
Spend quality time with marketers and the flying acronyms can be difficult to navigate. Whether new, trendy, well-known or obscure, we’ve gathered a few of our favorites below.
BRB
Be Right Back—Remember this classic from the days of AIM and Messenger? Gone for a minute or the rest of the evening, this was the go-to for announcing your departure from the conversation.
CMS
Content Management System—A web application designed to make it easy for non-technical users to create, edit and manage a website. Helps users with content editing and more "behind-the-scenes" work like making content searchable and indexable, automatically generating navigation elements, keeping track of users and permissions and more.
COS
Content Optimization System—Take a CMS, and optimize it to deliver customers the most personalized web experience possible.
CRM
Customer Relationship Management—System that lets companies keep track of everything they do with their existing and potential customers.
CRO
Conversion Rate Optimization—This process helps ensure your digital marketing efforts are effective as possible by taking a company’s goal (which is usually sales) and determining if areas on a website or other digital asset (like email) are best positioned to accomplish that goal.
CTA
Call-to-Action—Messaging that provokes the audience to react in a specific and defined way. It often uses imperative verbs.
CTR
Click Through Rate—One that every marketer should cherish, especially if they manage a lot of campaigns. CTR shows the percentage of people who click on your content after seeing it—a ratio between those who clicked and those who saw it and didn’t interact further.
FOMO
Fear Of Missing Out—That feeling in the pit of your stomach that screams you’ve made the wrong choice, or that voice in your head that tells you to check social media again before committing to evening plans. But it’s not all bad—research shows a little FOMO might be just enough to get us out the door.
HMU
Hit Me Up!—As in, "HMU for coffee tomorrow morning."
IMO
In My Opinion—It might be an opinion, but this is often used to preface an idea that hasn’t been fully vetted. “IMO this ad campaign should totally work.” Yeah, ask to see the data behind a decision if this one pops up.
KPI
Key Performance Indicator—One of the most essential statistics, KPI is a measure used for appraising performance and evaluating success. By picking some KPIs, you can set reachable goals and report your performance as well as make some improvements and corrections.
MQL
Marketing Qualified Lead—A lead who has indicated interest in what a brand has to offer based on that brand’s marketing efforts.
NPS
Net Promoter Score—A simple index ranging from 0 to 10 used to measure how willing a customer is to recommend your products. It's a relatively easy way to estimate the overall satisfaction of customers and a base to improve customer service and loyalty.
NSFW
Not Safe For Work—This kind of content is regarded as inappropriate to be displayed publicly (e.g. in the workplace), such as explicit language, nudity or violence.
ROX
Return On Experience—The metric with which marketers measure across the company to find correlations that have decisive influence on the purchase experience of their consumers and employees.
SAL
Sales Accepted Lead—These are marketing qualified leads (MQLs) that have met certain agreed-upon criteria and are passed along to the sales team where they will be acted upon within a predetermined time frame.
SEM
Search Engine Marketing—Another type of marketing in which increasing the visibility in search engine results pages matters the most. To achieve success with this kind of website promotion, your activities should be based on mainly paid advertising.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization—Techniques that help your website rank higher in organic search results, making your website more visible to people who are looking for your brand, product or service via search engines.
SLA
Service Level Agreement—An agreement between a company's sales and marketing teams that defines the expectations sales has for marketing and vice versa.
SMH
Shaking My Head—It’s like the HTML version of the face-palm emoji, basically. Think Liz Lemon’s eye roll for another visual.

UI
User Interface Design—This simply means “designing the most useful interface”, and it’s about focusing on maximizing the usability of a product, website, computer, mobile or electronic devices, for any end-user.
USG
User-Generated Content—Content (such as video, blogs, discussion form posts, digital images, audio files, etc.) that is created by your consumers or the end-user of your product and/or service, and is publicly available to anyone interested in a seemingly objective take on what you offer.
UX
User Experience Design—This is about keeping your customer satisfied while using and interacting with your product and its constant improvements of usability and features.
WOM
Word Of Mouth—The influence your consumers have on current and potential buyers of your product and/or service. The most powerful type of marketing, you’ll be wise to remember you want to contribute to the conversation more than hijack it.
What favorite acronym of yours are we missing? Tell us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.