Account-based marketing
ABMAccount-based marketing is a go-to-market approach in which sales and marketing coordinate their efforts around a selected set of target companies and the people involved in buying at those companies.
AI, data & GTM
glossary.
Understand the language behind AI agents, business data and go-to-market operations. Definitions you can use, examples you can follow, and sources you can check.
64 terms explained6 topic collectionsUpdated
64 terms
A
Agent orchestration
Agent orchestration is the coordination of agents, tools and task state so that work moves between steps with controlled dependencies, budgets, permissions and error handling.
Agentic AI
Agentic AI describes systems that can pursue goals through model-directed decisions and actions, rather than only generating a response to a single prompt.
AI agent
An AI agent is a software system that uses a model to choose actions, call tools and assess results while working toward an objective within defined permissions.
AI BDR
AI business development representativeAn AI BDR is software used to support business development work, usually by finding target accounts, researching potential buyers and preparing or coordinating outbound prospecting.
AI SDR
AI sales development representativeAn AI SDR is software that assists with or automates sales development tasks such as account research, contact discovery, qualification and outreach preparation. Its scope depends on the tools and permissions provided.
API enrichment
API enrichment adds data to an application’s records by programmatically sending identifiers to an enrichment service and processing the returned attributes through an application programming interface.
Audience matching
Audience matching connects eligible customer or prospect identifiers with records recognized by an advertising or engagement platform so a permitted audience can be included or excluded in campaigns.
B
B2B data
Business-to-business dataB2B data is information about businesses, their people, relationships and activities, used to support business decisions such as research, segmentation, sales and operations.
Buyer persona
A buyer persona is a research-informed description of a type of person involved in a purchase, focusing on their responsibilities, priorities, constraints and role in the decision.
Buying committee
A buying committee is the group of people who influence, evaluate, approve or use a business purchase. It can include business sponsors, technical reviewers, procurement, finance and end users.
Buying signals
Buying signals are observations or events that may indicate a change in a company’s needs, priorities or readiness to evaluate a purchase. They support hypotheses rather than proving a sale will occur.
C
Catch-all domain
Accept-all domainA catch-all domain is an email domain configured to accept mail for addresses that may not correspond to individually provisioned mailboxes, making mailbox-level verification less conclusive.
Cold email
Cold email is an unsolicited initial email to someone without an established conversation or relationship with the sender, commonly used for business prospecting and subject to applicable marketing and privacy rules.
Company enrichment
Company enrichment adds or updates organization-level information, such as domain, industry, employee range, location, technology or ownership, on an existing company record.
Confidence score
A confidence score expresses a system’s assessed support for a prediction, match or extracted value under a particular method. It is not automatically a calibrated probability that the result is correct.
Contact enrichment
Contact enrichment adds or refreshes professional information about a person, such as their employer, role or business contact details, after matching the input record to the correct individual.
D
Data accuracy
Data accuracy describes how closely a recorded value reflects the real-world fact it is intended to represent at the relevant time and level of detail.
Data cleansing
Data cleaningData cleansing identifies and corrects, standardizes, flags or removes data problems so records can be used reliably for a defined purpose.
Data completeness
Data completeness measures whether the fields or records required for a particular use are present, using an explicit definition of what counts as a meaningful value.
Data deduplication
DedupeData deduplication identifies records representing the same entity or event and applies rules to merge, suppress or link those duplicates without losing important information.
Data enrichment
Data enrichment adds relevant information to an existing record by matching it with internal or external sources, while preserving the identity, provenance and meaning of the resulting fields.
Data freshness
Data freshness describes how recently information was observed or verified relative to how quickly it can change and how current it must be for the intended decision.
Data governance
Data governance establishes the responsibilities, policies and decision processes for managing data, including its quality, access, meaning, retention and permitted use.
Data minimization
Data minimisationData minimization is the practice of limiting collected and retained personal information to what is appropriate and necessary for a defined purpose, rather than gathering extra data simply because it is available.
Data normalization
In data operations, normalization converts equivalent values into consistent representations, such as standardized country codes, date formats or units, so records can be compared and processed reliably.
Data provenance
Data provenance records where information came from and the activities, transformations or responsible parties involved in producing it, allowing users to trace a result back to supporting evidence.
Data quality
Data quality is the degree to which data is fit for its intended use, considering properties such as accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, validity and uniqueness.
DMARC
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and ConformanceDMARC is an email authentication policy and reporting mechanism that connects SPF or DKIM authentication to the visible From domain through alignment and lets domain owners publish handling preferences.
DomainKeys Identified Mail
DKIMDomainKeys Identified Mail, or DKIM, authenticates a domain’s responsibility for an email using a digital signature that a receiving server verifies with a public key published in DNS.
E
Email bounce rate
Bounce rateEmail bounce rate is the share of attempted messages reported as undeliverable, calculated using a stated denominator and time window. It should distinguish temporary failures from permanent rejection.
Email deliverability
Email deliverability is the ability of legitimate messages to reach their intended recipients’ inboxes, influenced by authentication, sender reputation, recipient expectations, content and receiving-provider policies.
Email verification
Email verification checks an address for evidence that it is correctly formed and potentially able to receive mail, using checks such as syntax, domain configuration and available mailbox-level signals.
