As the world transitions to become increasingly more digital, so too do the criminals take their business online. This can leave businesses and customers vulnerable as they are unsure how to know when emails and texts are fraudulent.
The easiest way to detect fraud in text or emails is to take a moment to review them carefully. Fraudulent emails are designed to sound urgent in the hopes that the reader will ignore the signs that it is fake. Just taking a moment to double check information can save you from several scams.
Read on to learn more about fraud detection in email marketing and how you can better protect yourself from scams.
Email marketing is a useful tool for businesses and customers alike. It can be used to present products to a number of people without needing to leave home. But how do you know when a marketing email is a fraud?
First of all, there are three major types of email fraud. They are phishing, spam, and spoofing.
Phishing is one of the most common types of fraud. It is usually an email or a text message sent with a link. Sometimes these emails can look like those that come from the sources you subscribe to, such as a bank or a store.
These emails are designed to look real in the hopes that you will click the link which will direct you to a site that looks almost like your normal site, and that you will put in your account information. These sites are programmed to steal your account information then use them to access your actual account.
The most common phishing scam that people fall prey to is those which look like PayPal. Almost every business uses PayPal to some degree, so receiving an email from them that something is wrong with your account will usually entice you to click the link.
Spam is an email you or your business receives that is something you didn’t wish to receive. For example you may have signed up for notifications that a product is back in stock, but instead been added to an email list for a variety of products you don’t care about.
While this type of email fraud is mostly harmless, it can be annoying. Unfortunately, many email users mistake spam for more harmful types of email fraud and may put emails they want to receive in the junk.
This is why it is important to design your email marketing campaign so that the emails don’t resemble spam emails. A professional marketing company can help you to design an email marketing campaign that will target the correct audience so your emails don’t get marked as spam.
Spoofing is an email fraud practice in which the sender sends you an email from someone you know. This can also be done with cell phone numbers.
The individual then asks you for money or information with the hopes that you don’t notice the email address has been spoofed. Spoofing is very dangerous for companies, as spoofers will often approach customers under the guise of the company.
It is very hard to avoid spoofing and there isn’t much a company can do other than to ask their customers and customer service agents to be vigilant and to double check any unusual requests.
There are many ways a company can go about increasing their fraud detection to protect their customers from fraud. Below are the five basic steps you should take to protect your customers and employees from email fraud.
Ask both customers and employees to watch for unusual activity coming from your email address. It can be helpful to establish with customers when you will email them and the information you will request.
For example, if your company sends frequent marketing emails, establish when the user signs up that they will never be asked in an email for their account information. You can also let them know that no one will text them for this information either.
As manager or business owner, you should subscribe to your company’s emails. This way if someone tries to spoof your account, you will receive the message and know it wasn’t sent by your marketing manager.
Then, you can take the time to warn customers to not respond to the suspicious email from your company.
If there is a criminal sending phishing or spoofing texts, ask customers to report it as junk texts. Carriers will track this information and they use what they find to create better technology to block fraudulent texters or callers.
In the same way, encourage users to report phishing email as junk mail so that their email providers will protect them from similar scammers in the future.
Another aspect of fraud detection is taking the time to perform regular audits. This can help you to know how many of your company’s emails may have been marked as spam by users. It can also help you to improve your click through rate.
Audits are best done by professionals, such as those at Neox Marketing, as they can help you to analyze why your emails are marked as junk and help you to develop a more effective email marketing campaign.
Sometimes emails are mistakenly marked as fraudulent because of their low quality or because they aren’t targeted towards the audience properly. Taking the time to hire a marketing team can help you to create better advertisements which are less likely to be marked as spam.
Overall, email fraud is unfortunately part of business life, but if your business takes several precautions, you can protect yourself and your customers from fraud.
If you need help developing an email marketing campaign that won’t get marked as fraud by customers, reach out to Neox Marketing today to discuss designing the perfect marketing campaign for your business.
