your site with the ultimate goal of increasing the percentage of website visitors who convert Learn more in our Creating a Conversion Optimization Strategy lesson! ^
Conversion Path: The process by which an anonymous visitor becomes a known lead. Learn more in our Understanding Conversions lesson! ^
Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who took a desired action or converted. To calculate, take the number of people who converted on your call-to-action, form, etc., and divide it by the total number of people who viewed it. Learn more in our Understanding Conversions lesson! ^
Conversion Rate Optimization: A system for increasing a conversion rate. Learn more in our Converting Your Visitors lesson! ^
CRO: See Conversion Rate Optimization. ^
CTA: See Call-to-Action. ^
D
Data In: The data you collect, either by asking for it explicitly or gathering it through analytics implicitly. Learn more in our Developing a Conversational Growth Strategy lesson! ^
Data Out: How you use your data to further optimize and personalize the conversational experience for your website visitor. Learn more in our Developing a Conversational Growth Strategy lesson! ^
Data Privacy Impact Assessment: A type of impact assessment where an organization audits its own processes and sees how these processes affect the privacy of the individuals whose data it holds, collects, or processes. In GDPR, Data Privacy Impact Assessments are required in certain instances. See Privacy by Design. Learn more in our Create a GDPR Strategy lesson! ^
Data Subject: In the context of GDPR, data subject is the individual who owns the data. Learn more in our Create a GDPR Strategy lesson! ^
DPD: The Data Protection Directive set out eight protection principles that governed how organizations treat personal data. It was a precursor to GDPR. Learn more in our Create a GDPR Strategy lesson! ^
E
Email Bounce: When an email is rejected by the recipient's mail server. It includes a bounce code that gives some explanation as to why the message bounced. Learn more in our The Essentials of Email Deliverability lesson! ^
Email Deliverability: The measurement and understanding of how successful a sender is at getting their marketing email into people’s inboxes. Learn more in our Understanding Email Deliverability lesson! ^
Email Marketing ROI: The overall return on investment for your email campaigns. Learn more in our Measuring Success With Email Analytics lesson! ^
Email Marketing Strategy: A strategy used to market products and services and nurture relationships in a human and helpful way through the use of the email channel. Learn more in our Understanding Email Marketing lesson! ^
Email Service Provider: A company that offers email marketing. Learn more in our Understanding Email Marketing lesson! ^
Emails Delivered: The number of valid email addresses that accepted your company’s message. Learn more in our Measuring Success With Email Analytics lesson! ^
Emails Sent: The number of emails you tried to send. Learn more in our Measuring Success With Email Analytics lesson! ^
Engagement: Conversations with individuals about your industry, brand, products, and services. Learn more in our Understanding Social Media Promotion lesson! ^
Enriching a Lead: Adding as much contextual information as possible to the contact record in your CRM. Learn more in our Prioritizing Active Buyers Over Passive Buyers lesson! ^
ESP: See Email Service Provider. ^
Evangelists: Customers who believe so strongly in a product or service that they try to convince others to use it. Learn more in our Sending the Right Message With Lifecycle Marketing lesson! ^
Explicit Data: Information that a contact intentionally shares with your company. Learn more in our Creating a Contact Management and Segmentation Strategy lesson! ^
Explore Phase: The part of your sales strategy where you explore a qualified lead’s goals and challenges to help them assess whether your offering is a good fit for their context. Learn more in our Closing Your Leads lesson! ^
F
Featured Snippet: A snippet of text that Google serves on a search engine results page (SERP) itself. Learn more in our Attracting Strangers to Your Business lesson! ^
Feedback: In design, feedback is an indication to the user that their action was recognized and completed successfully. Learn more in our Designing a Journey-Driven User Experience lesson! ^
Five Whys Framework: A problem-solving method that helps you cut through the layers of an issue and get to the root or the cause. Learn more in our Tracking Your Traffic Analytics lesson! ^
Funnel: A metaphor for the way people become your customer. "Top of funnel" refers to people who are just learning about your company for the first time, while "bottom of funnel" refers to people who are deciding whether to become your customer. In the middle of the funnel, visitors convert and become leads. Learn more in our Sending the Right Message With Lifecycle Marketing lesson! ^
