Glossary
The outbound vocabulary, defined
39 terms from the working language of outbound sales — signals and timing, prospect data, sending, deliverability, sequences and pipeline. Each one answers what it is in a sentence, then explains what it means in practice and where it usually goes wrong.
39 terms7 categoriesCross-linked
Signals and timing
The vocabulary of when to contact an account, rather than whether to.
Funding signalA funding signal is a public announcement that a company has raised capital, read as a buying trigger.Hiring signalA hiring signal is a public job posting read as evidence about a company's plans rather than as a recruitment ad.In-market accountAn in-market account is a company showing observable evidence that it is solving the problem you sell into right now — hiring for it, funding it, or publicly building around it.Relevance scoreA relevance score ranks signals against each other so a feed can be worked in priority order instead of chronologically.Trigger eventA trigger event is a publicly observable change at a company that creates a reason to contact it now — a job posting, a funding announcement, a leadership hire, a new office.
Prospect data
Where contact records come from, what verification claims mean, and what you owe the people in them.
Catch-all domainA catch-all domain accepts mail to every address at it, whether or not the mailbox exists.EnrichmentEnrichment fills the gaps in a record you already have — adding a company's size, sector, technologies or a missing contact detail from another source.Ideal customer profileAn ideal customer profile describes the kind of company worth selling to — size, sector, stage, stack, geography — as a set of filters you can actually run against a database.Prospect revealA reveal is the act of unmasking one contact's details in a prospect database.Right to erasureThe right to erasure lets a person require an organisation to delete the personal data it holds about them.Role addressA role address belongs to a function rather than a person — info@, sales@, support@, careers@.Verified emailA verified email address is one a provider has checked, rather than guessed, before handing it over.
Sending
Mailboxes, ceilings, rotation and the rules that decide what leaves today.
Mailbox rotationMailbox rotation spreads one campaign's sends across several connected mailboxes so no single address carries the whole volume.One-click unsubscribeOne-click unsubscribe is a mail header that lets a mail client show its own unsubscribe button and act on it without the recipient visiting a web page.RampA ramp raises a new mailbox's daily ceiling gradually instead of allowing full volume on day one.Send windowA send window is the range of hours and days on which a sequence is allowed to send, in a stated timezone.Sending capA sending cap is the maximum number of messages one mailbox may send in a day.Sending identityA sending identity is one mailbox that outbound mail leaves from: an address, its authentication, its own reputation and its own daily ceiling.Suppression listA suppression list is the set of addresses that must never be sent to again, checked before every send rather than at import.
Deliverability
Authentication, the metrics receiving providers act on, and how to observe where mail lands.
Auto-pauseAuto-pause takes a mailbox out of the sending rotation automatically when its bounce or complaint rate crosses a published threshold.Bounce rateBounce rate is the share of sent messages a receiving server refuses.Complaint rateComplaint rate is the share of delivered messages recipients report as spam.DKIMDKIM attaches a cryptographic signature to outgoing mail, covering the headers and body.DMARCDMARC ties SPF and DKIM to the From address a recipient actually sees, states what a receiver should do when neither aligns, and asks for reports.Inbox health scoreAn inbox health score summarises one mailbox's recent sending behaviour as a single number, so a pool of mailboxes can be compared at a glance and volume can be shifted away from the ones in trouble.Inbox placementInbox placement is where accepted mail is filed: the inbox, a tab, the spam folder.Seed listA seed list is a set of mailboxes you control, spread across the providers your recipients use, that a test message is sent to so you can see where it lands.Sender reputationSender reputation is the receiving provider's running judgement of a sending domain, address and infrastructure, built from bounces, complaints, engagement and consistency of volume.SPFSPF is a DNS record listing the servers permitted to send mail for a domain.
Sequences
Multi-step outreach: how it is structured, how it is measured and how it stops.
EnrollmentAn enrollment is one contact's run through one sequence: which step they are on, when the next action is due, and whether it is active, paused or finished.Reply detectionReply detection reads your sending mailbox, matches incoming mail back to the message that produced it, and acts: stopping the sequence, recording the reply against the contact, and categorising it.SequenceA sequence is an ordered set of steps applied to a contact over days or weeks — automatic emails, manual emails, calls, tasks, waits and conditional branches.Step variantA step variant is a second version of one email step in a sequence, so enrollments split between two messages and the results can be compared.
Pipeline and revenue
From a qualified deal to a signed contract and an issued invoice.
E-signature audit trailAn e-signature audit trail is the evidence that a document was signed by whom it claims, when it claims, and has not changed since.Pipeline stageA pipeline stage is one position a deal occupies on its way to closing, defined by something observable that has happened — not by how the seller feels.Quote approvalQuote approval is the internal check a proposal passes before it reaches a customer — someone with authority confirming the pricing, the terms and the discount.Sales forecastA weighted forecast multiplies each open deal's value by the win probability of the stage it is in, and sums the result.
Platform
Who runs the infrastructure, whose keys are used, and where the data sits.
Bring your own keyBring your own key means the software calls a model provider using credentials you supply, rather than reselling inference through the vendor's account.Self-hosted nodeA self-hosted node is a server you run that performs the work a sales platform would otherwise do on shared infrastructure — sending, crawling, background jobs.
Read these next
Signal-based prospecting: how to find a reason to write todayBuild outbound from public buying signals — hiring posts and other dated, public changes — rather than volume: what counts as evidence, how to rank it, how to work it.Why cold email goes to spam, and the order to fix itAuthentication, list quality, complaints, sending pattern, content: the five causes of filtered cold email, ranked by how much of the problem each one is.Mailbox ramp and rotation: caps, weights and auto-pauseSpreading outbound across several mailboxes: the rotation rule, the ramp schedule, per-mailbox caps, health scoring, and the thresholds that pause a mailbox.Self-hosting your sales dataWhat it means to run the work layer of a sales platform yourself: what stays with the vendor, what moves to your machine, and what it costs to operate.
Every one of these is a screen in the product
Prospect search, verification, sequences, deliverability, pipeline, quotes, e-signature and invoicing — on one record.
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