Glossary

The vocabulary of professional contact data

Short definitions of the terms you will meet on PeopleReach and in your sales, recruiting and data-quality work.

Account qualification: Checking a target company before investing sales time: who holds the function you sell to, and whether that contact is current.

Bounce: An email that could not be delivered. Hard bounces (address does not exist) should be removed from a list; soft bounces (full mailbox, temporary error) may be retried.
Buying committee: The group of people involved in a purchasing decision at a company — the function that uses, the one that pays and the one that signs.

Career history: The succession of roles and employers a professional has published about themselves: current position, past positions, location.
Catch-all domain: A mail domain that accepts every address, which makes individual deliverability impossible to confirm. Results from such domains are flagged as unverifiable.

Decision-maker: The person who holds the function your product or offer is addressed to, and who can take or influence the decision.
Deliverability: Whether an email address can actually receive mail, checked through the domain's mail servers without sending a message.
Directory listing: An entry in a published business or telephone directory: the holder as listed, the number, the address of the establishment.
Disposable address: A temporary mailbox created for a one-off sign-up. Flagged by verification so it is not used for follow-up.

Email format: The pattern a company uses for its business addresses (first.last@, f.last@, first@…), derived from published addresses on the domain.
Enrichment: Completing a contact record with additional professional details (company, role, business email, office number) from public and professional sources.

Fair use: The usage limits of the subscription, such as the number of detailed reports per month.

Homonym: Two professionals with the same name. Adding the company or the city is what separates them in a people search.

Line type: Whether a phone number is a landline, a mobile, a VoIP line or a premium-rate number. Useful to know what kind of line you are about to call.

Numbering plan: The structure of a country's phone numbers: country code, prefixes, length and the ranges assigned to each line type.

Public source: Information anyone can read without logging in: company websites, public professional profiles, published directories.

Reverse email lookup: Starting from an email address to find the professional and the company it belongs to, when published sources allow it.
Reverse phone lookup: Starting from a phone number to find the publicly listed holder — usually a business or a directory entry. Unlisted numbers return nothing.
Role address: A generic mailbox such as info@ or sales@. Fine to contact a company, not a person.

Sales intelligence: The practice of collecting and verifying professional information about companies and decision-makers to prioritise and prepare outreach.
Switchboard: The main published line of a company or establishment, from which calls are routed to a function or a person.

Talent sourcing: Identifying and reaching professionals who match an open role before they apply, through the professional profiles they published.

Unlisted number: A phone number whose holder asked not to appear in directories. Such numbers are not returned by the service.

Verification: Confirming that a contact detail is valid and current — a deliverable email address, an active line, a company still active.

Go further

Start with the trial, then keep the subscription only if it earns its place in your toolkit. Cancelling takes one step.

Prices are shown in euros including VAT. The subscription renews monthly and can be cancelled at any time.