Financial Marketing Glossary

In the spirit of Financial Literacy Month, RG’s own Bently Elliott, Operations Manager, has compiled the following terms to create a comprehensive Financial Marketing Glossary.

Our agency’s history is rooted in the FinServ and FinTech industries, so we are abreast of the density of jargon that exists within that sector.

And, as marketers, we think it’s fair to say that we’ve all participated in conversations similar to what’s illustrated below:

Pairing both industries together makes for a hearty “acronym soup”, so we hope this Financial Marketing Acronym Field Guide (FMAFG), makes your future conversations a little easier to digest. 😉

General Finance and Marketing Terms

AAU (Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage): Studies of awareness, attitudes, and usage (AAU) enable marketers to quantify levels and trends in customer knowledge, perceptions, beliefs, intentions, and behaviors.

ABM (Account Based Marketing): A strategic approach to business marketing based on account awareness in which an organization considers and communicates with individual prospects or customer accounts as markets of one. Account-based marketing is typically employed in enterprise-level sales organizations.

A/B Testing: A method of testing two different versions of an ad or landing page to determine which performs better.

Affiliate Marketing: A type of marketing where a business rewards affiliates for driving traffic or sales to their website.

AGM (Annual General Meeting): a meeting of the general membership of an organization.

AI (Accredited Investor): an individual or business entity that is allowed to trade securities that may not be registered with financial authorities

AOR (Agency of Record): An agency of record in advertising and marketing is an agency that is authorized to purchase advertising time or space on behalf of the company with which they have an agency contract.

Asset: Something that has economic value and can be owned or controlled to produce positive economic value.

Asset allocation: The process of dividing an investment portfolio among different asset classes, such as stocks, bonds, and cash.

AUM  (Assets Under Management): the total market value of the investments that a person or entity manages on behalf of clients.

Bond: A debt security that pays periodic interest payments and returns the principal amount at maturity.

Bond rating: A rating assigned to a bond based on its creditworthiness and likelihood of default.

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): measures how much an organization spends to acquire new customers. CAC – an important business metric – is the total cost of sales and marketing efforts, as well as property or equipment, needed to convince a customer to buy a product or service.

Capital: The amount of money or assets available to a business for investment or expansion.

Cash flow: The movement of cash in and out of a business or personal finances.

CLV, or Customer lifetime value (CLV, or CLTV): A metric that indicates the total revenue a business can reasonably expect from a single customer account throughout the business relationship. The metric considers a customer’s revenue value and compares that number to the company’s predicted customer lifespan.

CMS  (Content Management System): CMS is computer software or an application that uses a database to manage all content, and it can be used when developing a website. i.e. Webflow or WordPress.

Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.

CPA (Cost per Acquisition): The cost to acquire a new customer or lead through advertising or other marketing efforts.

CPA (Cost per Action): A metric used to measure the cost to drive a specific action, such as a form submission or a purchase.

CPC (Cost per Click): A type of online advertising pricing model where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on their ad.

CPL (Cost per Lead): The cost to acquire a new lead through advertising or other marketing efforts.

CPM (Cost per thousand impressions): The cost to show an ad to 1,000 viewers.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management): It refers to a technology system or strategy that companies use to manage their interactions with current and potential customers. i.e. Salesforce.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML. CSS is a cornerstone technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and JavaScript.

CTR (Click-through rate): The ratio of clicks to impressions on an ad or link, usually expressed as a percentage.

Debt: An amount of money owed to another party, typically with interest.

Derivative: A financial instrument whose value is based on the performance of an underlying asset, such as a stock or commodity.

Display Advertising: A form of advertising where ads are shown on websites or other digital platforms.

Diversification: The practice of spreading investments across different asset classes to reduce risk.

Dividend: A payment made by a company to its shareholders, typically in the form of cash or additional shares.

DSP (Demand Side Platform): A technology platform that enables advertisers to purchase digital advertising inventory in an automated, real-time bidding process.

ECPM (Effective cost per thousand impressions): A metric used to measure the cost of showing an ad to 1,000 viewers, taking into account the ad’s click-through rate.

Equity: The ownership interest in a company, represented by shares of stock.

ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance): metrics related to intangible assets within the enterprise, a form of corporate social credit score. Research shows that intangible assets comprise an increasing percentage of future enterprise value.

ETF (Exchange Traded Fund): A type of pooled investment security that operates much like a mutual fund.  Typically, ETFs will track a particular index, sector, commodity, or other asset, but unlike mutual funds, ETFs can be purchased or sold on a stock exchange the same way that a regular stock can.

