◈Terms briefly explained

An address book that remembers what happened.

The term stands for customer relationship management. In practice, a CRM consists of four things:

• Contacts — who.
• History — what happened: conversations, mails, notes.
• Follow-ups — what is still to come.
• Outreach — bulk mails to a selection.

What it does for you: you do not have to remember anything or search for anything. And several people see the same thing.

What you have to do for it: note down two sentences after every conversation. That is the whole price — and the reason why most introductions fail.

A content management system for websites: you maintain texts and images, and the software builds the pages from them.

The difference from a hand-coded website: you do not need any knowledge of HTML, and several people can work without getting in each other’s way.

The difference from a website builder like WIX: content and design are separate. You can change the design without rewriting the texts, and change the texts without putting the design at risk.

What you have to do: maintain the content. The system does everything else.

An entry in the DNS of your domain that says: these servers are allowed to send mails in my name.

Why it affects you: without SPF, mail providers classify your mails as suspicious — they land in spam or are rejected. Since 2024, Gmail and Yahoo have explicitly required it from anyone sending larger volumes.

What to do: have a TXT record set once, at the provider where your domain is managed. Aurora Hive Sales shows you the value; your provider enters it.

One trap: an SPF record may trigger at most ten lookups. Anyone who enters several sending services breaks the limit, and then the whole record stops working.

A digital signature on every mail you send. The receiving server uses it to check whether the mail really comes from you and has not been altered in transit.

Why this matters to you: like SPF, it is a prerequisite for your mails arriving — and it is the basis for DMARC.

How to proceed: have a record set in the DNS. The value is long and looks cryptic; it is copied once and then never touched again.

The difference from SPF in one sentence: SPF says who may send. DKIM proves that the mail comes from there unchanged.

The instruction on what a receiving server should do if SPF or DKIM do not match, and the address to which it sends reports about this.

Three possible instructions:

• none — do nothing, just report. The starting point.
• quarantine — into the spam folder.
• reject — refuse.

The procedure: start with none and look at the reports. Only when you are sure that all your sending routes are clean do you tighten it.

Why not reject straight away: if a sending route has been overlooked — the accounting software, a newsletter service — its mails will no longer arrive anywhere from that moment on.

The phone book of the internet: it translates a name like your-company.com into the address of the server where the site is stored.

Why it concerns you: almost everything to do with your domain is a DNS entry — the website, the mailbox, the deliverability records.

What you do: usually nothing, except when something is being set up or moved. Then entries are set, usually by your domain provider.

Two things worth knowing:

• Changes take time — up to 48 hours, usually much less.
• A wrong entry can bring down website and mail. Take a screenshot of the existing entries beforehand.

The two-stage procedure that makes consent provable:

1. Someone signs up.
2. They receive a mail and confirm in it.
3. Only then are they subscribed.

Why it affects you: without the second stage you cannot prove that the person agreed themselves — anyone could enter someone else’s address. In a dispute, the burden of proof lies with you.

What to do: use the procedure and keep the record — when, from which address, with which text.

And: the confirmation mail itself must not contain any advertising. Otherwise it is itself an unlawful advertising mail.

An objection: the person no longer wants advertising. In Aurora Hive Sales this is a block on the contact — they are taken out of every send.

Why this matters to you: an objection applies immediately, permanently and without any formal requirements. It does not have to come via an unsubscribe link and does not have to be justified.

How to proceed:

• Set the block as soon as an objection reaches you.
• Do not delete — you need the entry so that the address does not reappear in the list at the next import.
• Confirm briefly, without trying to win them back.

Personal messages remain possible: the block applies to advertising, not to the person.

A returned mail: the mail could not be delivered.

Two kinds, and the difference matters:

• Hard — the address does not exist. Permanent.
• Soft — temporary: mailbox full, server unreachable, mail too large.

Why it concerns you: hard bounces damage your sender reputation. Mail providers treat repeated delivery attempts to non-existent addresses as a sign of a bought list, and rate your future mails lower.

The procedure: remove hard bounces immediately. Keep an eye on soft ones, and after the third time remove them too.

The delivery rate says how many of your mails were accepted by the receiving server. It is a hard figure.

The open rate is deliberately not measured in Aurora Hive Sales — for two reasons:

1. It works via an invisible image that is loaded when the mail is displayed. That is processing that requires consent.
2. It is no longer accurate. Mail providers pre-load images on their own servers — an “open” then only means that a data centre has fetched the image.

What you look at instead: the reply rate. A reply is proof; an open is a guess.

The three ways in which a program talks to a mailbox:

• IMAP — reading messages, which stay on the server. The normal case today.
• SMTP — sending messages.
• POP3 — collecting messages and deleting them from the server. Outdated; with several devices it leads to trouble.

Why it affects you: when connecting a mailbox, you may be asked for these details. For the common providers, Aurora Hive Sales recognises them itself.

What you do: usually nothing apart from the email address. If you are asked after all, the values are in your mail provider’s help, with the associated port numbers right next to them.

An additional password that you generate for a specific program — instead of your actual password.

Why it exists: if you use two-factor sign-in (and you should), a program cannot sign in with a password alone. The app password is the substitute.

What to do: generate an app password in the mail account, enter it once in Aurora Hive Sales, then forget it. It is only valid for this one connection and can be withdrawn individually.

The advantage over the main password: if you want to end the connection, you revoke the app password — your own password remains untouched.

A data processing agreement (Auftragsverarbeitungsvertrag, AVV) — the contract with every service provider that processes personal data on your behalf.

