MailGraf and email marketing glossary

You do not need to read this glossary from beginning to end. Keep it as a reference for the MailGraf, email marketing and sending terms that appear in the app and its guides.

Contacts and consent

Contact

A record that holds an email address and the consent, tags, fields and engagement information connected to it.

List

A group of contacts brought together for a particular purpose, such as a newsletter or customer update.

Segment

An audience selected by rules. Its members change automatically as contact information and behaviour change.

Tag

A short label attached to a contact so you can group, find or target similar people later.

Custom field

A field you create to store information that MailGraf does not include by default, such as membership level or preferred location.

Consent

Permission from a person to receive marketing emails. Having an email address is not, by itself, consent.

Consent status

The contact's current permission state, used to decide whether marketing email can be sent to them.

Single opt-in

A sign-up method that does not require the person to click a separate confirmation email. For imported contacts, you must already have permission to email them.

Double opt-in

A sign-up method that becomes confirmed only after the person clicks the link in a confirmation email.

Confirmation record

The evidence kept for a confirmed sign-up, including when and how the confirmation happened.

Campaigns and content

Campaign

A marketing email prepared for a chosen audience and sent once, either immediately or at a scheduled time.

Subject line

The main line recipients see for the email in their inbox.

Preview text

The short supporting line many inboxes show beside or below the subject line.

Sender

The name and email address shown in the email's From field.

Email template

A reusable starting design for new campaign or automation emails.

Personalisation

Content that changes for each recipient by using contact information, such as a first name or custom field.

Test email

A copy sent to you or your team for checking. It does not send the campaign to its real audience.

Automations and growth tools

Automation

A sequence that runs when its starting condition is met and carries out steps without a manual campaign send.

Trigger

The event or condition that starts an automation, such as a confirmed sign-up or a contact joining a list.

Automation step

One action or wait inside an automation, such as sending an email, delaying the next action or checking a condition.

Form

A set of fields used to collect contact information and consent from people.

Popup

A form or message that appears over a website page when its display rules are met.

Landing page

A standalone page created for one focused action, such as joining a list or registering interest.

Sending and email health

Sending domain

The domain authorised to send your MailGraf emails and identify them as coming from your organisation.

DNS

Records that connect your domain to services such as your website and email. You edit these records when verifying your sending domain.

SPF

A DNS record that says which services are allowed to send email for a domain.

DKIM

A digital signature that lets receiving providers check that an email is authorised and has not been changed in transit.

DMARC

A policy that tells receiving providers how to handle email when the sender domain cannot be authenticated, and where to send authentication reports.

Deliverability

The ability of email to reach recipients' inboxes rather than being rejected or placed in spam.

Bounce

A delivery failure. A hard bounce indicates a permanent problem, such as an address that no longer exists. A soft bounce indicates a temporary problem, such as a full mailbox, for which delivery may be retried.

Complaint

A signal returned when a recipient marks an email as spam.

Block list

Email addresses MailGraf excludes from future sends after an unsubscribe, hard bounce, complaint or manual block.

Email verification

A check that estimates whether an email address is correctly formed and able to receive mail before you send to it.

Bounce test

A free check of a sample from your list. It helps assess sending risk but does not verify the whole list.

Sending credit

An allowance used to send email. It is separate from the credits used to verify addresses.

Verification credit

An allowance used to check email addresses and clean your list. It is not used to send campaigns.

Measurement and integrations

Open rate

The percentage of delivered emails recorded as opened. Privacy features can affect this measurement, so it is not exact proof that someone read the email.

Click rate

The percentage of delivered emails that recorded at least one tracked link click.

Unsubscribe rate

The percentage of delivered emails that led to a recorded unsubscribe.

Spam complaint rate

The percentage of sent emails reported as spam by recipients.

UTM parameters

Short values added to a link so analytics tools can attribute a website visit to the right campaign and source.

Engagement score

A value from 0 to 100 based on how recently and how often a contact opens your emails or clicks their links.

API

A structured way for another application to read from or send data to MailGraf.

API key

A secret credential an application uses to prove that it is allowed to make API requests for an account.

Webhook

An automatic message sent to another system when a particular event happens in MailGraf.

Endpoint

A specific API address used for one kind of request, such as creating a contact or reading a list.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

A shared communication standard that lets AI assistants connect to applications, retrieve information and carry out actions within the permissions granted.

For setup steps and example requests, see Connect your AI assistant to MailGraf.