Marketing

AI A/B testing uses artificial intelligence to automatically generate, serve and evaluate test variants of ads, copy or pages. AI identifies the better-converting variant faster and can test many combinations in parallel.

Attribution models are rules by which the value of a conversion is distributed across the touchpoints involved in a customer journey. They range from simple models such as last-click to data-driven approaches based on machine learning.

The churn rate indicates what proportion of customers is lost within a given period. It is usually calculated as a percentage per period and is a central metric for customer retention and customer value.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the average cost of winning one new customer. It is calculated as total marketing and sales spend divided by the number of new customers acquired in that period.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV, also LTV) is the expected total value of a customer over the entire relationship — usually as contribution margin. Compared with acquisition cost (LTV:CAC ratio) it shows whether winning new customers is profitable.

Corporate discipline that creates demand, wins customers and maintains relationships — from brand building and content through paid channels and SEO to CRM and loyalty.

The marketing funnel is a model that describes the path of people from first awareness of a brand to purchase and beyond in phases: awareness, consideration, conversion and retention. It serves to plan cross-channel activities.

Marketing mix modeling (MMM) is a statistical method that estimates the contribution of individual marketing channels and factors to business results. It uses aggregated data without user tracking and is seeing a renaissance driven by privacy and AI.

MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) and SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) are qualification stages of a lead in the funnel. An MQL shows interest through its behaviour; an SQL is assessed by sales as ready to buy and suitable for handover.

Predictive analytics in marketing uses historical data and machine learning to forecast future customer behaviour. Typical applications are lead scoring (conversion probability), churn prediction (attrition) and forecasting of revenue or campaign performance.

Top-level profitability KPI: profit relative to the investment made. Goes beyond pure ad spend and includes all relevant cost components.

Synthetic personas are target-audience profiles simulated with AI language models to mimic real respondents. Marketing uses them to test messages, concepts or products quickly against a modelled audience — as a complement to, not a replacement for, real research.