It’s alarming how easily spammers defeat even the best spam filters and how many businesses get fooled by even the most advanced scams. According to HubSpot Blogs research, 19% of businesses have reported losing thousands of dollars to email scams. It’s time to find out how to protect your email marketing from going into spam and what you can do to ensure you aren’t a victim of email fraud.
Understand The Differences Between Good, Bad, And Spam
One of the first things you need to do in order to ward off email fraud is to understand what makes the spam you’re getting so special. Long story short: there are three main things you need to check for in order to identify legitimate emails versus those from scammers. Make sure you’re not missing any of these components, and you’ll be well on your way to avoiding the bulk of email fraud. Start by asking yourself these five questions.
1. Is The Email From A Trusted Source?
The first thing you need to check for is whether or not the email is coming from a trusted source. You want to make sure that whoever you’re doing business with is a reputable company. A good place to start when investigating the legitimacy of an email is the ‘from’ field. If it’s not coming from a trusted source, then it’s probably spam. The ‘from’ field should match the ‘reply’ field. This ensures that you’re actually speaking to the person you’re corresponding with and not just some automated email system. It also helps prevent spoofing, a technique scammers can use to seem more trustworthy.
2. Is The Email Validated By Human Reads?
Now that you have some assurance that the email is legitimate, you can move on to the second step of your email validation process. This step involves having actual humans read through the email and checking for spelling errors, grammar mistakes, and factual inaccuracies. In other words, you’re looking for signs of professionalism and reliability. The best place to find human ‘readers’ is the ‘email validation’ button found on the ‘send’ form of most email marketing platforms. When you click this button, you’ll see a list of ‘validation words’ you can choose from to have the email checked for errors by an actual human being. You can also choose to have your email checked for grammatical errors by an online grammar checker like Grammarly or Correctly.
3. Does The Email Provide A Best-In-Class Experience?
If you’ve ever shopped at an online store, then you’ll know that poor customer experience is often the result of a bad email marketing strategy. Customers expect the best experience when shopping online, and if your emails aren’t up to par, they’ll have low expectations for your business, which could lead to you losing revenue. The best way to ensure you have a positive online shopping experience is by investing in the best-in-class toolsets to support your email marketing strategy. This means investing in things like A/B testing, email analytics, and dynamic content.
4. Does The Email Stand Out From The Crowd?
In a nutshell, this step involves crafting an email that is both interesting and useful to your target audience. When sending out email marketing, you need to consider the email’s design, content, and calls-to-action (CTAs). The most common mistake businesses make is using generic emails that look and feel the same as everyone else’s. The fact is, your email audience doesn’t want to feel like they’re at a garage sale, looking for the best deal. They want to feel like you’re thinking of them specifically and that your email is a valuable part of the process.
5. Does The Email Track Conversion Results?
As a business owner, manager, or marketer, it’s your job to ensure your team is measuring the right results from their marketing efforts. Luckily, this part is easy to check. All you need to do is look at the email’s ‘click-through rate’ (CTR). When a person clicks on an email, they’re taken to a landing page or some other URL where they can make a purchase. The higher the CTR, the better. Keep in mind that not all leads are created equal. Some leads are more likely to purchase than others, so you need to track and examine your email’s click-through rate to determine its success. You can also look at conversion rates, orders, and other similar numbers to determine the effectiveness of your efforts. When you’re looking at these metrics, examine how many of your email leads converted into paying customers compared to your total number of leads.
Now that you’re equipped with the knowledge needed to separate legit emails from scammers, you can take action to keep your own email marketing from going into spam and ensure you’re not a victim of email fraud.