G
GDD: See Growth-Driven Design. ^
GDPR: The General Data Protection Regulation is an EU Regulation that will replace the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive. Learn more in our Create a GDPR Strategy lesson! ^
Goal: A metric outcome you can check off a list. Learn more in our Aligning Your Teams Around a Unified Revenue Goal lesson! ^
Greymail: Email that you opted in to receive but don’t really want. Learn more in our Measuring Success With Email Analytics lesson! ^
Growth Marketing: An integrated approach to growing your business and optimizing your content marketing efforts through constant testing across marketing channels. Learn more in our Developing a Growth Marketing Mentality lesson! ^
Growth-Driven Design: A data-driven web design process that focuses on continuous improvement. Learn more in our Growth-Driven Design Fundamentals lesson! ^
H
Hand Raiser: A lead who explicitly asks to talk to sales. Learn more in our Developing a Lead Qualification Framework lesson! ^
Helpful: Providing people the insight and guidance they need at each step of the buyer’s journey. Learn more in our Earning the Attention of Today's Empowered Buyer lesson! ^
Hero statement: A statement that combines a buyer persona with a job to be done. Learn more in our Creating a Hero Statement lesson! ^
Historical Optimization: Optimizing your old blog posts so that they're fresh, up-to-date, and can rank higher in search results. Learn more in our How HubSpot Uses Blogging to Rank #1 on Google lesson! ^
Holistic: Providing the same level of human, helpful service to people at every stage of the lifecycle. Learn more in our Earning the Attention of Today's Empowered Buyer lesson! ^
Human: Taking an empathetic, personable approach to doing business. Learn more in our Earning the Attention of Today's Empowered Buyer lesson! ^
I
Ideal Customer Profile: A checklist of the most basic attributes someone needs to have in order to be successful as your customer. Not to be confused with a buyer persona. Learn more in our Developing a Lead Qualification Framework lesson! ^
Identify Phase: The part of your sales strategy where you identify potential buyers who may have a goal or challenge you can help with. Learn more in our Prioritizing Active Buyers Over Passive Buyers lesson! ^
Implications: On the flip side of consequences are the positive implications of making a change. Implications are often implied within goals. Learn more in our Understanding the Buyer's Context lesson! ^
Implicit Data: Information you gather about a contact based on their behavior. Learn more in our Creating a Contact Management and Segmentation Strategy lesson! ^
Inbound: A fundamental shift in the way you do business. The inbound approach focuses on being human, helpful, and holistic. Learn more in our Inbound Fundamentals lesson! ^
Inbound Lead: A lead who converted on your website. Learn more in our Prioritizing Active Buyers Over Passive Buyers lesson! ^
Inbound Marketing: Marketing focused on attracting potential customers by being human, helpful, and holistic during every stage in a contact's buying journey. Learn more in our Attracting Strangers to Your Business lesson! ^
J
Jobs Theory: A way of digging into why people buy products. Your customers want to make progress in their lives, and they "hire" products to help them make that progress. If you understand the job people hire your product to do, you'll be able to design an experience that helps them see more success. Learn more in our Using Jobs to Be Done in Sales Enablement lesson! ^
Jobs to Be Done: See Jobs Theory. ^
Journey-Driven Design: Journey-driven design centers around the journeys users take and the flows they follow to complete their objectives. Learn more in our Designing a Journey-Driven User Experience lesson! ^
Judicial Branch: A small group of leaders who review every MQL Sales rejects. Learn more in our Holding Your Teams Accountable With a Service-Level Agreement lesson! ^
K
Keyword: One word or phrase that someone uses to describe what they need in search. Learn more in our How HubSpot Uses Blogging to Rank #1 on Google lesson! ^
L
Lead: A contact who has converted on your website or through some other interaction with your company. Learn more in our Developing a Lead Qualification Framework lesson! ^
Lead Flow: A HubSpot tool that generates leads through a simple pop-up conversion experience. Learn more in our Building Lead Flows lesson! ^
Lead Nurturing: The process of building relationships with your prospects with the goal of earning their business when they're ready. Learn more in our Understanding Lead Nurturing lesson! ^
Lifecycle Stage: Properties that designate where your contacts are in your funnel. Learn more in our Creating a Contact Management and Segmentation Strategy lesson! ^
