Glossary
Cold email and inbox glossary
The key terms behind cold outreach, reply management, and team inbox collaboration — in plain language.
- Cold email
- An unsolicited email sent to a prospect you have no prior relationship with, used to start a sales, partnership, or recruiting conversation. Sent at volume across multiple accounts to protect deliverability.
- Unified inbox
- A single shared view that aggregates email from many separate accounts. For outreach teams, it means every reply from every sending inbox appears in one place instead of behind separate logins.
- Reply management
- The operational work of reading, assigning, responding to, and closing replies that come back from outreach — distinct from sending the campaigns in the first place.
- Sending account
- An email account used to send cold outreach. Teams run many to spread volume and protect deliverability, which is why replies end up scattered across them.
- Deliverability
- The likelihood that a sent email reaches the recipient's inbox rather than spam. Spreading volume across many accounts and domains is a common way to protect it.
- Thread assignment
- Giving ownership of a specific conversation to one teammate, so it is clear who is responsible for replying and nothing falls through the cracks.
- Internal note
- A private comment left on a conversation that is visible only to your team, never to the prospect — used for context, deal stage, or next steps.
- Thread status
- A label on a conversation indicating where it stands — for example Open, Pending, or Closed — so a team can see what still needs action at a glance.
- Shared inbox
- An inbox multiple team members can view and work together, with visibility into who is handling what. The basis for collaborative reply management.
- IMAP
- A standard email protocol that lets an application access messages on a mail server. MyColdInbox uses IMAP to connect inboxes from providers beyond Gmail and Outlook.
- OAuth
- A secure authorization standard that lets you connect an account, like Gmail or Outlook, without sharing your password. Access can be revoked at any time.
- Speed to lead
- How quickly a team responds to an inbound reply. Faster responses to warm replies meaningfully improve the odds of booking a meeting or closing a deal.
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