However, the mission to protect customers from phishing attacks, while going paperless seems to be at odds.

Do your emails look like you’re phishing your customers?

We don’t want to look like phishers and tell our customers to login from an email. But, if they are paperless via a portal, sending an email to login is usually the method used to get them to view their bills or statements. And if there is an amount due, these emails often ask our customers to go online to pay their bills.

Are you inadvertently teaching your customers to get phished?

Of course that’s not to say customers won’t be phished if you don’t send these types of emails. However, making customers familiar with the process of logging in to view a bill or statement from an email or text notification just gets them far more accustomed to the notion.

If you’re on the hunt for an Email Service Provider (ESP) and you send these sorts of emails, you should ask how they can help you with your notification emails so you can ultimately protect your customers.

Applying best practice based on their expertise is crucial to ensuring your emails pass this test.

Measure their ability! 3 Questions to ask your prospective ESP

1. Can they help verify that your emails are the real deal?

Phishing attacks are usually mass emails sent in hopes that someone will click a link, without noticing that it has gone to a different URL (as the site looks the same) and ‘login’. This action gives phishers the information they need to gain access to their account. It’s not that they know these victims; it’s just a matter of chance as to who will fall for their scam.

Your ESP should definitely help you set up email authentication: DMARC, DKIM and SPF for your emails. However, those processes help ISPs filter your emails from potential phishing emails, not your customer.

Look out for an ESP that can help guide you on how to help your customers. An example would be to include authentication information in the email body. This information can be anything – the last five digits of the customer’s account, along with the first line of their home address. And of course referring to them by their full name in the email is of utmost importance, as phishers don’t have this information.

2. What tactics would the ESP employ to help educate customers?

Your customers won’t necessarily know to always look out for the authentication information, so you’ll have to tell them to. Send out email campaigns literally pointing out (in step-by-step fashion) what they should look out for and what they can expect from you. An ESP with a great UX resource is important here.

Crafting these emails to help educate your customers both in copy and layout will help you down the line.

3. Can your ESP help you bypass the login process?

Asking customers to login or verify their account are two very common ways phishers trick customers into giving their personal information. So, don’t teach your own customers to do this.
Instead, consider attaching the bill or other secure document to the email itself and password protect the attachment.

If this sounds like the solution you need, you will need to ask if your ESP has this capability to send attachments. Also, make sure the attachment type, isn’t a conduit for viruses (.html and .exe attachments for example).

There is no sure fire way to protect your customers from being phished, but finding the ESP that can help you in your process will certainly help ensure you don’t look like you’re trying to phish them.

The post Don’t look like a phisher – find the best ESP to help you appeared first on Email vendor selection.

Far too often, the set-up of each email is assumed to be correct and taken care of by each Email service provider.

7 Points of your set up to test in your email campaigns:

Marketers are so busy juggling too many demands that very often it’s the basics that get overlooked. Especially if it is part of the set up. Based on the templating and system this can seem to be a task for your email service provider to take care of.

Instead, the goal should be to work with your ESP on testing every part of your email, ensuring it has been set up correctly. This is a checklist with 7 Points of your set up to test in your email campaigns.

1. Email headers

Email headers are included in the set-up of automated emails and campaigns and seldom looked again after set-up. These include your FROM name, FROM address and reply address.

a. The ‘FROM’ name indicates who the email is from. Remember that customers open emails from brands they know, so check for consistency across emails. Check the spelling too.

b. The ‘FROM’ address is the email address that displays in email clients and appears next to the FROM name. Look out for any placeholders here such as example@example.com.

c. Your Reply address is often the same as the FROM address, but you should implement a process to ensure that the reply is tested (even those with a no-reply). The email address should work and a no-reply email should result in an automated message back to the customer informing them of alternative contact details.

2. Tracking

You should be testing every single link in the email , especially those that are tracked. The test should include clicking on the link to make sure it takes you to the right page, but also go back and check the reports. Each of your clicks should show up on the click tracking report.

3. SPAM Checks – Content and IP address checks

Again, ask your ESP if they have an automated test (most do) to give you an indication on whether your content could be seen as spam. This gives you a chance to rephrase some of the wording.

