Ever wondered what those weird phrases and technical jargon meant? Anytime you are unsure, just visit our glossary of terms! If it’s not listed and you don’t know what it means, email us at marketing@hallmarkconsumer.co.uk & we will answer you and upload it on this page!
B2B: Business to business-businesses whose customers are other businesses.
B2C: Business to consumer- businesses whose customers are consumers or the public.
Fulfilment: the act or process of taking/receiving an order (via telephone, email or post), picking, packing it and making it ready for delivery to the end customer.
Payment gateway: a payment gateway is an ecommerce application service provider service that authorises payments for online retailers. It is the equivalent of a physical point of sale terminal located in a retail outlet. Payment gateways protect credit card details by encrypting sensitive information, such as credit card numbers to ensure that information is passed securely between the customer and the merchant and also between merchant and the payment processor.
Authorisation process: verifies that the information given by the customer is correct and then allows (or does not allow) payment to be sent to the merchant so that the transaction can be completed.
Pick locations: A pick location is a numbered storage location on the racking in our warehouse where we will store a particular product. Each different product has a different location; although these are where the products are stored, we pick the orders from these locations, hence the name.
E-Commerce: selling products online; “Electronic Commerce”
E-Fulfilment: as with “Fulfilment” these are the arrangements that are necessary for businesses to sell their products or services on the internet; also known as “E-commerce Fulfilment” or “Electronic Commerce Fulfilment”.
Sales channel: A sales channel is the route through which a company or representative brings their products or services to market so that they can be purchased by consumers. Sales Channels include the internet via a website, public market places (i.e. Amazon or eBay) or comparison site, post via a brochure or catalogue, high street and email.
PCI-DSS: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is an industry recognised standard relating to the security of credit, debit and cash card transactions. This standard is widely accepted as proof that your company is doing their bit to protect cardholders again misuse of their personal information.
We hold the highest standard of PCI-DSS.
Systems configuration management: Configuration management is a process to ensure that the interrelationships of varying versions of infrastructure hardware and software are documented accurately and efficiently.
MailManager: Mail Manager organises and streamlines email workflow with two features: an efficient email filing tool and a flexible search. Mail Manager is a light weight webmail module; it provides a way for us to create inboxes for all of our different clients and create responses from the emails received, on behalf of the client. Each user has their own login account and Mail Manager allows you to assign emails to each of them accordingly. Reports can be created so that we can know exactly how many emails we have opened, received and responded to over a period of time, by client or as a whole.
Service Level Agreement: a service level agreement is part of a service contract where a service is formally defined. The term SLA is used to refer to the contracted delivery time of the service or the performance. For example, we would agree that if the client’s orders reach us by X time of day, we would ensure that all those received were despatched the same day. Any orders received after this time would be despatched the following day.
In order for us to reach this performance SLA, the client must uphold their half of the agreement ensuring that their orders reach us before X time.
Hand enclosure: the process of inserting items into an envelope and sealing by hand; hand finished as opposed to machined.
Polywrapping & polybagging: polywrapping is the machined/automated process of wrapping a direct mail item in a clear or printed polythene film.
Environmental Management Plan: is a site specific plan developed to ensure that all necessary measures are identified and implemented to order to protect the environment and comply with our ISO 14001 accreditation. We try to use environmentally friendly packaging where possible and recycle everything that we can.
Simplex: printing on one side of a sheet of paper
Duplex: printing on two sides of a sheet of paper
PlanetPress Suite: is software that allows variable data printing. It provides document design tools that allow us to easily and automatically create communication that’s personalised to the needs of our clients; this is used mainly to personalise our despatch notes to each client.
120gsm: “gsm” relates to the thickness and quality of paper; is stands for grams per square metre and is often written as gm². The higher the number the thicker the paper, e.g. 120gsm is thicker than 80gsm.
Carrier Sheet: normally a single sheet or over cover used to provide the recipient’s address for delivery purposes; a separate enclosure which is either attached to the outside of the publication or enclosed within a polywrapped mailing or polybag. It may be used to contain advertising or promotional messaging or as a response mechanism but is most commonly used to carry the recipient’s address.
SKU: Stock keeping unit, a way of keeping track of what stock is available to sell. A unique identifier or code is usually used as a SKU and each SKU is attached to an item.
Forecast volumes: calculating or estimating order/sales volumes in advance based on previous data to serve as an indication of what to expect in the future. A way of clients knowing what stock they need to order.
Sales Promotion: a way of generating more sales immediately. A sales promotion can be directed at the customer, sales staff or retailers (distribution channel members). Sales promotion often include several communications activities that attempt to provide added value or incentives to consumers, wholesalers, retailers or other customer to stimulate immediate sales. Examples of devices used in sales promotions include couples, samples, premiums, Point of Sale displays, contests, rebates and sweepstakes.
Point of Sale: is the place where a retail transaction is completed (also known as a checkout).
Point of Sale material: is a specialised form of sales promotion that is found near, on, or next to a checkout counter. They are intended to draw the customer’s attention to products which may be new products or on special offer. Point of sale displays may include dummy packs, display stands, mobiles, posters and banners. We can stock these as individual items and then make a “kit” out of them. Most of our Point of Sales jobs are B2B from manufacturers to suppliers.
Data Cleansing: the process of detecting corrupt, irrelevant or inaccurate records within a database and removing or correcting them.
PAF Matching: Postal Address File (PAF) is a database which contains all known delivery points and postcodes located within the UK. It is a collection of over 29 million Royal Mail addresses and postcodes. We match databases with the data contained in the PAF to ensure that the addresses we have are up to date. Royal Mail is the owner of the PAF data and acknowledges that there will be some errors within the data at times due to new housing developments being built and a small number of addresses changing or being listed incorrectly.
Mail Preference Service records: The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) offers this service for individuals
who want their names and addresses removed from mailing lists so that they do not receive unsolicited mail. We have to check data against this record in order to ensure we are not illegally mailing those who do not want it.
Reverse logistics: refers to the reuse of products and materials. We can deal with your customers unwanted and returned items by relocating them onto stock if they are in a re-saleable condition or destroying them/quarantining them if they are faulty and this is what you require. We would agree an SLA with you regarding your returns.
ISO Accreditation: receiving an ISO accreditation from an independent third party assessor shows that our credentials have been verified according to the specification of the International Organisation for Standardisation.
