Glossary

The words behind local lead generation.

44 terms from finding businesses, finding and checking their emails, and sending to them, each explained in plain English with an example.

Lead generation

B2B lead generation
B2B lead generation is finding businesses that might buy your product or service, and starting conversations with the people who decide.
Cold email
Cold email is a one-to-one business email to someone you have no prior relationship with, sent to start a conversation about a specific offer.
Data decay
Data decay is the steady loss of accuracy in a lead list as people change jobs, businesses close or move, and email addresses stop working.
Email finder
An email finder is a tool that finds email addresses for a business or person, from websites, databases or pattern guesses, usually with verification.
Firmographics
Firmographics are descriptive facts about a business, such as industry, location, size and age, used to segment and qualify B2B leads.
Ideal customer profile
An ideal customer profile (ICP) describes the kind of business that gets the most value from your offer and is most likely to buy it.
Lead enrichment
Lead enrichment is adding missing data to a lead, such as emails, social links, categories or ratings, so it can be qualified and contacted.
Lead list
A lead list is a set of businesses or people you plan to contact, with the fields needed to qualify them and reach them, such as email and phone.
Lead scoring
Lead scoring is ranking leads by how likely they are to buy, using points for fit and behavior, so you contact the best ones first.
Local lead generation
Local lead generation is finding and contacting businesses in a specific place, such as every dentist in a county, usually starting from Google Maps.
NAICS code
A NAICS code is a 2- to 6-digit number from the North American Industry Classification System that identifies a business's industry.
SIC code
A SIC code is a 4-digit Standard Industrial Classification number for a business's industry, an older US system largely replaced by NAICS.
Total addressable market
Total addressable market (TAM) is the total number of potential customers for an offer, or the revenue they represent, in the markets you can serve.

Google Maps & local data

Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is the free listing that shows a business on Google Search and Maps, with its categories, hours, phone, website and reviews.
Google Maps categories
Google Maps categories are the fixed labels businesses choose to describe what they do, such as "Plumber" or "Dental clinic," one primary plus extras.
Google Maps scraping
Google Maps scraping is automatically collecting business listing data, such as names, phones, websites and ratings, from Google Maps search results.
Google Place ID
A Google Place ID is a text identifier that uniquely identifies a place in Google's Places database, used to dedupe and look up listings.
Google Places API
The Google Places API is Google's official, paid API for searching places and getting details like name, address, phone, website, hours and ratings.
Grid search
Grid search (tiling) splits an area into small tiles and searches each one, to get past the result limits of a single Google Maps search.
Polygon search
A polygon search finds businesses inside a shape you draw on a map, instead of a city name or a radius, so the results match your exact territory.

Email & deliverability

Bounce rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of sent emails that were returned as undeliverable; for cold email, under 2% is a sensible target.
Catch-all email
A catch-all email is an address on a domain whose mail server accepts mail for any address, so a verifier can't confirm the mailbox really exists.
DKIM
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is a cryptographic signature added to email so receivers can verify which domain sent it and that it wasn't altered.
DMARC
DMARC is a DNS policy that tells receivers what to do with mail that fails SPF and DKIM alignment for your domain, and where to send reports.
Email deliverability
Email deliverability is the ability of your emails to reach recipients' inboxes rather than bouncing or landing in spam.
Email permutation
An email permutation is a guessed address built from a name and domain using common patterns, such as first@, first.last@ or flast@.
Email verification
Email verification is checking whether an address can receive mail, using syntax, MX and SMTP tests, without sending a message to it.
Email warm-up
Email warm-up is gradually increasing the volume sent from a new domain or mailbox so mailbox providers learn to trust it before full campaigns.
Hard bounce
A hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure, such as an address that doesn't exist, returned with an SMTP reply code starting with 5.
Role-based email
A role-based email is an address for a function rather than a person, such as info@, office@ or sales@, often read by several people.
Sender reputation
Sender reputation is the trust mailbox providers place in your sending domain and IP, built from complaints, bounces, authentication and engagement.
Soft bounce
A soft bounce is a temporary delivery failure, such as a full mailbox or busy server, returned with an SMTP reply code starting with 4.
Spam trap
A spam trap is an email address used to catch senders with poor list practices; mail to one can damage your sender reputation or get you blocklisted.
SPF
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a DNS record that lists which servers are allowed to send email for a domain, so receivers can spot forgeries.

Compliance

CAN-SPAM Act
The CAN-SPAM Act is the US law for commercial email; it allows cold email without consent but requires honest headers, an address and a working opt-out.
CASL
CASL is Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, which requires consent before most commercial emails, including implied consent for published business addresses.
GDPR legitimate interest
GDPR legitimate interest is a lawful basis for processing personal data without consent, which can cover B2B direct marketing after a balancing test.
Suppression list
A suppression list is a list of addresses or domains you must never email again, such as opt-outs, hard bounces and complaints, checked before every send.

Technical

Deduplication
Deduplication is finding and merging records that describe the same business or person, so each appears once in a list.
KML file
A KML file is an XML file that stores map shapes, points and lines, used by Google Earth and GIS tools to share areas like sales territories.
Model Context Protocol
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT connect to external tools and data sources.
MX record
An MX record is a DNS record that names the mail servers accepting email for a domain, with a priority number for each server.
SMTP
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard, defined in RFC 5321, that mail servers use to send and relay email to each other.
Webhook
A webhook is an HTTP request one app sends to a URL you choose when something happens, so other systems can react without polling.

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