You should also check to see if your IP address is black or grey listed on any servers before giving the go ahead to do this – this ensures that your email has the best chance of delivery. You can check your IP address by visiting a site such as mxtoolbox.

4. Text version

HTML emails should be sent in “multipart-alternative” format. This means that the email is embedded with a plain text version and an HTML version of the message. When a server can’t view HTML email, the plain text version displays instead. Make sure to test your text version, as well as the HTML.

5. Rendering in various environments

With mobile being such a hot topic and the need to get emails not only looking good on a mobile phone, but also easy to act on, it has now become vital to check the rendering in various environments.

Two ways to check this:

• Ask your ESP if they have an automated test to check the email in various environments, including Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook and mobile platforms. If they do, check the results of those tests to make sure your email looks good.
• If your ESP doesn’t have an automated test, set up a test seed-list across as many email clients as possible – don’t feel bad to rope in colleagues to test on different phones too. Alternatively, you can check your email on Litmus or Email on Acid – this will give you the required results.

6. Images

This is usually the one aspect that is not checked – especially if your ESP is coding the email for you. If you have images, here are some basic checks:

a. Are image sizes specified?
If the images looked stretched before you download them, they haven’t been specified. If this is the case, a number of email clients will create their own default size for the images. Ensure that the dimensions are the true dimensions of the image. Certain email clients will ignore the width and height attributes stipulated in the code and use the image’s actual width and height instead.

So, in order to keep your structure as sound as possible, check that the image sizes have been specified. You can do this by viewing the source of the email – look for the images (ask your ESP how they name them) Ctrl-F and check the width and height.

b. Is alternate text included in the background?
If the images are blocked or are linked but not downloaded, one should still be able to read what that image is about. The way to do this is to include alternate text behind the image. Check each email, before downloading images to check this.

c. Are all images purchased?
Emails have been sent with images that haven’t been purchased. Simple enough to fix after the fact but add it to the check list to remove that panic.

7. Online version

Many email marketing emails carry an online version, allowing customers to click through if their email doesn’t display correctly. The online version should be checked as thoroughly as the email. Check the following:

a. If your email has personalisation, does the customisation and personalisation pull through to the online version?
b. When you click on a link, does it open a new page? You don’t want the link to replace your email page.
c. Ensure that the online version link does not appear on the online version.
d. If your customer is logged into Skype and has browser add-ons, telephone numbers will be converted to a specific style with a flag, which could break the template, so check how it looks when you’re logged into skype and have the add-ons enabled.
e. Are the landing pages named correctly? Check the top of the page / tab –they should carry the name of the campaign or the subject line.

It’s important that you consider each of these 7 points when testing all your email campaigns. They’re quick checks that can make all the difference to your emails.

In the image: Jerminah Mooka from the Striata operations services team giving a thumbs up after a correct set up.

The post Are your emails set up correctly? 7 back-to-basic tips not to forget appeared first on Email vendor selection.

The confidential nature of these documents has prevented them from being emailed over the “public” internet.

The basics of document security and why you should care
The result? These documents are housed on a secure website and a transactional  email notification is sent to customers to login (or even register first) to retrieve them. This is not a great experience for customers who then quickly opt to receive paper documents again.

The solution to this problem is to protect the confidential information by encrypting the document and applying a password to open it, before attaching this secure document to an email.

This immediately takes the pain away from the customer, allowing them to replace the opening of an envelope with clicking on an attachment directly from the email – so much easier than having to visit a website and login. It also plays to the strengths of email.

