B2B Data Glossary
Plain-English definitions for the terms sales and marketing teams encounter when working with B2B data.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate in email refers to the percentage of sent emails that could not be delivered to the recipient's mailbox, categorized as either hard bounces (permanent failures) or soft bounces (temporary issues).
Catch-All Email
A catch-all email domain is configured to accept all incoming messages regardless of the specific address, making it impossible to verify whether a particular mailbox exists.
Contact Enrichment
Contact enrichment is the process of enhancing individual contact records with additional professional and personal data points such as job title, phone number, LinkedIn profile, and company affiliation from external data sources.
CRM Data Hygiene
CRM data hygiene is the ongoing practice of maintaining clean, accurate, and complete data in your CRM system through regular validation, deduplication, enrichment, and standardization.
Data Appending
Data appending is the process of adding missing or additional data fields to existing records by matching them against external data sources, filling gaps without replacing information that is already present.
Data Cleansing
Data cleansing is the process of detecting and correcting inaccurate, incomplete, duplicated, or improperly formatted records in a database to improve overall data quality and reliability.
Data Decay
Data decay is the gradual degradation of data accuracy over time as contact details, job titles, company information, and other B2B data points become outdated.
Data Enrichment
Data enrichment is the process of enhancing existing data records with additional information from external sources, improving accuracy, completeness, and usefulness for sales and marketing teams.
Data Normalization
Data normalization is the process of standardizing data formats, values, and structures across a dataset so that records from different sources are consistent and comparable.
Deliverability Score
A deliverability score is a rating that predicts how likely an email is to successfully reach the recipient's inbox rather than being filtered to spam or bounced.
Email Deliverability
Email deliverability is the ability of an email message to successfully reach the recipient's inbox rather than being filtered to spam, bounced, or blocked by email service providers.
Email Validation
Email validation checks whether an email address is correctly formatted and associated with a real, active mailbox - encompassing both syntax rules and deliverability testing.
Email Verification
Email verification is the process of confirming that an email address is valid, properly formatted, and capable of receiving messages, without actually sending an email.
Firmographic Data
Firmographic data describes the characteristics of a business organization, including industry, revenue, employee count, location, and company structure - the B2B equivalent of demographic data.
Golden Record
A golden record is the single, most accurate and complete version of a data entity created by merging and deduplicating information from multiple sources.
ICP Scoring
ICP scoring is a lead qualification method that rates prospects based on how closely they match your Ideal Customer Profile, using firmographic, technographic, and behavioral attributes.
Intent Data
Intent data consists of behavioral signals collected from online activity that indicate a company or individual is actively researching a topic, product category, or solution, suggesting potential purchase readiness.
Lead Enrichment
Lead enrichment is the process of automatically appending additional data to incoming leads - such as company details, contact information, and firmographics - to enable faster qualification and more personalized outreach.
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is the process of assigning numerical values to leads based on their fit with your ideal customer profile and behavioral signals that indicate purchase intent.
Multi-Provider Enrichment
Multi-provider enrichment uses multiple data vendors simultaneously or sequentially to enrich records, maximizing coverage and accuracy by combining the strengths of different data sources.
Record Deduplication
Record deduplication is the process of identifying and merging duplicate records within a database that represent the same real-world entity, ensuring each person or company exists only once in the system.
Reverse ETL
Reverse ETL is the process of syncing data from a central data warehouse or data lake back into operational tools like CRMs, marketing platforms, and sales engagement systems where teams can act on it.
Sales Intelligence
Sales intelligence refers to the collection and analysis of data about prospects, companies, and market trends to help sales teams identify opportunities, personalize outreach, and close deals more effectively.
Technographic Data
Technographic data is information about the technology products, platforms, and tools that a company uses, providing insight into their infrastructure, maturity, and potential compatibility with your solution.
Waterfall Enrichment
Waterfall enrichment is a data enrichment strategy that routes each record through a sequence of data providers, moving to the next source only when the previous one fails to return a match.