Glossary

10DLC, short for 10-Digit Long Code, is a 10-digit phone number format that needs to be registered and approved by a mobile network operator to support high volume SMS Messaging.

A2P stands for Application-to-Person messaging. These are messages that are sent from an application to a person, for example One Time Passwords, bank alerts or booking confirmations by means of API or Web App.

An acquisition chatbot is designed and explicitly used to acquire new customers or users for a product, service, or organization. These chatbots are a subset of conversational AI applications typically employed in marketing and sales contexts.

Agentic AI is a type of AI that can act autonomously to accomplish tasks. This means that AI agents can make decisions and take actions on their own, and they can even learn from themselves to improve over time.

An AI chatbot is a piece of software that interacts with a human through written language. It is often embedded in web pages or other digital applications to answer customer inquiries without the need for human agents, thus providing affordable effortless customer service.

Bulk SMS is a way to send a large number of text messages to many people at once. It's often used by businesses and organizations to quickly share information, promotions, or alerts with a big group of recipients or customers.

Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions describe SaaS applications that provide the functionality to replicate a traditional, fully-fledged contact center. CCaaS software contains a host of communication features, enabling companies to communicate with customers via one solution.

A CDP or Customer Data Platform is a software that collects customer touchpoints and interactions with your product or service from various channels and sources. It aggregates all this data from multiple sources to create a unified profile of each customer.

Conversational AI (artificial intelligence) technology enables computers to engage in natural-sounding text conversations with customers. When chatbot interactions seem natural, consumers feel like they are having an organic social interaction.

Conversational commerce is the idea of enabling consumers to shop and communicate with brands through messaging channels, voice, and chat. Brands can implement conversational commerce using technology like chatbots, social messaging or virtual assistants.

Conversational Marketing is the practice of engaging in real-time, personalized conversations with potential customers to guide them through the buyer’s journey. It is an effective way to build relationships with customers, understand their needs, and improve their consumer experience.

Cookieless data collection gathers user data and insights without using website cookies (data trackers that contain personal identifiers) either because the user rejects them or because they are not permitted. This method is growing given multiple tracking restrictions and privacy regulations.

CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) is a cloud-based communications platform that integrates SMS, Voice & OTT Chat Apps into your existing software with the use of APIs. As businesses rely more on cloud-based services, CPaaS enables a fully customizable communications infrastructure.

A customer service chatbot can automatically respond to different queries and use connected databases to find the answer to more complex questions. With the right data, the bot can be very personal. It can adapt the answers based on the customer, context, and intent.

Customer service software is the program or platform a business uses to manage its customer service channels. The best customer service software helps brands manage, prioritize, and handle requests and complaints from customers - from any location, at any time, via the customer’s preferred channel.

A digital signature guarantees that an electronic document is authentic. It is an encrypted digital code appended to an electronic document to verify that it was created by a known source and has not been altered.

An electronic signature, also known as an e-signature, is a digital version of the paper-based method of signing signatures. It allows a person to electronically add a signature to a digital contract or document, thereby removing the need for ink and paper.

Within the Mobile Marketing Cloud, you'll find CM.com's Email Campaigns: the perfect tool to create and personalize emails, easily A/B-test those emails and send email campaigns in bulk.

Email marketing is a form of marketing that uses email to send, analyze, and manage personalized and customized marketing campaigns to audiences worldwide. It’s an effective way to engage with target audiences that complements other channels like website and video content.

A FAQ chatbot can be used to automate answers to some of the more common questions your organization may be asked. These types of questions can be a huge drain on your customer service team and often involve repetitive, copy & paste answers that are more easily and efficiently managed by a machine.

First-party data is customer data collected with consent and owned directly by your company (the data controller). It is a valuable source of customer insight in the age of data privacy, as regulations and security measures now make other types of data less secure, accurate, and reliable.

General Admission Ticketing simply refers to the act of allocating tickets for events with no assigned seat or specific area. Often referred to as ‘standing tickets’, event organizers are likely to make use of General Admission Ticketing, mainly thanks to its easy “scan and go” nature.

Geo-redundancy is the practice of replicating and backing up your data, applications, and servers across a number of locations in the real world. Its goal is to spread your risk across multiple or “redundant” points – avoiding any single point of failure.

