A strategy to generate more revenue by increasing email marketing engagement rate and upgrading outbound email security
The United Arab Emirates is not new to adopting new technologies and adapting to the existing ones. In fact, the nation is the most technologically advanced country in the Middle East region.
According to Digital Nexa, as of 2020, there are 9.73 million active internet users in the UAE. That is almost 99% of the total population. Needless to say, if one is using the internet then they also have an email account too.
So what does this mean for organizations in the UAE?
Well, this means that organizations can leverage the benefits of email communication to generate more revenue.
Now one might ask what is stopping them?
There are several reasons why!
One among them is that with the increasing number of data breaches and online frauds, emails can no longer be considered a secured tool for business communications.
Now you might want to know if there is any solution to this problem. It is safe to say that there is!
But before getting into the solutions, let’s find out some common email threats that are creating a hurdle in generating email marketing value.
“To cure a patient, you need to know the disease first”
What are the Common Types of Email Threats?
As stated in one of our blogs, there are 3 common email threats that organizations need to watch out for. These threats are putting businesses at a high risk of suffering a cyber attack. Moreover, it can also be considered as one of the most harmful threats to email marketing.
Phishing Attacks
It is a social engineering attack that hackers often use to steal personal information, including login credentials and bank account details.
Ransomware Attacks
A cyber attack that is typically carried out to deliver malicious malware and virus through emails most of the time. The goal is to demand ransom after the users’ systems are infected with the malware or virus.
Business Email Compromise (BEC) Attacks
An email attack where hackers spoof a legitimate email domain or impersonate an organization’s executives to trick the employees, customers, and partners.
Increase Email Marketing Engagement Rate and Outbound Email Security
Now you know the most common email threats that are stopping organizations and customers from having a smooth and safe conversation over the emails. Moreover, creating a problem in building a strong relationship and resulting in a declining email marketing engagement rate. So, now it is time to find out how you can fight back.
Therefore, you should focus on two major imperatives which are mentioned below.
Educate Your Customers and Employees
To prevent the email threats mentioned, education and training are a must.
To give an example of how email threats can affect your email marketing engagement rate.
Imagine a hacker is continuously impersonating your email domain and sending malicious emails to your customers.
Do you know what would happen if this occurs?
If your customer is smart enough to realize it’s a hacking attempt then he/she will mark it as spam. Worst case scenario they will report your email.
What happens next?
Email service providers mark your email domain as a spammer. So, next time you send an email it goes to the spam box and not the inbox.
Moreover, the customer will also lose the trust in your brand that took you years to build.
Now, if the customer is unable to detect the fake email, he or she falls victim to the cyber attack.
If you think carefully, why did they suffer? Just because the customer trusted your brand, as simple as that. So, to increase and maintain a good email marketing flow, you will need to maintain the brand’s trust.
This you can achieve by educating your customers and employees.
Some of the methods you can use for educating your customers are:
- Send them regular emails and updates regarding the threats
- Provide them tips on how to identify legitimate email
- Make them aware to confirm the sender if personal information needs to be shared over an email
For educating your employees, tools like ThreatCop can be handy. The tool helps in training employees based on the latest and common cyber attacks. ThreatCop assists in running cyber attacks simulation campaigns that ensure they understand how these attacks look like. Also, it provides them the knowledge and practice of avoiding such cyber attacks.
Secure Outbound Emails
The other method you need to implement is to strengthen your outbound email security. As you can see most of the email threats get a high success rate just because they impersonate your legitimate email domain.
KDMARC is one such tool to rescue you from this problem. It is a GCA-certified email authentication tool that monitors SPF and DKIM, the two email authentication protocols. The tool provides you with full insights into your email channel. It can help you identify the email sources that impersonate your email domain and prevent malicious emails from reaching your email recipients. Hence, it also increases your email engagement rate.
How to Calculate Email Engagement Rate?
As mentioned in one of our previous blogs, several parameters calculate the email engagement rates, such as:
- Open Rate
- Click-Through Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Bounce Rate
- Number of Unsubscribes
- Number of Spams Reported
- Forwarding Rate
Conclusion
If you want to leverage the benefits of email marketing then you must focus on your outbound email security posture. Because this will in turn increase your email engagement rate as well.
Hackers might not have impersonated your email domain, but you can never be too sure. As long as they can earn some easy money impersonating your email address, they will go for it. So implementing the ideal cyber security measures is the best way to increase your business profitability and also stay protected against cyber criminals.
Moreover, it will also keep up the customers’ trust in your brand!