Futures contract: A standardized agreement to buy or sell an asset at a specific price on a future date.

Hedge fund: An investment fund that uses advanced investment strategies and techniques to generate returns.

HENRYs – High Earners Not Rich Yet

ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): A description of the ideal characteristics and attributes of a company’s target customer. 

Interest: The cost of borrowing money, usually expressed as a percentage of the borrowed amount.

Investment: The purchase of an asset with the expectation of generating a return or profit.

KPI (Key Performance Indicator): A metric used to measure the success of a marketing campaign or strategy.

Lead Generation: The process of generating interest in a product or service in order to acquire new customers or clients.

Liability: A financial obligation or debt owed to another party.

LP (Limited Partnership): Defined as having limited partners and a general partner, which has unlimited liability. LPs are pass-through entities that offer little to no reporting requirements. There are three types of partnerships: limited partnership, general partnership, and limited liability partnership.

LTV (Lifetime Value): The amount of revenue a customer is expected to generate over their lifetime with a business.

M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions): The process of combining two or more companies into a single entity or acquiring one company from another.

MaaS (Marketing as a Service): A business model where companies outsource their marketing activities to a third-party service provider. Also, one of the unique ways RG supports our clients.

MAS/MAP (Marketing Automation Software/Marketing Automation Platform): Technology that is used to help marketers capture new customers, improve marketing efficiency, and analyze lead behavior and campaign performance. i.e. HubSpot and Marketo.

MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead): A  person who has indicated an interest in what a brand has to offer based on marketing efforts or is otherwise more likely to become a customer than other leads.

Mutual fund: An investment vehicle that pools money from multiple investors to purchase a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, or other securities.

Native Advertising: A type of advertising that is designed to look like the content around it, in order to blend in and not appear intrusive.

Net worth: The value of an individual’s assets minus their liabilities.

Option: A contract that gives the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a specific price.

PII (Personally Identifiable Information): Data that could potentially identify a specific individual – name, address, email, cc, ss, etc.

Portfolio: A collection of investments owned by an individual or organization.

PPC (Pay-per-click): A type of advertising where the advertiser pays each time a user clicks on their ad.

Programmatic Advertising: A form of advertising where software is used to automate the buying and selling of ads, in order to make the process more efficient.

Retargeting: A form of advertising where ads are shown to users who have already shown interest in a product or service, in order to encourage them to make a purchase.

RIA (Registered Investment Advisor): a person or firm who advises high-net-worth individuals on investments and manages their portfolios. As the first word of their title indicates, RIAs are required to register either with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or state securities administrators.

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): A metric used to measure the revenue generated by an advertising campaign compared to the cost of the campaign.

ROI (Return on Investment): A metric used to measure the profit or loss generated from an investment compared to its cost.

SaaS (Software as a Service): Cloud-based software delivery model in which software applications are hosted by third-party service providers and made available to customers over the internet.

SDR (Sales Development Representative): an individual who focuses on prospecting, moving, and qualifying leads through the sales pipeline and then delivers those leads to individuals who are responsible for closing sales.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing): A type of marketing where businesses use paid search ads to appear at the top of search engine results pages.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The process of optimizing a website to appear at the top of search engine results pages organically.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page): The page that a search engine displays after a user enters a keyword or query.

SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit): when dealing with inventory management, it’s a distinct type of item for sale, purchased or tracked in inventory such as a product or service, and all attributes associated with the item type that distinguish it from other item types.

SMB (Small & Midsize Business): Refers to businesses that have a relatively small number of employees and generate lower levels of revenue than larger corporations.

SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company): A “blank check company”, is a shell corporation listed on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring a private company, thus making it public without going through the traditional initial public offering process.

Stock: A type of security that represents ownership in a company.

SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats): An analysis conducted in relation to business competition or project planning

UI (User Interface): Refers to the screens, buttons, toggles, icons, and other visual elements that you interact with when using a website, app, or other electronic device.

UTM (Urchin Tracking Module): A simple code that can be attached to any URL to generate Google Analytics data for digital campaigns.

UX (“User experience”): Encompasses all aspects of the end-users’ interactions with the company, its services, and its products.

WOM (Word-of-mouth marketing (or WOM marketing): When a consumer’s interest in a company’s product or service is reflected in their daily dialogues. Essentially, it is free advertising triggered by customer experiences—and usually, something that goes beyond what they expected.

To stay up to date on financial marketing trends and strategies, subscribe to our quarterly newsletter, Brain Candy.