Marketing glossary

There's enough jargon in marketing to fill a dictionary. Here are some of the main terms you might come across.

Active customer, member or subscriber
Generally an active customer is one who has purchased from you, joined your organisation or sent for information from you within the last 12 months.

Cause-related marketing (CRM)
This is where a company develops a relationship with a 'cause' for mutual benefit. The company might gain publicity, goodwill, a useful database or a helpful association. In return the charity might get sponsorship, a donation or something else of value. Both sides gain. CRM also stands for customer relationship management.

Circulation and readership
Circulation figures tell you how many people buy a particular publication and readership figures tell you how many people read it. Readership figures are usually higher than circulation ones, as a publication will frequently be read by more than just the person who bought it.

Co-op mailings
Two or more non-competitive organisations come together and have their promotional material inserted into the one mailing, sharing the costs.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
The idea that businesses are committed to contributing to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families, as well as of the local community and society at large.

Cost per conversion
Add together all the costs of a direct mail campaign and divide by the number of orders received, donations made or subscriptions taken out. This is a good way of working out whether your campaign has been a success in terms of the response it has generated.

Donor profile
A donor profile paints a picture of your typical supporter - e.g. young (18-30) Daily Telegraph readers with no children, living in the midlands or north of England and interested in the environment and politics.

List cleaning
Mailing lists need to be kept up to date. List cleaning involves correcting names and addresses, removing those who have moved away or those who have not responded to your mail within a designated period (e.g. after five mailings or within six months).

Piggy backs
This is when you enclose literature in another organisation's mailing, for example by putting an insert into another charity's newsletter. This is a cheap way of doing a mailing. You can make money this way too, by offering a piggy back service in your own mailings.

Single column centimetre
This is the unit of vertical measurement that is used to measure the size of an advert and therefore its cost.

Unique selling point (USP)
This is what differentiates you from the others. For example, there might be hundreds of animal charities, but your USP is that you are the only one exclusively caring for abandoned or badly-treated reptiles. With no one else offering that service, you stand apart from the rest.