Entity resolution
Entity resolution determines which records from one or more sources refer to the same real-world person, organization or other entity, despite differences in identifiers or representation.
F
Firmographic data
FirmographicsFirmographic data describes organizations through attributes such as industry, size, location, ownership and revenue range, helping teams segment businesses and evaluate company-level fit.
First-party data
First-party data is information an organization collects through its own direct relationships and interactions, such as product usage, customer records, support conversations or website activity.
G
Go-to-market strategy
GTM strategyA go-to-market strategy defines the customers a business will serve, the problem it will solve, its offer and the channels and operating model it will use to reach and support those customers.
H
Human in the loop
HITL · Human-in-the-loopHuman in the loop is a system design in which a person reviews, approves, corrects or supplies information at a defined point in an automated or AI-assisted process.
I
Ideal customer profile
ICPAn ideal customer profile describes the characteristics of companies most likely to benefit from a product and support a viable commercial relationship, including explicit qualification and exclusion criteria.
Idempotency
Idempotency is the property that repeating an operation with the same intended input has the same intended effect as performing it once, helping systems retry safely without duplicating side effects.
Intent data
Intent data consists of observed behaviors interpreted as possible interest in a topic, product or purchase, often aggregated at a person or account level under a provider-specific methodology.
L
Lead generation
Lead genLead generation is the process of creating or identifying potential customer interest and capturing enough relevant information to support a next step in a sales or marketing process.
Lead qualification
Lead qualification is the process of deciding whether a prospect meets the requirements for a specific sales stage or next action, based on evidence about fit, need and the buying process.
Lead scoring
Lead scoring assigns a value or category to a prospect using defined criteria, helping teams prioritize records based on fit, engagement or other evidence relevant to a business objective.
M
Model Context Protocol
MCPModel Context Protocol, or MCP, is an open protocol for connecting AI applications to external tools, resources and contextual information through a consistent client-server interface.
O
OAuth
OAuth 2.0OAuth is an authorization framework that lets an application obtain limited access to resources on behalf of a user or another authorized party without requiring the application to collect that party’s password.
P
Prompt injection
Prompt injection is an attempt to make an AI system follow instructions from untrusted input that conflict with the intended task or its controlling instructions.
R
Rate limiting
Rate limiting controls how many requests or operations a caller may perform within a period or concurrency budget, protecting service capacity and enforcing fair or contracted usage.
REST API
Representational State Transfer APIA REST API is an application interface organized around resources and representations, commonly using HTTP methods and status codes to let clients read or change application state.
Retrieval-augmented generation
RAGRetrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, supplies a language model with information retrieved from an external collection so it can generate an answer using context relevant to the request.
Revenue operations
RevOpsRevenue operations coordinates the processes, systems, data and measurement used across revenue-related teams so customer and commercial work moves through a consistent operating model.
Reverse ETL
Reverse extract, transform, loadReverse ETL moves prepared data from an analytical store, such as a warehouse, into operational tools so teams can use modeled attributes, segments or scores in everyday workflows.
S
Sales intelligence
Sales intelligence is information and analysis that helps sales teams understand accounts, identify relevant people and decide where, when and how to focus commercial effort.
Sales prospecting
Sales prospecting is the work of identifying, researching and prioritizing potential customers so a sales team can initiate relevant conversations with suitable accounts and people.
Sender Policy Framework
SPFSender Policy Framework, or SPF, is an email authentication mechanism that lets a domain publish which mail servers are authorized to send for the envelope sender domain used in an SMTP transaction.
Sender reputation
Sender reputation is a receiving provider’s assessment of a sending identity or infrastructure based on observed sending behavior and feedback, influencing how future messages are accepted and filtered.
Suppression list
A suppression list records identifiers that should be excluded from a particular action, such as marketing outreach, audience activation or prospecting, with a reason and scope for the exclusion.
T
Technographic data
TechnographicsTechnographic data describes technologies associated with an organization, such as software, infrastructure or platforms it uses, based on observations or other documented sources.
Third-party data
Third-party data is information obtained from an external organization that is separate from the recipient’s direct relationship with the people or businesses described in the data.
Total addressable market
TAMTotal addressable market is an estimate of the total demand or revenue opportunity for a defined product category under explicit assumptions about eligible customers and potential spending.
W
Waterfall enrichment
Waterfall enrichment queries an ordered sequence of data sources, moving to another source when required information is missing or fails an acceptance rule, until the workflow reaches its stopping condition.
Webhook
A webhook is an HTTP notification sent by one system to a configured endpoint when an event occurs, allowing another system to react without continuously polling for changes.
Workflow automation
Workflow automation executes a defined sequence of tasks and rules when a trigger occurs, passing data between steps and handling specified conditions without manual repetition.
Z
Zero-party data
Zero-party data is a marketing term for information a person intentionally and proactively shares with an organization, such as stated preferences, interests or purchase requirements.
A reference you can inspect.
Each entry separates the definition from practical guidance, examples and limitations. Related terms show how the concepts connect.
Sources over slogans
References favor standards, official documentation and original research. Statistics include their source and context; illustrative calculations are labeled as examples.
Useful distinctions
Learn why a verified email is not a delivery guarantee, a confidence score is not permission, and a buying signal is not proof of a purchase.
From concept to practice
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Written and maintained by the AstroFabric team. Found an unclear definition or a source that changed? Send a correction.