If you’ve been at this a while, you’re probably pretty comfortable with email marketing industry lingo. Terms like A/B split, CAN-SPAM, firewall, mailto, phishing, and suppression file are probably all quite familiar to you. But as with any ever-evolving field, knowledge and terminology change frequently. Luckily, the Email Experience Council maintains a comprehensive Email Glossary so you can always look up terms you don’t know.

Now it’s time to test your email-speak. How many of these terms do you know? (Answers below; no peeking!)

• * Bayesian filter
• * Joe job
• * Mail bomb
• * Spamcop
• * Throttling

Check yourself against the answers below. If you knew more than 2 of these terms, consider yourself an email expert!

• Bayesian filter: An anti-spam program that evaluates header and content of incoming email messages to determine the probability that it is spam. Bayesian filters assign point values to items that appear frequently in spam, such as the words “money-back guarantee” or “free.” A message that accumulated too many points is either rejected as probable spam or delivered to a junk-mail folder. Aka content-based filter.
• Joe job: A spam-industry term for a forged email, in which a spammer or hacker fakes a genuine email address in order to hide his identity.
• Mail bomb: An orchestrated attempt to shut down a mail server by sending more messages than it can handle in a short period of time.
• Spamcop: A blacklist and IP-address database, formerly privately owned but now part of the email vendor Ironport. Many ISPs check the IP addresses of incoming email against Spamcop’s records to determine whether the address has been blacklisted due to spam complaints.
• Throttling: The practice of regulating how many email message a broadcaster sends to one ISP or mail server at a time. Some ISPs bounce email if it receives too many messages from one sending address at a time.

Refer to the EEC’s comprehensive email glossary any time you come across an unfamiliar term – or simply contact your OpenMoves account manager.  We stay on top of cutting-edge changes in the email industry so you don’t have to.