Benefits of an email secure document include:

1. Customer adoption
Due to the nature of email, it’s so much easier to get customers to opt-in to receive documents via email, compared to asking them to register and then visit a portal. This requires the customer to remember yet another username and password which is a barrier.
2. Reduce phishing concerns
Since you’re not asking customers to visit a website from an email, the phishing concerns are reduced significantly. The document is attached and the email contains authentication information on each customer.
3. Ease of use
It’s easy for the customer to open and save these documents. No registration is required, instead the document password is a “Shared Secret” which is a mixture of known information about the customer (birth date and postal code as an example).
4. Reduce payment time
Email bills arrive quickly and most often sooner than the paper. In our experience we’ve found that more than 50% of customers pay within two days of receiving the email bill, which is a significant improvement on paper processes.
5. Increase self service
Advanced functionality can be included in the attachment, such as payment calculators, change of address forms, call-back request forms, cross-selling tools and basic dispute resolution.
6. Archiving & Control
The customer can quickly and easily save their document to their own PC and back up those documents without reliance on third parties.
7. Reduce operations costs
The solution significantly reduces paper, printing and postage costs by substituting email for paper delivery.
8. Security
An email bill is totally secure, using the latest encryption technology and remains encrypted when not in use, protecting confidentiality.
9. Marketing
Personalised and relevant marketing can be included to cross sell and up sell customers, a touch-point that is often missed in a notification.

Finding the right ESP to help you with secure email documents

Partnering with the right supplier is crucial when it comes to data security and privacy of sensitive information sent over email. The vendor you choose should have the following abilities:
1. Accept multiple data formats and feeds and create different document formats
2. Encrypt the document (ask for the encryption method and strength. It should be at least 128bit encryption, but 256bit is of course better, depending on your requirements).
3. Add password protection to the document
4. Provide 2 factor authentication
5. Ensure the data used to create the document is encrypted when it is at rest on the email platform
6. Able to provide Proof of Delivery of the document
7. Digitally sign the email
8. Automatically notify the customer if the message is not delivered

And specifically for financial institutions ask if:
• the data centre is PCI compliant
• the software can be deployed within the company’s data centre into the future?

Deliverability is a key factor, as these documents must reach the end recipient, therefore the supplier should have the ability to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Automated processes back to the printer should be available when an email bounces, so that there is never an instance when a customer doesn’t receive their information.

Evaluating Email Service Providers

While you’re evaluating your options, think about the user experience and whether all the benefits of using email as a medium have been explored (automated triggers, relevant marketing included, etc). Then look at the various types of documents that you want to convert to email and establish what level of security needs to be applied to each one, as they won’t all carry the same amount of confidential information.

And last, but not least, partner with a company that has the experience in sending secure documents over email. Just as in email marketing, there are specialists in this field. It’s too important to get wrong.

The post 17 things to know about sending email with secure documents appeared first on Email vendor selection.

There is one email type that will satisfy these needs, it is powerful in driving results, but is so often forgotten – the transactional email message.

You need the right email marketing company

Not only is transacional email often overlooked, when appointing an email marketing company (ESP) the requirements around transactional messages are also not explored. It’s important to understand the transactional message landscape and the technical abilities needed to send these messages out successfully.

What exactly is a transactional email?

Transactional emails can be triggered based on a customer’s action with a company. Triggered transactional messages include dropped basket messages, purchase/order confirmation emails and email receipts. Contract notifications are sent automatically, based on a contract agreement. They include email delivery of bills, statements, invoices upgrade notices and policies.

Transactional messages play a vital role in a company’s communication strategy. Simply put, these are the emails customers are expecting and therefore they often yield a much higher open rate. This means these emails are a great channel for relevant cross-sell and up-sell messages.

Understanding all customer communication touch points

Transactional messages are often overlooked because they’re either automated from a company’s website, or managed by an entirely different department that isn’t involved in any marketing efforts. Unlike email marketing messages, these messages aren’t given any branding treatment. Also many valuable marketing opportunities of transactional email are lost. I often see that contract notifications have not seen a branding guideline or a marketer since they were launched!

Unfortunately it isn’t as easy as one would think to get a clear picture of all messages leaving the organisation. Which then begs the question: How do you take control of these messages? The first step is to understand each business area and how it interacts with your customer.

Transactional emails are sent via different departments

Emails are being sent out from so many different departments. Not only are they not complying to the company’s standards, but there are so many missed marketing opportunities. For example, are messages going out to customers asking them about their experience with the call centre? Are these messages based on the email guidelines, do they use the right tone and is there any room for improvement?