Link Building: The process of manually encouraging people to link to your website from theirs. See also "Backlinks." Learn more in our Link Building for SEO: Scaling Your Backlink Strategy lesson! ^
List: The groupings of contacts that result from segmenting your contacts database. Learn more in our Contact Management and Segmentation lesson! ^
M
Mapping: Mapping is the act of drawing connections between interface objects and their intended effects. Learn more in our Designing a Journey-Driven User Experience lesson! ^
Marketing Automation: A software platform designed to help marketers automate repetitive tasks. Learn more in our Understanding Lead Nurturing lesson! ^
Marketing Qualified Lead: Leads that are both a good fit for your offering and ready to have a sales conversation. Learn more in our Developing a Lead Qualification Framework lesson! ^
Mere-Exposure Effect: The more familiar we are with something, the more we like it. Learn more in our Designing the User Experience lesson! ^
Micro Moment: An intent-driven moment when a person turns to a device, increasingly a mobile device, to act on a need to know, to go, to do, to buy. Learn more in our Designing a Journey-Driven User Experience lesson! ^
Monitoring: The method of looking for mentions of your brand, products, hashtags, employees, competitors, and customers in social media. Learn more in our Understanding Social Media Promotion lesson! ^
MQL: See Marketing Qualified Lead. ^
N
Net Promoter Score: A quantified view of your customers' relationship and experience with you. The better you do at creating a valuable and enjoyable end-to-end experience for your customers, the higher your NPS will climb. Learn more in our Applying a Customer Marketing Approach lesson! ^
NPS: See Net Promoter Score. ^
O
One-Stop-Shop: A GDPR provision that allows organizations with offices in multiple EU countries to liaise with a single "lead authority" to act as a central point of enforcement rather than dealing with multiple supervisory authorities in different EU Member States. Learn more in our Create a GDPR Strategy lesson! ^
Open Rate: The percentage of people who received your email and actually opened it. Learn more in our Measuring Success With Email Analytics lesson! ^
Opportunity: When a lead shows real intent to buy, they become an opportunity. Learn more in our Inbound Sales Fundamentals lesson! ^
P
Passive Buyer: People who aren’t yet looking to buy but might be in the future. Learn more in our Prioritizing Active Buyers Over Passive Buyers lesson! ^
Personalization: Personalization is a tool that you can use inside of your larger contextual marketing strategy. It allows you to focus on an individual. Learn more in our Using Personalization in Contextual Marketing lesson! ^
Pillar Page: A website page that covers a broad topic in depth and is linked to from a cluster of related content. Learn more in our Creating Topic Clusters and Pillar Pages lesson! ^
Plan: In sales qualification, the course of action a lead is going to pursue unless you can help them come up with a better approach. Learn more in our Understanding the Buyer's Context lesson! ^
Press Request Alerts: Requests that journalists send out asking for sources of information (like quotes on a certain topic from an industry expert). Learn more in our Link Building for SEO: Scaling Your Backlink Strategy lesson! ^
Privacy by Design: When new technology is developed, it will have to be built with GDPR in mind, and an organization will have to perform a Data Privacy Impact Assessment. Learn more in our Create a GDPR Strategy lesson! ^
Psychological Safety: How confident a team member feels taking an interpersonal risk in the presence of other team members. Psychological safety is vital to the success of smarketing meetings. Learn more in our Maintaining Alignment With Smarketing Meetings lesson! ^
R
Recipient Bounce: An email bounce code of 500 or 550, meaning the address is either no good or never was good. Also called "unknown user bounces." Learn more in our The Essentials of Email Deliverability lesson! ^
Relevance: In SEO, a measure of how well your content matches certain search queries. Learn more in our How to Find the SEO Strategy that Fits Your Business lesson! ^
Reporting: A written or spoken description of a situation, event, etc. Learn more in our Creating a Conversion Optimization Strategy lesson! ^
Reputation Bounce: An email bounce code of 500 or 550, meaning some system between you and the recipient’s mailbox made a judgment call based on your reputation and refused to deliver the message. The bounce codes are either 571, 554, or sometimes 471. Learn more in our The Essentials of Email Deliverability lesson! ^
