Glossary

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A

Address Correction

The process of reviewing and correcting addresses from source data and re-formatting them into standard formats with complete data components such as city, state and ZIP code.

Aggregated Variables

Derived fields based on fields coming from a customer's source system.

Aggregation

The process of calculating and generating Key Performance Indicators, or "Aggregates."

API

Application Programming Interface. This is the data collection method primarily used by Ascent360 to extract data from vendor systems.

Ascent360ID

The unique identifier for individuals in an Ascent360 database. Also referred to as "LTGID"

Audience Selector

Ascent360 tool used to segment a customer database based on shared attributes from a source system.

B

Behavior Based Marketing

Automate behavior-based marketing = set up automatic triggers based on past behaviors to "Use your CDP to drive the mosst value from your online ads."

Behavioral

Data used to describe how individuals in the database interact with your products and services. This data is typically derived from transactions, email engagement, and website engagement.

Business Intelligence

industry standard term for reporting and analytics tools. Our current BI tool is YellowFin, a third party BI application.

C

Campaign

1. A group of individuals created with the Campaign Manager tool
2. Another term for "Source Name" in some areas of Ascent360

Campaign Manager

Ascent360 tool that allows for creation of complex queries through combined audiences.

CDP

Customer Data Platform. Allows for leveraging of data from one or more source systems to create authentic customer interactions.

Client View

The internal name for a client’s virtual CDP database. It is a single view (like a table) that contains all the updated customer contact, aggregate, transaction, and source data.

Cloud-Based

The Ascent360 Portal can be accessed through any device with an internet browser.

CNAME

Canonical Name. CNAME records create an alias for your sending domain to point to the email server. It creates the signature on your emails for ISPs to recognize you and also allows open and click events to be recorded.

CPM

Cost Per Mille, or Cost per Thousand Impressions. CPM refers to the advertising cost of marketing per one thousand impressions.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management system. A CRM is a technology to help manage relationships with customers and prospects.

Custom Analytics

in AS360 and our BI data we enable customer calculations of transaction data.

D

Data Management

processes or data services that identify data problems and suggest correction actions. For example, highlight products sold for which there is not data the provides the department roll-up values.

Data Warehouse

Consolidates and centralizes data from one or more sources to allow for extracting, transforming, and loading processes.

Demographic

Data used to describe certain attributes of individiuals like age, income, presence of children, etc.

Demographic Append / Acxiom Data

Acxiom is the largest demographic data provider in the US and our source for personal (customer) descriptive data, such as age, income, number of children, etc.

DNS Records

Domain Name System records are used to associate and IP address to the human-readable web address.

E

ETL

Extract, Transform, Load. The data integration process that combines data from one or more sources to be loaded into a data warehouse.

F

FTP

File Transfer Protocol. FTP is an alternative process that Ascent360 uses to capture data from vendor systems.

Fuzzy Logic

Method of customer matching that involves techniques that do not rely on exact matches. For example, Ascent360 can match names phonemically, like "Smith" and "Smyth."

G

Geographic

Location-related data to be used for segmentation and heat map analysis.

Grain

defines the primary key of a dataset. This is the columns in the dataset who’s values define a unique record. For example, the grain of the client view is client id, customer id, transaction id, line item id, and update date.

I

Integration Partners

The vendors that our clients use for their POS, CRM, and other source systems.

L

List Source Date

This is a meta-data field which is present in every row of every clients' CDP. This field shows the date the data was acquired. For a transaction, this field will have the same value as a transaction date. For a lodging reservation, this field will have the same value as the reservation date. For a form submit, this field will be the date the form was submitted.

Location

This is a meta-data field which is present in every row of every clients' CDP. This field typically represents a physical location, whether that's a retail store location or a mountain at a ski resort. The default location for E-Commerce data is "Main Office."

LTGID

This is the unique identifier for individuals in an Ascent360 database.

M

Matching

The process of matching customer data to existing customers based on shared data points.

Metadata

Data about data. This is reference data that is used internally at Ascent360.

N

NCOA

National Change of Address. The service we use to update customer addresses who have submitted a move request from one address to another.

NPS

Net Promoter Score. NPS is a 10-point "Likeliehood to Recommend" scale that gauges customer loyalty and satisfaction.

P

POS

Point of Sale System.

Q

Quintiles

Dividing data by revenue into 5 equal groups or quintiles.

R

Refresh Intervals

Describes how frequently data is updated.

RFM

Recency, Frequency, Monetary. RFM is a tool to help compare customers against one another in the areas of how recently a customer purchased (R), how frequently a customer purchases (F), and how much money a customer has spent (M).

S

SAAS

Software as a Service. Enables users to use Ascent360 through a web browser without the need of a software download.

Scope

Related to a dataset, scope defines parameters around the dataset that limits the data. For example, scope may be set for a single client and include all customers and all of their transactions.

Segmentation

Demographic: data used for segmentation that is descriptive about the customer e.g., age, income range, presence of children, etc. Behavioral: data used for segmentation that describes how customers behaved. Typically these are derived from transactions, email actions, web site actions, and other actions. Aggregates are included. Geographic: data used for segmentation that can determine distances between two places (e.g., the customer's primary address and a store or ski resort). Can also be used for heat map analysis.

Source Name

Also referred to as "Campaign", this is a meta-data field which is present in every row of every clients' CDP. Source Name/Campaign must begin with a year (in YY, YYYY, YY/YY or YYYY/YYYY format) and is the most granular of the meta-data fields. Typical values are "YY Transactions", "YY Email Signup", and "YY Lift Scans" See article on source data to learn more.

Source Type

Sometimes referred to as "Source", this is a meta-data field which is present in every row of every clients' CDP. This field typically displays the type of system the data is coming from. Common values for this field are things like "Contests","RTP","Siriusware" and "Springer Miller"

Standard Analytics

in AS360 we have a set of standard Aggregate fields that we can think of as Standard Analytics – those “out of the box” . These include life-time spend, RFM, and other measures.