Glossary
Every EmailFig term in one place, from list and segment to tag, suppression and BYOS account.
Words EmailFig uses in a specific way, in plain terms and in alphabetical order. Where a term has its own article, the link takes you there.
Auto-upgrade: the setting that moves you up a pricing tier automatically when your contact count grows past the one you’re on, so your next send isn’t blocked. On by default. More
Automation: an email sequence that runs on its own. Something a contact does enrols them, then a series of steps runs for that contact: send an email, wait, add or remove a tag, or branch on a condition. A contact goes through a given automation once, ever. More
Bounce: a delivery failure reported back by the receiving mail server. A hard bounce is permanent (the address doesn’t exist) and suppresses that address across the whole platform. A soft bounce is temporary (full mailbox, server down); repeated soft bounces eventually clean the contact. More
BYOS is “bring your own SES”: a plan family where EmailFig sends through your Amazon SES account instead of ours. Fixed at signup. More
Campaign: one email sent once to a chosen audience. Built in a four-step builder (Setup, Template, Content, Review) and, after it sends, its own report. More
Cleaned is a contact status meaning “removed from sending because the address doesn’t work”: a hard bounce, repeated soft bounces, or an address our import hygiene checks rejected. Distinct from unsubscribed, which is a choice the recipient made. More
Complaint: a recipient pressing “report spam” in their mail client. It unsubscribes them from your account immediately and counts against your sending health.
Contact: one person in your audience, identified by email address and unique within your account. A contact belongs to your account, not to a list.
Custom field: an extra piece of data you store on every contact (text, number, date or true/false) usable as a merge tag. More
DKIM: a cryptographic signature on your outgoing mail that proves it really came from your domain. Published as one TXT record we generate for you. More
DMARC: a policy record at your domain telling mailbox providers what to do with mail that fails authentication. We check that a valid one exists and never ask you to weaken an existing policy.
Double opt-in is a list setting: people who join through a signup form must click a confirmation link before they’re subscribed. It’s a property of the list, not of the form. More
Drag & drop editor is one of two ways to build an email: a visual block editor. The other is the HTML editor. More
Draft: a campaign that hasn’t been committed to send yet. The only status you can still edit in. More
Embed: a signup form that lives inside your own website, as opposed to a landing page we host. A form’s kind is fixed when you create it. More
Engagement: opens and clicks. Engagement-based segment rules look back at most 90 days. More
Gallery: the built-in library of ready-made email templates. Using one makes an editable copy in your account; later changes to the gallery never touch your copy. More
Grow: the sidebar section holding your signup forms and landing pages.
In review: a campaign or automation status meaning a person is looking at it before it sends. It hasn’t failed, and it blocks other sends on the account until it clears. More
Landing page: a full page we host for you at its own address, used to collect signups. The other form kind is an embed. More
List: a group of contacts you send to. Campaigns target lists; tags and segments don’t replace them. More
MAIL FROM: a subdomain of your sending domain that carries the technical return address for your mail, so bounces come back to your domain rather than a shared one. It needs an MX and an SPF record. More
Merge tag: a placeholder in your email replaced per recipient at send time, like {{ contact.first_name }}. Two of them are compulsory in every email: {{ unsubscribe_url }} and {{ account.physical_address }}. More
Orchard: the name of EmailFig’s paid plan for platform sending. Priced by contact count. More
Pending: for a contact, a double opt-in signup that hasn’t been confirmed yet; they aren’t sent to until they confirm. For a sending domain, DNS records we haven’t seen yet.
Preference center is the alternative to a one-click unsubscribe: recipients pick which of your topics they want instead of leaving entirely. Set at Settings → Unsubscribes. More
Preview text: the short line of text shown after the subject in an inbox list. Also called a preheader.
Recipe: a ready-made automation you can start from instead of building one step by step. More
Recipient: one contact’s copy of one send. A campaign’s report counts recipients; your audience counts contacts.
Segment: a saved rule that matches contacts dynamically, by status, list, tag, signup date or engagement. Nothing is stored in a segment; the rules are re-run every time it’s used. More
Sending domain: a domain you own and have proved you own, that your campaigns send from. Real campaign sending requires at least one verified one. More
SES sandbox: an Amazon SES restriction on new AWS accounts that only allows delivery to addresses you’ve verified yourself. BYOS accounts only; you lift it by asking AWS. More
SPF: a DNS record listing who is allowed to send mail for a domain. Ours lives on your MAIL FROM subdomain, never at your root domain.
Sprout is the free plan: 4,000 contacts, every feature, and a “Powered by EmailFig” line on your hosted signup, unsubscribe and preference pages. More
Suppression: a record that an address must never be emailed, whatever else says otherwise. Unsubscribes, complaints and bounces all create one, and re-importing the address doesn’t clear it. Hard bounces suppress platform-wide. More
Tag: a label you put on contacts. Tags don’t send; they help you filter contacts. More
Template: a reusable email design saved in your account. Applying one to a campaign copies its content into that campaign, which you then edit independently. More
Test send: a single copy of a campaign or template sent to yourself. It can only go to a confirmed member of your account or an address at one of your verified sending domains. More
Tracking link: a link in your email rewritten so clicks can be counted. Platform accounts get a tracking host unique to their account; BYOS accounts use Amazon’s default.
Unsubscribed: a contact status meaning the person opted out. Only they can undo it: an operator can’t resubscribe someone on their behalf. More
Verified: a sending domain whose required DNS records we’ve confirmed. Only a verified domain can send campaigns, and a domain can go back to pending if its DNS changes. More
View in browser: the {{ webview_url }} merge tag, which renders a hosted copy of the email for recipients whose mail client mangles it.