Rule of Seven: In content marketing, the idea that a prospect needs to see or hear your marketing message at least seven times before they take action and buy from you. Learn more in our Extending the Value of Your Content Through Repurposing lesson! ^
S
Sales Enablement: The processes, content, and technology that empower sales teams to sell efficiently at a higher velocity. Learn more in our Introduction to Sales Enablement lesson! ^
Scientific Method: The scientific method is the iterative problem-solving approach used in most scientific files--chemistry, physics, biology, just to name a few--to answer questions about observable phenomena. Learn more in our Analyzing Your HubSpot Campaigns lesson! ^
Search Engine Optimization: The process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine. Learn more in our How to Find the SEO Strategy that Fits Your Business lesson! ^
Secondary SEO: Being included or referenced on websites that already rank well on search engines for a particular keyword. Learn more in our Developing a Growth Marketing Mentality lesson! ^
Segmentation: Breaking up your contacts into smaller groups of similar people. Learn more in our Contact Management and Segmentation lesson! ^
SEO: See Search Engine Optimization. ^
Service-Level Agreement: An agreement between a service provider and its customer that guarantees a certain output. In the context of sales enablement, it refers to an agreement between marketing and sales that unifies them around a single revenue goal. Learn more in our Holding Your Teams Accountable With a Service-Level Agreement lesson! ^
Shared Knowledge: This is information or data that is accessible by all tools and participants in a conversation. Learn more in our Developing a Conversational Growth Strategy lesson! ^
Signifiers: Also referred to as affordances, these are visual cues that teach the user how somehing can be operated. Learn more in our Designing a Journey-Driven User Experience lesson! ^
SLA: See Service Level Agreement. ^
Smarketing Meeting: A time when sales and marketing come together to discuss problems and collaborate on solutions. Learn more in our Maintaining Alignment With Smarketing Meetings lesson! ^
SMART Goal: A goal that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Learn more in our Understanding Lead Nurturing lesson! ^
Social Listening: How you track, analyze, and respond to conversations across the internet. Learn more in our Understanding Social Media Promotion lesson! ^
Soft Bounce: See Temporary Bounce. ^
T
Temporary Bounce: An email bounce indicating that the system protecting your recipient’s inbox isn't quite sure what to make of you, so they’re taking a wait and see approach. Learn more in our The Essentials of Email Deliverability lesson! ^
Timeline: In sales qualification, the prospect's timeline is how soon they intend to address the goals and challenges you're trying to help them with. Learn more in our Understanding the Buyer's Context lesson! ^
Topic: A group of keywords. Learn more in our How HubSpot Uses Blogging to Rank #1 on Google lesson! ^
Traffic Analytics: Traffic analytics is a subset of reporting options that looks at engagement data of visitors at the top of your funnel. Learn more in our Tracking Your Traffic Analytics lesson! ^
Trigger Event: Anything that indicates that you could provide immediate value to someone. Learn more in our Earning the Attention of Today's Empowered Buyer lesson! ^
V
Visibility: Visibility ensures that the most important options are quickly located and easily accessible to the user. Learn more in our Designing a Journey-Driven User Experience lesson! ^
Vision: A state of affairs you want to bring into being. A vision should be long-term and far-reaching. You'll then set goals to help you bring that vision about. Learn more in our Aligning Your Teams Around a Unified Revenue Goal lesson! ^
VoC: See Voice of Customer. ^
Voice of Customer: The process of listening to customer feedback about their experience using a product or service, sharing results within the organization, and interpreting feedback to improve customer experience and retention. Learn more in our Delighting Your Customers lesson! ^
W
Web Analytics: The facts and statistics you gather that inform you about the traffic that's coming to and interacting with your web pages. Learn more in our Interpreting Your Web Analytics lesson! ^
Website Performance Roadmap: In GDD, the website performance roadmap is a framework used by the strategist, or the person accountable for the website vision and results, during any planning. This framework helps ensure the team is investing its time in building the highest impact items to drive value to the user and maximize results. Learn more in our Using the Website Optimization Roadmap lesson! ^
White Space: Also known as negative space, white space refers to the part of your emails that is left unmarked. Learn more in our Email Design and Functionality lesson! ^
