At sign (@)

Finding the humble at sign (@) in a marketing glossary might seem odd, but it earns its spot. For most people, @ is a symbol used in everyday email addresses or social media mentions.

Let’s start with the basics. The at sign originated in accounting and commerce, meaning “at the rate of.” Fast-forward to today, and it’s become a universal symbol of communication, connection, and context: three things that sit at the heart of modern marketing.

In email marketing, you see @ all the time. Every address needs it, of course, but they can also be used as personalisation tokens. For example, when setting up an email campaign, you might use dynamic fields like “Hi @FirstName,” where @FirstName is a placeholder that gets swapped out with real data for each recipient. So in this world, @ has become a trigger for segmentation and personalisation.

Then there’s social media. On platforms like Twitter (now X), Instagram, and LinkedIn, the at sign is used to tag or mention someone’s handle, flagging them in a post. Want to shout out a partner company or respond to a customer question? Use the @. Not only does it keep the conversation public and trackable, but it also makes sure the tagged party gets notified. This kind of interaction is part of a brand’s voice online, and it plays a subtle but strategic role in community management and customer engagement.

Behind the scenes, the at sign has a technical life too. Marketing systems and CRMs often use @ as part of internal identifiers or custom field logic. In some data structures, it can indicate a field tied to a specific source, user attribute, or trigger. If you’ve ever worked with a marketing automation platform and seen something like @user.email or @lead.score, that’s the software’s way of pulling in dynamic data.

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