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B2B marketing database management like any other function of an organization has it’s own language and its own terms peculiar to those who use them and sound greek to those who don’t. Data-speak is what you can call it! No matter how vague or complicated any of these words may seem, they all have very simple explanations and anyone can learn how to walk the talk once they break it down to its simplest meaning. Here are some of them we’ve picked and completely broken down into simple explanations:

• Address Hygiene: the level of accuracy of contacts and mailing addresses on a list
• Back-end: the database where the records are stored
• Cold List: a list of contacts which have not been previously contacted or engaged yet 
• Data Append: adding missing or additional information to existing records like adding missing email addresses
• Data Migration: moving data from one place to another. For example moving records from an Oracle database to Salesforce.com
• Data Export: downloading records and data from an application into a simple list format such as a Microsoft Excel sheet or CSV file
• De-dupe: is short for de-duplication. A term commonly used to remove two identical records in a database or list so that it has only unique records left
• Dead Contact: a business contact in a database who is no longer in the same company or job role and thus is not useful as a target contact anymore
• DNC: short for Do Not Call an abbreviation used to mark records or contacts which are not to be contacted again
• Email list bounce rate: a statistic which helps understand out of a total list of emails sent, how many emails bounced or failed to reach the recepient due to a bad email address or some other reasons
• Gatekeeper: usually a term associated with a secretary, admin or administrative assistant who monitors access to a higher level executive
• Geographical Database: a database restricted to a fixed geographical area for example list of printing companies in Atlanta, Georgia
• Opt-in list: list of emails where the receivers have agreed to receive solicitation emails from the sender. List of emails authorized by owners for marketing use
• Primary Contact: the key decision maker within an account who is the main point of contact for all marketing and sales targeted towards that account
• Prospect-List: a list of potential customers or business contacts who are qualified enough to be possible future customers
• Record Status: an attribute assigned to a record to either understand where it stands within the sales or marketing cycle or convey some message about the record
• Reference Contact: not a primary decision maker but an alternative contact within the account a sales person can use to connect with the primary contact
• Supress List: a list of records, names or email addresses which are to be excluded while working on any campaign or email reachout
• SIC Codes: short for Standard Industrial Codes a four digit US government recognized number assigned to businesses to classify them under a set of industries
• Vertical Specific Database: a database of accounts which all belong to a single vertical or industry type such as Financial Investment companies or Furniture Retail companies

Any more that come to mind?