An internal knowledge base chatbot allows you to hold a vast amount of internal company information in one place. This single source of truth is oftentimes based on the input of your customer-facing chatbot and will be optimized continuously by experts and customer service agents.

IVR or Interactive Voice Response is an automated phone system with call routing capabilities. It answers incoming calls and prompts customers to interact with a pre-recorded message or series of messages, taking them to the appropriate business department based on their response.

A live event chatbot allows customers to get quick answers to their questions before, during, and after a live event. Moreover, it can enhance the experience of your visitors. Offer support, exclusive content, deals, entertainment, or notifications to not miss out on must-sees at the event.

A Long Code or Long Number is a standard-length (10-digits) virtual phone number that can be used by businesses to send and receive SMS and MMS messages, or to make and receive voice calls. They are cheaper to use than short codes.

Marketing automation refers to the use of software and technology to automate and enhance marketing activities, such as email campaigns, SMS campaigns, social media ad campaigns, chatbot conversations, tracking, A/B testing, and more.

Mobile commerce (also known as mcommerce or m-commerce) refers to shopping, banking, or making payments online through mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. Mobile commerce is the new form of ecommerce (electronic commerce), which refers to sales transactions conducted online via the internet.

Mobile marketing applies the principles of marketing with a focus on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Mobile Marketing aims to attract, engage, and communicate with customers via content, campaigns, and managed conversations via email, SMS, MMS, social media, and messaging channels.

CM.com's Mobile Marketing Cloud is an omnichannel customer engagement solution build for B2C marketers. It's the only solution that includes all mobile messaging channels like WhatsApp. This empowers marketers to create superior customer experiences that increase conversion rates and sales.

Omnichannel marketing is the integration and cooperation of the various channels that an organization uses to interact with consumers, with the goal of creating a consistent brand experience and interacting with consumers in a seamless way.

A One Time Password or OTP is a security code designed to be used for a single login attempt or transaction, to minimize the risk of fraudulent attempts and maintain high security. OTP's are more secure than static passwords created by users and their potential reuse across multiple accounts.

Online identification refers to any bit of information associated with a specific individual found on the internet. While online identification is most often connected with entire personal accounts, such as banking profiles, it can consist of any personally identifiable information.

A payment service provider (PSP) refers to a third-party solution that enables businesses to accept a variety of online payment methods by connecting them to the broader financial system. 

Push notifications are brief alerts triggered by an application. They are an effective way to communicate important information to customers. You can still deliver push notifications, even when the customer doesn’t have your app open.

A Qualified Electronic Signature is an e-signature accompanied by a qualified certificate to ensure the highest levels of authenticity & originality. A QES verifies the signer’s identity with a legitimacy level that equals the legal value & effect of a traditional handwritten signature in Europe.

RCS Basic Messages are the simplest form of communication that the RCS solution offers. These messages function as a direct replacement for SMS by allowing users to send and receive plain text messages over an IP-based network, instead of the traditional cellular network used by SMS.

Rich Communication Services (RCS) is a communication protocol designed to enhance traditional SMS and MMS messaging. RCS enables network operators and phone carriers to incorporate richer content, making the messaging experience more similar to other modern messaging platforms.

Safeguard is a suite of software-based features aimed to combat fraud. All features help CM.com customers put restrictions and rules in place for their traffic flow and help recognize and monitor suspicious activity in traffic.

Safeguard Plus is a smarter way to protect your messaging traffic. It's software designed to help combat Artificially Inflated Traffic (AIT) effectively, offering a practical and reliable solution to monitor and protect your messaging traffic.

Seated Ticketing simply refers to the act of allocating tickets for events with an assigned seat, for example, at a football stadium or tennis championship so that spectators have a dedicated place to observe the game. This is opposed to a ‘general admission’ booking.

Client and server-side tracking are two routes to collecting audience data. With client-side tracking, the user’s browser (client) sends data to the tracking platform’s server. Server-side tracking sends the user data to your website server first before being transferred to the tracking platform. 

A short code is a specialized 5 or 6-digit number ideal for marketing campaigns, lead generation, and promotions where you want people to easily remember your number. Short codes are used for sending and receiving SMS (and MMS) messages to mobile phones.