Why this matters to you: you need it under Art. 28 GDPR, and before the first access. It is one of the first documents a supervisory authority or an IT department asks for.

Who it concerns: the operator of your system, the mail sending service, AI services, search services, often also your tax adviser and your IT support.

How to proceed: conclude one for each service and file it. Aurora Hive Sales generates one for your own customers, in case you act as a processor yourself.

A separate, self-contained copy of the program — with its own address, own database and own accounts.

Why it concerns you: your data is not lumped together with that of other customers. Whatever happens in your instance stays there.

Practical consequences:

• An account applies to one instance. Anyone working with two needs two.
• Data does not move between instances by itself. A contact in one does not exist in the other.
• Updates come per instance.

If you work with several — for example as an agency for several customers — check which one you are in before every change.

The position of a mail in a sequence: First mail, 1st follow-up, 2nd follow-up.

Why it exists: a single mail is rarely answered. The return comes from systematic, time-delayed follow-up, and for that each stage needs its own text.

This is a must: create a template for each stage. Anyone sending the same mail three times gets unsubscribes the third time.

And the interval is part of it: five to seven days until the first follow-up, ten to fourteen until the second. After that it is over — anyone who has not answered three times will not answer the fourth time either.

A spot in a template where, when sending, the details of the respective recipient are inserted — salutation, name, company.

Why it affects you: a placeholder turns a form letter into a mail that feels personal. And an empty placeholder does the opposite: “Dear ,” devalues the whole mail.

The procedure:

• Only use placeholders whose fields are filled.
• Check the recipient list before every send — the preview with a real contact shows it immediately.
• Think about what should happen if a field is empty.

Fewer placeholders are safer than more.

An appointment with yourself: to get back to a specific person on a specific day.

The difference from a task: a task is something to be done. A follow-up is attached to a contact and means: get back in touch there.

Why it is the most important tool in sales: most revenue is not generated at the first contact but at the third or fourth — and without a follow-up, that contact never takes place.

What you do: set one immediately after every conversation that has not been concluded. With a date and one sentence about what it concerned. Not in the evening, not on Friday — immediately.

• Category: a classification that describes a contact and rarely changes. Each contact has exactly one. You select recipients by it.
• Tag: a free marker, several possible per contact. For everything that cuts across.

The test for a category: would I write a different mail to this group? If so, category. If not, tag.

Examples:

• Category: existing customer, prospect, supplier.
• Tag: “Leipzig trade fair 2026”, “Christmas card”, “speaks English”.

Few categories, as many tags as you like — that way both stay useful.

Saving secures your change — for you. Publishing makes it visible to visitors.

This applies in Aurora Hive Sites and is the most common reason for the report “my change cannot be seen”.

Why there are two steps: so that you can rework a page at your leisure without visitors seeing a half-finished state. And so that someone else can check before it becomes public.

What to do: publish after saving. And then check in a private window — there you see what your visitors see.

In Aurora Hive Live it is different: there, saving equals publishing. That is intentional, because Aurora Hive Live is meant for quick corrections.

In German, the word “Baustein” has two meanings in Aurora Hive Sites — which is why it is easily confused. In the English interface they have two different names:

1. A block — a type of section. Hero, text, card grid, gallery. There are 26 of them, and you build a page from them.
2. A symbol — a reusable section that you maintain once and use on several pages. A change takes effect everywhere.

How to tell which is meant: you choose a block when adding a section. You find symbols under the Symbols menu item.

What you should do: use symbols as soon as the same section is needed for the third time — contact block, opening hours, donation appeal.

• Domain is the address — your-company.com. You rent it annually.
• Hosting is the place where the website is stored.

Why this matters to you: the two can be with different providers, and when moving, usually only one of them is changed.

What follows from this:

• The domain belongs to you and can be taken with you. Check that it is registered to your business and not to a service provider.
• Changing hosting means: pointing the DNS entry to the new location.
• Mail hangs on the same domain, but on different entries — which is why you can move the website without touching the mail.

Whoever has the domain has control. That is the most important practical conclusion.

That a website adapts to the screen size — looking different on a phone than on a computer, without there being two websites.

Why it concerns you: more than half of your visitors come from a phone. A page that does not work there loses the majority.

There is no way around this: nothing to set up — it is built in. But check it, on a real device:

• Is the heading still readable, or does it wrap onto four lines?
• Can the buttons be hit with a thumb?
• Is the phone number clickable?
• Are images cropped sensibly?

Five minutes after every larger redesign.

The description of an image in words — for people who cannot see it, and for search engines, which cannot see it either.

Why it affects you:

• Accessibility. A screen reader reads the alt text aloud. Without it, the image does not exist for blind users.
• Search engines only understand images through text.
• If an image does not load, the alt text appears in its place.

How to proceed: describe what can be seen — briefly and factually. “Freshly rendered facade of an apartment building” instead of “Image1” or “Facade nice”.

Purely decorative images do not need alt text; anything that conveys something does.

A local copy that your browser creates so that a page loads faster next time.

Why this matters to you: it is the cause of the most common confusion of all — you still see the old version, even though you have made changes and published them.

The procedure:

• Hard reload: Ctrl + Shift + R (Mac: Cmd + Shift + R).
• Private window: there is no cache there — what you see there, your visitors see too.

And if strange error messages appear after maintenance — something with “DOCTYPE” or “unexpected token” —, it is almost always for the same reason: during the maintenance the browser stored a notice page and keeps serving it.