Glossary
The outbound & real estate dictionary.
Plain-English definitions for the terms that run through deal making and outbound — no jargon, no fluff.
A
A/B Testing
Comparing two versions of a message or page against each other on a single variable to learn which performs better, decided by data not opinion.
A2P 10DLC
The US carrier registration system that lets businesses text from standard 10-digit numbers without being filtered.
Absentee Owner
A property owner whose mailing address differs from the property address — often an out-of-area landlord open to selling.
After-Repair Value (ARV)
The estimated market value of a property after it has been fully renovated. ARV is the anchor number for every flip and wholesale offer.
AI Follow-Up
Software that autonomously works prospect replies — answering questions, handling objections, and booking appointments — escalating hard cases to a human.
Anchoring
A negotiation tactic where the first number stated frames the entire discussion, pulling the final price toward it.
Appointment Setting
The function of turning a prospect's interest into a scheduled meeting on a closer's calendar — the conversion goal of most outbound effort.
Assignment Fee
The wholesaler's profit: the spread between the contract price with the seller and the price the end-buyer pays.
B
Batch Skip Tracing
Skip tracing an entire list at once — uploading hundreds or thousands of records to append phone numbers, emails, and addresses in bulk.
Bounce Rate
The share of sent emails that fail to deliver. High bounce rates signal a dirty list and directly damage sender reputation and inbox placement.
Buy Box
The formula and criteria that define which deals an investor will buy — price band, location, condition, and the math each offer must satisfy.
C
Cash Buyer
An investor who purchases properties with cash (no financing contingency) — the end-buyer a wholesaler assigns a contract to.
Closing Costs
The fees paid to complete a real estate transaction — title, escrow, recording, transfer taxes — beyond the purchase price itself.
Cold Calling
Phoning property owners who haven't expressed interest, to find motivated sellers — governed by TCPA and do-not-call rules.
Cold Email
Personalized outreach email sent to prospects who haven't heard from you, dependent on deliverability infrastructure to land in the inbox.
Cold SMS
Short text-message outreach to a prospect list, with ~90% open rates and tight regulatory requirements (A2P 10DLC, opt-outs).
Comparable Sales (Comps)
Recently sold properties similar to the subject in location, size, and condition, used to estimate market value and ARV.
Contract Assignment
Transferring the rights of a purchase contract to an end-buyer, who steps in and closes in the wholesaler's place for a fee.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of people who take a desired action out of those who had the chance — the universal yardstick for any step in a funnel.
Cost Per Deal
Total marketing spend divided by closed deals — the bottom-line metric that tells you whether a channel is actually profitable.
Cost Per Lead
Total campaign spend divided by the number of qualified leads it produced — the efficiency measure of any lead-gen channel.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
The total profit a business expects from a customer across the whole relationship — the number that sets how much you can spend to acquire one.
D
Data Enrichment
Adding missing details to records — owner info, equity, phone, email, distress flags — to make a list more targetable and contactable.
Deliverability
Whether your messages reach the inbox instead of spam (email) or get delivered instead of filtered (SMS). The real constraint in outbound.
Direct Mail
Sending physical letters or postcards to a targeted owner list — a slower, higher-cost channel that reaches owners who ignore calls and texts.
Dispatch
Assigning and routing technicians to jobs — matching the right person to the right call at the right time to maximize completed jobs per day.
Dispositions
The sell side of a wholesale or flip business — finding the end-buyer and getting a controlled property assigned or sold.
Distressed Property
A property in poor physical or financial condition — deferred maintenance, code violations, or looming default — that trades below market.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
A cryptographic signature on your outgoing email that lets receivers verify the message wasn't altered and came from your domain.
DMARC
A DNS policy that tells receivers what to do with email failing SPF/DKIM checks, and reports who's sending as your domain.
Do Not Call Registry
The federal list of phone numbers that have opted out of telemarketing calls. Scrubbing against it is a compliance requirement before cold calling.
Do-Not-Contact List (DNC)
An internal list of people and domains that must never be contacted — opt-outs, competitors, existing customers, and legally off-limits records.
