Glossary
Glossary of people search and outreach terms
This glossary defines the terms you meet when you look for people and try to reach them, each in plain words with an example and a link to a practical guide.
By Invenitor team. Updated .
- Catch-all addressA catch-all domain is a mail setup that accepts messages sent to any address at that domain, even an address that does not exist.
- Cold email bounce rateCold email bounce rate is the share of emails you sent to strangers that could not be delivered, and Hunter describes staying under 2% as a widely adopted benchmark.
- ConsentConsent means a person has clearly agreed to be contacted for a stated purpose, and having their email or phone number is not the same thing.
- Contact enrichmentContact enrichment is adding missing details, such as an email, a phone number or a current role, to a person you already have on your list.
- CreditA credit is the unit many contact tools charge in, and its value differs between tools because each one decides what a credit buys.
- Data decayData decay is the way a contact list goes out of date over time as people change roles, change companies and close old mailboxes.
- Data fiduciaryUnder India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, a data fiduciary is the person or company that decides why and how personal data is used.
- Decision makerA decision maker is the person at an organisation who can say yes to your proposal and approve the money or time it needs.
- Email verificationEmail verification is using a tool to test whether an address can receive mail, without sending a real message to it.
- Found-only billingFound-only billing means you pay for a contact only when the tool returns an email or phone, and pay nothing when it comes back empty.
- GatekeeperA gatekeeper is a person who controls access to someone else, such as an executive assistant, a front desk or a shared inbox owner.
- Hard bounceA hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure, which usually means the address does not exist or the receiving system will never accept your mail.
- MCP (Model Context Protocol)MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is an open-source standard for connecting AI applications such as Claude or ChatGPT to external tools and data.
- Opt-outAn opt-out is a person telling you to stop contacting them, and you should honour it every time, across every tool you use.
- People searchPeople search is finding real people by describing who they are, such as their role, field and place, rather than looking up a name you already know.
- People search APIA people search API lets your code find people from a description or filters and get the results back as structured data.
- REST APIA REST API is a way for your own code to send a request to a service over the web and get a structured answer back, usually as JSON.
- Soft bounceA soft bounce is a temporary delivery failure, such as a full mailbox or a busy server, where the address itself may still be fine.
- Spam rateSpam rate is the share of your delivered mail that recipients mark as spam, and Google asks senders to stay below 0.10% and never reach 0.30%.
- SPF, DKIM and DMARCSPF, DKIM and DMARC are settings on your domain that help mailbox providers confirm a message really came from you.
- Warm introductionA warm introduction is when someone who knows both of you connects you, so the person hears about you from someone they already trust.
- Waterfall enrichmentWaterfall enrichment means asking several data providers in order, one after another, until one of them returns the email or phone you asked for.