SIM Swap Fraud occurs when fraudsters manage to persuade mobile carriers to transfer the telephone number of a victim to a SIM card in their possession, giving them access to sensitive information such as text messages and phone calls.

SIP trunking is a type of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology that lets businesses make calls over a data connection rather than a traditional phone line.

Smishing, a mash-up of SMS and the more familiar cyber scam of “phishing,” is the practice of sending fraudulent text messages to individuals or businesses. The aim of such messages is to convince the target to click on a malicious link or provide sensitive information.

SMS – Short Message Service – is a long-established messaging service, allowing mobile phones to exchange text messages of up to 160 characters. Any mobile phone, anywhere in the world can send and receive texts with SMS, making it incredibly useful as a marketing and customer service channel. 

An SMS API is a type of API that allows your business to integrate SMS (Short Message Service) messaging into your existing software platforms. SMS APIs enable you to send or receive SMS messages quickly and easily through any website or application.

An SMS Gateway enables you to send text messages to mobile phones all around the world. To integrate this functionality into your application, you (or your developers) should implement communication with a SMS API.

SMS marketing combines the oldest and simplest channels available to any marketer - SMS - with marketing platforms and software to send timely, personalized, and interactive messages and campaigns at scale while staying compliant with privacy legislation.

SMS pumping, or Artificially Inflated Traffic (AIT), exploits automated log-in systems. By triggering sharp spikes in traffic toward premium rate numbers, or to a range of numbers controlled by a specific mobile network operator (MNO), fraudsters receive a share of the revenue generated.

Ticketing is an integrated technology used by event organizers, venues, and promoters. Ticketing provides brands with a centralized platform where they can optimize the online customer experience, and enhance the transaction process; end-to-end.

Time Slots simply refers to the act of allocating dedicated windows of time to a ticketed event. 

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) protects online accounts by imposing two methods of user identification when a log-in is attempted. In addition to the traditional username and password, another piece of evidence – or factor – is required for verification, usually a passcode from a personal device.

Two-Way Messaging is an SMS service that allows businesses to send and receive SMS, to give their customers an easy way to respond. Two-Way SMS can be sent from a short code or long number via a messaging platform with the use of APIs, to communicate with large numbers of customers effectively.

Verification chatbots are a simple and secure way to verify the identity of customers, allowing them to access and update their information online without the need to contact customer service teams directly.

Verified SMS becomes RCS Business Messaging. From October 2022, Google will focus solely on RCS Business Messaging.

Vishing is the fraudulent use of voice messages or phone calls to convince an individual to hand over sensitive information. Often, vishing scams work by fraudsters pretending to be from a reputable organization, and they can involve threatening or forceful language.

A voicebot is a conversational agent that uses artificial intelligence and natural language understanding (NLU) to interpret the intent and meaning in the speech of its conversational partner. We also refer to this technology as 'Conversational IVR'.

Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP is a technology that allows people to make phone calls over the internet, instead of a legacy analog phone line. With VoIP you can make calls using your laptop, tablet, smartphone or VoIP-compatible office phone hardware.

WhatsApp Business Platform allows large and medium sized businesses to engage and communicate with customers at scale via APIs. Engagement can be live or automated, and the APIs can be integrated with numerous back-end systems.

A WhatsApp Chatbot is a computer programme that simulates text-based human conversation via the WhatsApp messaging platform. WhatsApp Chatbots can automatically respond to various customer communications, from customer service to sales, and can be integrated via the WhatsApp Business Platform.

WhatsApp Commerce provides brands with a means of connecting with users and selling their products and services directly to them. It does so by allowing companies to engage in two-way communication between themselves and their customers as a form of conversational commerce.

With the WhatsApp Business Platform you can deliver exceptional customer service in real-time and make sure your customers have all the information that they need in one familiar place, and can ask questions regarding their order whenever they like.

WhatsApp Marketing is the sending of messages from a brand's WhatsApp Business account to a specific audience of customers for promotional purposes. In doing so, it allows businesses to establish a direct line of connection between themselves and potential consumers.

A WISMO, or Where Is My Order, chatbot is designed to assist customers in tracking the status and location of their orders. These chatbots are commonly used in eCommerce and logistics industries to provide real-time updates to customers regarding the delivery progress of their purchased items.