Glossary

10DLC

10-Digit Long Code. 10DLC numbers are the traditional long-code phone number for both voice and messaging. 10DLC is a sanctioned A2P messaging channel in the U.S., but is not fully sanctioned in Canada yet.

A2P

Application-to-Person. A2P messaging is any kind of traffic in which a person receives messages from a business rather than an individual. There are 2 types of A2P messaging that Ascent360 supports: Informational and Promotional.

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.

Audit

A carrier consent audit is an investigation of a messaging campaign where a downstream peer or carrier requests a message sender to provide proof that opt-in was collected for a set of receiving phone numbers.

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.

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.

Carrier

Carriers are cellular providers that create and maintain the telecommunications infrastructure. Carriers impose requirements on senders and traffic in order to remain compliant. Examples of carriers are AT&T, Verizon, and Bell

CASL

Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation.

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.

Consent

Senders are required to obtain explicit consent prior to messaging individuals. Read more about consent in SMS - Ascent360's Guide to Texting Compliance

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.

CTA

Call to Action. Language inviting an individual to opt-in to receive text messages from your business.

CTIA

Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. The CTIA is is a trade organization comprised of wireless carriers that standardizes and publishes guidelines related to message sending. They also perform audits on the behalf of carriers.

Custom Analytics

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

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.

ETL

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

FCC

Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is a US federal agency that regulates interstate communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable.

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."

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.

GSM-7

GSM-7 is a character coding standard used for SMS messages that can use up to 160 characters per segment. Generally, it includes non-special alphanumeric characters.

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Ascent360 uses HTTP to send messages on behalf of senders.

Integration Partners

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

Keyword

Keywords are case-insensitive words that, when received inbound to Ascent360, trigger a specific response. Examples include: START, STOP, HELP.

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."

Long Code

A long code is a phone number which is typically a 10-digit number used to exchange SMS & MMS communication. Toll-free numbers in the form of 1-8YY also fall under messaging long codes.

LTGID

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

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.

Mini-TCPA

Florida's telemarketing rules which are a stricter version of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Florida's statute puts tighter boundaries on the rules set forth by the federal TCPA.

MMS

Multimedia Messaging Service. MMS is the media version of a Short Messaging Service (SMS) text. MMS includes any messages sent with a gif, image, video, or audio clip over a traditional cellular network. MMS has a much longer character limit at 1,600 characters per segment.

NANP

North American Numbering Plan. NANP is the telephone numbering plan for the PSTN World Zone 1 (20 countries in North America and the Caribbean, excluding Mexico, Cuba, and Haiti). NANP assigns 792 usable prefixes to every area code, and 10,000 telephone numbers to every prefix, which means that every area code has 7.92 million phone numbers. Still, phone numbers are a finite resource and eventually become exhausted as numbers are used.

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.

OTT

Over-the-Top. OTT apps and services use the internet for their communication rather than networks of traditional wireless carriers. Examples include WhatsApp and Telegram. Ascent360's messaging is not OTT.

P2P

Person-to-person messaging. This is when 2 or more people communicate over text messaging. Ascent360 does not handle P2P traffic; the US and Canada do not consider any application-facilitated traffic to be P2P.

Porting

Transferring a number from one service provider to another.

POS

Point of Sale System.

Quintiles

Dividing data by revenue into 5 equal groups or quintiles.

RCS

Rich Communication Services messaging. RCS is the future of texting by combining the best features of SMS, MMS, and OTT to create a new standard that delivers those services within a single experience you can use on your existing mobile client. RCS is not yet universally supported, but is gaining adoption across phone and messaging providers.

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).

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.

SHAFT

Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco. Using terms related to SHAFT or anything illegal will cause a messages to be heavily filtered by downstream wireless carriers or blocked altogether. Carriers can also impose fines on senders for sending SHAFT-related content.

SMS

Short Messaging Service. This messaging only supports alphanumeric text and emojis.

SNOWSHOEING

Snowshoeing involves sending similar messages across multiple numbers. As this technique is commonly used by spammers and causes messages to be blocked, it should not be done.

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.

TCPA

Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The TCPA is the federal regulation that restricts telemarketing calls and messages.

Toll-Free Number

Toll-free numbers are a type of sending number consisting of 10-digits and starting with an eight. Toll-free numbers first need to be verified prior to sending.