Glossary of Terms

Bounce

When an email is undeliverable the email server will return a message stating that this was the case. This is known as bouncing of the email. The Touchpoint Interactive Marketing Platform can automatically interpret this bounce message and mark the Contact's email address as invalid. There are two types of email bounces:

A soft bounce, which includes such things as a user's mailbox being full, does not result in the Contact's email address being marked as invalid.

A hard bounce can include such things as an invalid domain name, no such email address at that domain or network problems. A hard bounce will result in the Contact's email address being marked as invalid.

Click-through

A click-through refers to a link being clicked by a Contact or other person from a Message, web page or other source. Click-throughs can be tracked within the management console for reporting purposes.

Cookie

HTTP cookies which are commonly referred to as cookies, are a small piece of text that is sent from a server to a client when communicating. The cookie is then sent, unchanged, from the client to the server during subsequent communications. Cookies can have many applications such as tracking, authenticating or storing user preferences.

CRON

CRON is a standard, time-based, job scheduling tool that is present on most UNIX-like operating systems.

Enable

The status of a Contact controls if Messages can be sent to that Contact. Messages can only be sent to Contacts with a status of enabled and this can be manually set from the management console.

When manually enabling a suspended Contact, that Contact may now potentially be targeted by Messages. You should always check your local unsolicitored mail legislation to make sure that enabling the Contact complies with the applicable laws.

GNA

GNA (Gone No Address) refers to a Contact who cannot be contacted at their provided postal address, and where no forwarding address is available.

Referrer

When a Contact tells another person about a promotion or campaign and that person registers so that they too become a Contact in the system, the Contact that told them about the promotion or campaign is recorded as the Referrer Contact.

A Contact can refer another person in several ways. For example, by forwarding an email on, or by filling out a Tell a Friend form on a web site.

Screened Out

Survey participants that are screened out do not meet specific criteria required to complete a survey. For example, they may be completing a survey on coffee brands, but be screened out because they only drink coffee once a month.

Shortcode

A shortcode is a number that is registered on the telecommunications network to receive inbound SMS messages sent from mobile phones and other devices. The Touchpoint Interactive Marketing Platform can monitor a shortcode and process any messages received.

Suspend

The status of a Contact controls if Messages can be sent to that Contact. When a new Contact is created, the status is enabled by default. A status of suspended means that messages cannot be sent to that Contact. A Contact's status can be changed to suspended manually in the management console or is they choose to unsubscribe from communications.

Tab Delimited

A tab delimited text file is a standard way to store records in a text file. Each record starts on a new line and each field is separated by a tab character. A tab delimited text file can be edited in a program such as Microsoft Excel or any text editor.

Transaction

Transactions are a record of a Contact's financial and loyalty transactions. Most Transactions have either a monetary or points value (or both). For example, Transactions can be used to record the points accumulation and redemption for a loyalty scheme.

Transmission

When a Message is posted to the target Contacts a transmission record is kept for future reference. Within the management console, this record is referred to as a transmission.

txt

Often referred to as txt messaging, Short Message Service (SMS) text messages can be transmitted to and from mobile phones and other devices.

URL

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a standardized way to tell computers how to find information on a network or the internet. For example, in the address bar of your web browser you would enter the URL https://manage.touchpointgroup.com/ to browse to the management console.

WYSIWYG

The WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor is a visual HTML editor that allows you to design HTML pages (or emails) without knowing any HTML. Using familiar formatting and layout tools the WYSIWYG editor allows you to design an HTML page as it should look in the finished output.

XML

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a markup language used widely on the internet to ease the sharing of structured information.