Modern email marketing lets you target interested prospects with pinpoint precision or reward loyal customers with tailor-made perks. This is possible thanks to the large amount of diverse data marketers collect. While undoubtedly effective – email marketing’s ROI remains unsurpassed – such reliance comes with the obligation of protecting your and your customers’ interests.
What threats does email marketing face and what can you do to prevent them? Discover the essential steps to protecting your brand and boosting email campaign efficiency in one go.
What Security Threats Affect Email Marketing?
Wide reach, customer trust, and data dependency make email marketing a vulnerable and enticing target. Worse yet, cybercriminals can use it to harm marketers themselves or their audiences.
For example, they might create phishing emails that imitate your brand’s appearance and voice. Since links to deals, rewards, customer surveys, etc., are common in marketing emails, it’s easy to disguise malware downloads or unsafe sites behind them. This not only puts prospects and customers at risk, it can severely undermine your reputation.
Hackers might also target marketers directly to access confidential marketing and customer information. Moreover, they may incapacitate some of the essential services marketers use to deploy campaigns, leading to delays or reducing a campaign’s impact and success.
Protecting Your Campaigns from Threats
Marketers who approach campaign security and execution with equal diligence won’t have to fear the consequences. Here’s what to keep in mind.
Implement a secure password policy
Email marketing pros may simultaneously need to handle campaigns for multiple clients and use diverse tools like CRMs, project management, and email automation software for the best results. Keeping track of all associated accounts quickly becomes overbearing, and the likelihood of reusing or setting an easily guessable password increases with each addition.
Login credentials protect your tools, databases, and campaigns only if they’re unique and resist guessing through brute force. That’s why a team password manager is among the first security measures you should set up. It automates password creation, ensuring however many logins you and your teammates need are one-of-a-kind, complex, and stored securely.
A reputable password manager helps prevent unauthorized access to the accounts it secures and can even apply extra protection like two-factor authentication. To find a good provider, check what people say online about them. This way, you can evaluate your options before committing to a service.
Set up authentication protocols
Using authentication protocols is the best way of preventing phishing attacks that exploit your reputation. DKIM, SPF, and DMARC are industry-standard protocols that define where emails originate from and validate their authenticity.
Implementing these protocols is essential for establishing trust and combating phishing attacks. It also helps prevent emails from landing in the spam folder or being blocked outright, improving campaign efficiency. Your email service provider or marketing platform may help you simplify and automate the setup process.
Use established providers & third-party tools
Since email marketing depends on an ecosystem of synergizing services and tools, you should ensure their developers are as security-conscious as you are. Select only tools with proven track records and ample reviews by genuine customers whose developers are transparent about their cybersecurity posture and data protection measures.
The right email provider also simplifies and strengthens your cyber defenses. Apart from offering assistance with authentication protocols, your provider can protect sensitive marketing email contents through end-to-end encryption and ensure the messages you send comply with data protection regulations.
Raise awareness
Cyber threats continue to be successful largely due to human error. Customers may not know how to recognize a phishing attempt passing off as your marketing email. Colleagues can disregard notices not to share passwords or fail to keep their devices and tools up to date. Spreading awareness of these threats and cybersecurity best practices will help reduce related incidents while establishing you as a brand that values customer security and data privacy.
Conclusion
Email campaigns remain a potent tool in any digital marketer’s arsenal. Whether you’re drumming up business, enticing customers with irresistible offers, or fostering engagement, make sure to keep the tips we laid out here in mind.