When the billing department sends out an email bill or statement are these sent according to branding guidelines set out for email? Is the layout as it should be and are there any cross-selling opportunities that can be included?

Marrying the transactional message with the ESP

Once you’ve gained an understanding of the customer communication touch-points and decided on how and where to include marketing, you need to assess whether your current email sending capabilities will cater for the complex data queries that are required to manage these types of messages.

Is your current email marketing system meeting the requirements?

• Deliverability: What email delivery rates are being achieved on transactional emails (this percentage should be in the upper 90s)? Is the SMTP gateway monitored for blacklisting? Are you signed up to feedback loops and conducting inbox placement tests?
• Reporting: Many of these messages aren’t tracked at all (triggered directly from a web-site and sent in text). Does the system allow for tracking and email reporting that is applied to all email marketing messages?
• Best practice: Transactional messages are often badly designed and not properly tested in all environments (in cases where HTML is used). An understanding of email marketing to achieve the required marketing goals is a must.
• Response management: Is there anyone monitoring responses? Many transactional emails have a standard ‘do not reply’ policy. But these are no different to email marketing messages – they’re the start of a conversation. Customers reply – you need to respond.
• Dealing with complex data rules: If you’re going to add relevant marketing to these messages, can the current system cater for the data rules required to achieve the goals?

Six questions to ask when moving to a new email service provider

If your current system is falling short of these transactional email services and you’re looking to move to an email service provider, here are 6 fact-gathering points to help you make the decision:

1. How does your ESP deal with complex data rules? This is imperative, as transactional messages are triggered with personalised customer information and also need to include appropriate cross-sell messages based on the ’core’ message content.
2. Do they have the ability to send time-critical messages? Many of these messages are triggered based on an action and require the email to be delivered within minutes of the action being taken.
3. Does your Email service provider meet SLA requirements and what is their contingency plan like? Server up-time is an important factor, as messages are time critical. How often is down-time experienced, what are the disaster recovery options and business continuity processes that are put in place?
4. Is your ESP able to provide encrypted document delivery? Should you be sending sensitive information, the ability to encrypt documents sent with sensitive information (details of a policy, statements or bills for into this category) is where you can really start to unlock the full potential of email.
5. How does your ESP guard against phishing? Many of these emails are notifications that pull customers back to a portal to view an order / statement / invoice. Are measures put in place to guard against phishing (such as user authentication within the email)?
6. Can your ESP accept multiple data feeds? This is important when the data for these emails come from multiple sources and the email needs to be built from these varying data types.

Of course, it’s easy for an email marketing company to merely state that they are able to provide the service. Dig into their experience in this area and chat to their customers already receiving this service. These messages are too important to ignore and certainly too important to be implemented badly.

All messages are a reflection of the company and brand, so take the time to find the right email partner and provide your customers with the best possible experience – at every customer touch point.

The post Maximizing email marketing opportunities with transactional email appeared first on Email vendor selection.

In my previous post I discussed the correct motivations for sending out an RFP and how understanding the “why” will help focus the RFP. Now I take a look at the next common point of failure – who should be putting the RFP together.

Who should be involved in the RFP process?

When appointing an ESP the Request for Proposal process is all too often managed by people unaffected by the solution or not everyone affected is involved.

The wrong people compile the RFP
The biggest problem with most RFPs is that the questions are compiled by the wrong people or not enough of the right ones. Although procurement may have the right experience in compiling RFPs and know how to drive negotiations, they may not understand your specific solution requirements. By the same token, asking just the marketing department or just the IT department is also incorrect as so many business units are affected.

Who should be writing the RFP, ideally?
Ideally, the RFP should be developed by all business units who will ultimately be affected by the solution. So when putting together the RFP, think about the outcome. Email marketing affects all sides of the business and the compilation of the RFP should therefore be a meeting of minds. With marketing, IT, call centre, customer service & sales, as well as procurement involved.

This will make for the most well rounded responses. In my experience I have  found that the call centre and customer service areas are most often forgotten in this process.

