Video messaging glossary
The words that come up when teams start sending video instead of meeting, defined plainly and without marketing. 24 terms, each one saying what it means, when it matters, and where the idea runs out.
- Asynchronous videoA recording made to be watched later rather than attended live, so the sender and the viewer are never required to be free at the same moment.
- Video messagingSending a short recording to a specific person or small group in place of a written message, usually as a link rather than a file.
- Screen recordingCapturing what happens on a display as a video file, usually with narration, so that a process can be shown rather than described.
- Picture-in-picture (camera bubble)A small camera view laid over a screen recording, so the viewer sees both the interface being demonstrated and the person explaining it.
- Personalized videoA video message tailored to one recipient — by what it says, or by the page it arrives on — rather than sent identically to a list.
- Video prospectingUsing short recorded messages in outbound sales, usually to earn a first reply from someone who has not spoken to you before.
- Video emailAn email whose point is a video, sent as a thumbnail linking to a page rather than as an attached file.
- Video thumbnailThe still image that stands in for a video before it plays, in an email, a feed or a search result.
- Watch timeThe total amount of time viewers have spent watching a video, and the metric that best reflects whether it held attention.
- Completion rateThe share of viewers who watch a video to the end, sometimes called view-through rate.
- Retention curveA graph of how many viewers are still watching at each point in a video, used to find exactly where attention is lost.
- Engagement heatmapA visual map of which parts of a video individual viewers watched, rewatched or skipped.
- Views versus unique viewersViews count every play; unique viewers count every person. The gap between them is a signal in its own right.
- Identified viewerA viewer whose identity is known, because they arrived through a link tied to them rather than an open one.
- Call-to-action (video CTA)A button on a video page that gives the viewer a next step, and whose clicks are counted.
- Video landing pageA web page built around one video, where the recording is the content rather than an element on a longer page.
- Tracking linkA share link tied to one recipient, so that the views arriving through it can be attributed to that person.
- Video campaignOne recording sent to many named recipients, each receiving their own page and link, with engagement reported per person.
- CRM sync (one-way)Writing video engagement into a CRM record, in one direction, matched to a contact by email address.
- Engagement noteThe entry a CRM receives when someone watches a video: a note or activity on the contact, not a new record type.
- TranscriptionThe automatic conversion of a recording's speech into text, which becomes the basis for captions, search and summaries.
- Captions versus subtitlesCaptions render speech and relevant sound for viewers who cannot hear it; subtitles translate dialogue for viewers who cannot follow the language.
- AI video summaryA short written account of a recording, generated from its transcript, usually with key points and chapters.
- Video embedPlacing a video inside another web page with a snippet of code, so it plays in context rather than on its own page.