15 Marketing Acronyms Workspace Managers Should Know

In today’s fast-paced world, everything is shorter, sweeter, and straight to the point. We think this has something to do with the fact that people want to get more done in less time and also because people read less, skim more, and written messages are being measured by amount of characters instead of words (at least in some cases).

Before this becomes too long, let’s get right down to it: today we’re talking acronyms. A couple of weeks ago, Hubspot published a glossary of must-know marketing and business acronyms. We encourage you to go through all of them, however from their list, we’ve picked the top 15 that we believe are the most used in the flexible workspace industry.

B2B – Business to Business

B2B is used to describe companies that sell their services/products to other companies. Flexible workspace operators are B2B businesses, given that you sell your services to other companies. Another example is  a technology provider or a furniture manufacturer selling products to your workspace.

B2C – Business to Consumer

B2C are companies that sell directly to consumers and users. B2C companies are tour operators selling package holidays or flights to customers, cafes selling coffee, shops selling clothes/toys/kitchenware, etc…

BR – Bounce Rate

BR can be used when talking about your website or your newsletters or batch emails. Regarding a website, the bounce rate is the percentage of visitors of your site that do not navigate to other pages after reaching the landing page. The lower the bounce rate, the fewer people ‘bouncing’ immediately off your website, the higher the conversion rate.

In terms of email and newsletters, BR refers to the rate at which an email was undeliverable. There are two types of BR, soft and hard; the former typically happens when an email inbox is full, the recipient email server is temporarily down or offline, or the message/attachment is too large. The latter one, hard bounce, means an email cannot be delivered for a permanent reason, and it can happen because the email address has been cleaned, it doesn’t exist, the domain name doesn’t exist, or the recipient email server has blocked delivery.

CoCA (or CAC) – Cost of Customer Acquisition (Customer Acquisition Cost)

Basically, your total sales and marketing costs. To calculate this, Hubspot suggests the following: Add up program or advertising spend + salaries + commissions + bonuses + overhead; divide this number by the number of new customers in X time period. Workspace operators should take into consideration: website costs, email and online marketing spend, cost of offline marketing channels, time spent managing marketing channels, marketing manager salary, broker commissions, and cost of workspace directories. Calculate this monthly and divide by the number of new clients.

CR – Conversion Rate

CR is the percentage of people who complete an action on your website; for flexible workspace operators this action could be booking a tour, subscribing to a newsletter, requesting more information, buying a membership, etc.

CRM – Customer Relationship Management

CRM is used to refer to software programs or technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer behavior and interactions. The goal of CRM is to improve and enhance the workspace operator’s relationship with its members, driving sales and customer retention. Happy Desk and essensys are two CRM softwares that specialize in CRM within the flexible workspace industry.

CTA – Call-to-Action

CTA can be in the form of text, button, image, or link, and its purpose is to get a website visitor to take an action you desire (subscribe, share, download, etc.) Some places where you can include a CTA can be your website, your Facebook Page, blog posts, and newsletters.

CTR – Clickthrough Rate

CTR is the percentage of your website visitors that clicks through one step of your marketing efforts to the next. Hubspot’s equation to measure CTR is to take the total number of clicks that your page or CTA gets, divided by the number of opportunities they had to click.

CX – Customer Experience

CX refers to the overall experience a member has with your workspace. The experience starts when they first discover your workspaces (or brand). A successful CX drives interaction, sales, purchases, and advocacy.

PR – Public Relations

PR aims to earn media attention and it can help bring your workspace to the right audience at the right time. The goal of PR is to inform the public (especially prospective members or employees) about your workspace/brand. Today’s PR is highly focused on content creation, with the aim of  getting your workspace featured in a blog, magazine, or local newspaper by way of articles (and also press releases).

RSS – Rich Site Summary (sometimes known as ‘Really Simple Syndication’)

RSS Feed is “a web feed that publishes frequently updated information;” these can be in the form of blog posts, news stories, or podcasts. If you have a blog on your website that regularly shares posts on your latest news or tips on how to best use your space, then ideally your visitors will subscribe to your RSS Feed to get new content updates automatically.

SaaS – Software as a Service

SaaS is any software that “is hosted by another company, which stores your information in the cloud.” Some examples include Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

SEO refers to techniques that help your website rank higher in online engine searches (Google, Yahoo, Bing). Good SEO practices can help your website appear on the top positions of the first page of any search engine when people search with specific keywords, therefore improving your online visibility and credibility. Good SEO practices include relevant title tags, keywords, image tags, link structure, inbound links, and great website structure and design.

SMM – Social Media Marketing

SMM refers to the practice of using different social media channels to drive your marketing efforts. Flexible workspace operators use SMM to increase their engagement with workspace members and attract potential customers and employees. In our industry social media is also used to foster workspace community.

WOM – Word-of-Mouth

WOM is a referral-based communication method  that gives information and recommends a product or service. In the case of flexible workspace operators, WOM works when members or employees recommend your workspace to friends or colleagues. In today’s digital world, Hubspot considers online communication to count as WOM when followers share and openly recommend a product or service.