Domain Warm-up
Gradually ramping sending volume on a new domain or inbox so mailbox providers see a normal sender, not a sudden blaster.
Double Close
Two back-to-back transactions — buying from the seller, then selling to the end-buyer — that keep the wholesaler's spread private.
Double Opt-In
Requiring a second confirmation step after sign-up — a verification click — before adding someone to a list, producing a cleaner, more engaged audience.
Drip Campaign
A series of pre-written messages sent automatically on a schedule or triggered by behavior, nurturing a contact toward a goal over time.
Driving for Dollars
Physically driving neighborhoods to spot distressed or vacant properties, logging addresses to research and pursue off-market.
Due Diligence
The investigation window after a contract is signed — verifying condition, title, numbers, and risks before the deal becomes binding.
E
Earnest Money
A deposit a buyer puts down to show a contract is serious, held in escrow and credited toward the purchase at closing.
Email Verification
Checking that addresses on a list are real and deliverable before sending — the single biggest lever on bounce rate and sender reputation.
Email Warm-up
Gradually ramping a new mailbox's sending and generating positive engagement so providers build trust before it sends real cold volume.
Equity
The portion of a property's value the owner actually owns — market value minus what's still owed against it.
Estimate (Quote)
A priced proposal for a job given to a customer before work begins — the conversion step between an interested lead and a booked job.
G
Google Business Profile (GBP)
A business's free listing on Google Search and Maps — the hours, reviews, photos, and contact info that drive local discovery and map-pack ranking.
Google Local Services Ads (LSA)
Pay-per-lead ads at the top of local search where you pay only for genuine contacts, and verified businesses earn a Google Guaranteed badge.
I
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
A precise description of the company and buyer most likely to buy and stay — the targeting filter that defines who outbound should reach.
Inbox Rotation
Spreading cold-email volume across many sending mailboxes so no single inbox exceeds safe daily limits — the way cold email scales without burning domains.
Install Base
The full set of customers a service business has already sold equipment to or served — the warmest source of repeat and referral revenue.
Intent Data
Signals that a company is actively researching a solution — surges in relevant content consumption that flag accounts likely to be in-market now.
L
Lead List
A targeted set of property and owner records — filtered by motivation criteria — that feeds every outbound channel.
Lead Scoring
Ranking leads by likelihood to convert using fit and behavior signals, so reps work the most promising prospects first.
Letter of Intent (LOI)
A non-binding written offer stating price, terms, and timeline. It opens negotiation without the legal weight of a purchase contract.
List Stacking
Overlaying multiple motivation lists and prioritizing records that appear on more than one — where seller motivation concentrates.
LOI Blasting
Sending letter-of-intent offers to large batches of listed properties automatically — comp, generate, send, and follow up at scale.
M
Maintenance Agreement
A recurring contract where a customer pays for scheduled upkeep — predictable revenue for the contractor and priority service for the customer.
Map Pack
The block of three local business listings with a map that Google shows at the top of local-intent searches — prime real estate for service businesses.
Maximum Allowable Offer (MAO)
The most an investor should pay for a property and still hit margin: typically (ARV × 70%) − repairs, minus any wholesale fee.
Meeting-Booked Rate
The percentage of contacted prospects who end up booking a meeting — the outbound metric closest to pipeline and revenue.
Missed-Call Text-Back
An automation that instantly texts anyone whose call goes unanswered, recovering leads who would otherwise hang up and call a competitor.
MLS (Multiple Listing Service)
The agent-controlled database of properties listed for sale. The on-market counterpart to the off-market deals most investors pursue.
Motivated Seller
An owner with a pressing reason to sell — distress, relocation, inheritance, tired-landlord fatigue — who will trade price for speed and certainty.
Multichannel Outreach
Reaching prospects across more than one channel — email, phone, SMS, LinkedIn — within a coordinated cadence to lift overall response.
O
Off-Market
A property not publicly listed for sale. Reaching owners before they list — with less competition — is the core of investor lead gen.
Open Rate
The share of delivered emails that recipients open. A directional engagement signal that has become noisier as providers pre-fetch and mask opens.