Determining who should be involved in the ESP selection process should be based on who will own and who will be impacted going forward. Who is responsible for the success of this solution? Those are the people that need to have a stake in the RFP. They must understand the direction and solution required.

Who do you invite to participate?

Time and time again, RFPs are sent out to a list of ESPs but without that crucial first step – meeting them beforehand. Every good partnership is based on a relationship. Take the time to meet the Email suppliers you’d like to invite to gain a better understanding upfront of whether you would work well together – this means meeting the account management team, rather than just the sales team. This process allows the email supplier a chance to better understand your business and your unique requirements which results in far improved responses to your RFP.

Decide what you want in an ESP, meet those potential email suppliers and send the RFP out to them. You’ll find that you won’t send the RFP to all the email suppliers and some may decline to bid for the contract based on the culture and fit of the company, saving you time down the line.

Once you have the right team in place, you have a clear understanding of your goals and you have determined the right candidates you are ready to embark on your RFP journey.

10 Steps to finding the right Email Supplier with an RFP:

1. Have an email marketing strategy

2. Involve all affected business units

3. When putting questions together, include as much detail as possible (it’s difficult to provide pricing if the information provided is vague)

4. Decide on the key features you want in an ESP

5. Draw up a candidate list based on those features

6. Meet with your ESP candidates

7. Send out the RFP to those that fit the bill

8. Shortlist the vendors based on their ability to fulfil your specific requirements

9. Set up presentations by the shortlisted vendors with all the stakeholders that have been involved from the start

10. Find your perfect match (and hopefully after all the effort, the decision won’t be made purely on price)

A request for proposal is a time consuming process. But if you take the time to do it right from the start, you will find the perfect ESP for your needs.

The post Looking for an email supplier, but who writes the RFP? appeared first on Email vendor selection.

Before embarking on the RFP process, ask yourself whether the reasoning for going through this process is sound. Here are a few points to take into consideration when thinking about an RFP.

What is your motivation for an RFP?

To get better pricing – if you’d like better pricing from your current email Service Provider (ESP), rather go back and negotiate. Sending out an RFP to get better pricing can damage the relationship with your ESP. Remember it’s a hugely time-consuming process – not only for you but for all the vendors involved. If corporate governance requires you to get pricing from a number of vendors, rather prepare a one-pager with your current requirements and sending volumes and only ask for quotes.

To use it as an ideas and strategy exercise – you need to be 90-100% sure of the strategy before you invite vendors in. Don’t use the exercise to get a strategy. If you are unsure of the direction you want to take, rather find an ESP that can strategise with you. Keep in mind that an RFP won’t necessarily highlight the best strategists.

To compare apples with apples – no two ESPs are the same. Email marketing is a lot more than features. What is the team structure of the email vendor? Do they have a high staff churn rate? Do they offer the same quality of services? And what do other vendors have to say about them?
These answers won’t necessarily be answered in an RFP process. Do research outside of the proposal process to understand whether the ESP is the right fit

To tick the technology box – most ESPs provide the same technical service and can give you a list of features that sound great on paper. Again, an RFP is unnecessary here as there are reputable established tools such as on the Email Vendor Selection site where you can compare functionality.

The right approach to an RFP:

If a simple feature check is not what you’re after, then an RFP may be the right choice for you. To get the most out of this exercise here are some points to consider:

1. If you have your email marketing strategy in hand, you can look for an Email Service Provider that is ideally positioned to help you to fulfil your specific requirements.
2. If this is a new company strategy and the process is required from a corporate governance perspective, do your research before going out to Request Proposals.
3. If you’re serious about changing partners, make sure to document the reasons for changing your current ESP (e.g. account management, deliverability, cannot fulfil the entire scope of requirements) and structure the RFP accordingly.
4. Scope out the specific goals that need to be met. Knowing what you want means getting the right questions in the RFP and the feedback from the participating ESPs will be so much more valuable.
5. Meet the potential ESPs before-hand and then use the RFP process to map out the functionality, structure and pricing across them. Meeting up goes a long way in evaluating the ESPs and determining if they will fit in with your company culture and have the staff to meet the requirements.

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