Marketing Automation Glossary of Terms

Marketing automation solutions can provide rich functionality to automate and measure demand generation campaigns that generate more high-quality sales leads. Marketing automation, the use of technology to manage and automate the process of converting prospects to buyers, empowers B2B marketers to focus more on the strategic and creative activities that improve marketing ROI.

Get started today by leveraging these marketing automation terms and definitions:

BANT – The acronym for budget, authority, need, timeline— fundamental ways to determine the sales readiness of a lead

Campaign Management - The process of creating, executing, and measuring marketing programs directed at specific audience segments

Demand Generation – The act of using marketing to create interest or demand in a company’s products or services

Email Marketing – The use of email communication to increase awareness, generate leads and build relationships with prospective and existing customers

Landing Page Optimization – The process of obtaining the greatest number of conversions from a landing page by continuously testing and revising various landing page elements

Lead Database – A system used to collect information on a company’s leads such as demographic, BANT and behavioral data

Lead Management – The process of generating revenue from leads by collecting, qualifying and interacting with individuals and/or organizations in relevant ways throughout the buying process

Lead Nurturing – The process of building relationships with qualified prospects regardless of their timing to buy, with the goal of earning their business when they are ready

Lead Scoring – The process of determining the sales readiness of leads using a pre-determined scoring methodology and ranking them accordingly

Marketing Asset – A piece of marketing content (e.g. whitepapers, videos, newsletters, Webinars, etc.) used to educate and generate interest for a company’s products or services

Marketing Automation – The use of technology to manage and automate the process of converting prospective customers into actual buyers

Revenue Cycle – A new way of looking at the traditional sales cycle, the revenue cycle starts from the day the organization first meets a prospect and continues through the sale and beyond to the customer relationship

Trigger – An event based on a change or update in status, demographic information, or user behavior that causes a lead to proceed along a specific workflow branch or new path

Website Monitoring – The ability to monitor page visits, click-throughs, form submissions, and other online activities from either known or anonymous visitors

Workflow – A pre-determined path of interactions for individuals to experience based on their profile, demographic, and/or behavioral data with the goal of nurturing and building relationships