Opt-In
A recipient's explicit permission to receive messages — the consent that separates permission-based marketing from cold outreach.
Opt-Out
A recipient's request to stop receiving messages. Honoring it promptly is both a legal requirement and a deliverability necessity.
P
Personalization Token
A placeholder in a template — like a first name or company field — that fills in per-recipient data at send time to make mass messages feel individual.
Power Dialer
Software that dials numbers from a list automatically — often several lines at once — connecting reps only to live answers.
Pre-Foreclosure
A property whose owner has missed mortgage payments and received a default notice, but hasn't yet been foreclosed — a high-motivation lead.
Proof of Funds
Documentation showing a buyer has the cash to close — a bank statement or lender letter sellers and agents often require before accepting an offer.
R
Rapport
The trust and ease built with a seller that makes them comfortable enough to share their real situation and accept an offer.
Reactivation Campaign
Outreach to old customers or dead leads in your database to revive dormant relationships — the cheapest pipeline a business already owns.
Referral Program
A structured system that rewards existing customers for sending new ones — turning satisfied customers into a low-cost, high-trust acquisition channel.
Rehab Estimate
The projected cost to renovate a property to market standard. It's subtracted from ARV to set the maximum allowable offer.
Reply Rate
The percentage of recipients who reply to an outbound message — the most honest early read on whether targeting and copy are working in cold email.
Reputation Management
The ongoing work of earning, monitoring, and responding to online reviews so a business's public rating reflects the quality of its service.
Response Rate
The percentage of contacts who reply to a campaign. The first conversion metric in any outbound channel — mail, email, SMS, or calls.
Review Gating
The prohibited practice of filtering customers so only happy ones are asked for public reviews — banned by Google and most review platforms.
Ringless Voicemail
A prerecorded message delivered straight to a prospect's voicemail without ringing the phone, used as a low-friction first touch.
S
Sales Cadence
A predefined sequence of outreach touches across channels and days — the structured follow-up plan an SDR works against for each prospect.
Sales Development Representative (SDR)
A rep dedicated to top-of-funnel prospecting — qualifying leads and booking meetings for account executives rather than closing deals.
Sales Engagement Platform (SEP)
Software that builds, automates, and tracks multi-touch sales cadences across email, phone, and social from one workflow for outbound reps.
Seller Financing
The seller acts as the lender — the buyer pays them directly over time (price, down payment, interest, term) instead of using a bank.
Sending Domain
The domain emails are sent from. Cold senders use separate secondary domains to protect their primary brand domain's reputation from outbound volume.
Shared Leads
Leads a lead-gen platform sells to several businesses at once, forcing a speed-and-price race — the opposite of exclusive leads sold to one buyer.
Skip Tracing
Appending contact details — phone numbers, emails, mailing addresses — to a property or owner record so you can actually reach them.
Speed-to-Lead
The time between a prospect responding and you answering. The highest-ROI variable in outbound, because contact rates collapse within minutes.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
A DNS record listing which servers are allowed to send email for your domain — one of three records that prove your mail isn't forged.
Spintax
A syntax for generating message variations from interchangeable phrase options, used to reduce footprint so identical cold emails do not pattern-match as spam.
Subject-To
Buying a property while leaving the seller's existing mortgage in place, taking over the payments rather than getting new financing.
Suppression List
A master list of addresses and numbers to exclude from every send — opt-outs, bounces, complainers, and do-not-contact records.
T
TCPA
The federal law governing calls and texts — consent rules, autodialer restrictions, and quiet hours — with steep per-violation penalties.
Throttling
Deliberately limiting how fast and how many messages go out per inbox or per hour, mimicking human sending to protect deliverability.
Title Company
A neutral third party that verifies clear ownership, holds escrow, and handles the paperwork and funds at closing.
W
Waterfall Enrichment
Querying multiple data providers in sequence — falling through to the next when one lacks a record — to maximize match rate on contact data.
Wholesaling
Putting a property under contract and assigning that contract to an end-buyer for a fee, without taking ownership.
Win-Back Campaign
A targeted effort to recover customers who lapsed or churned — usually with a tailored offer acknowledging they left.