Email

Forgery is one of the oldest white-collar crimes in history. In ancient times, rogue artists studied genuine signatures, manuscripts, and works of art to reproduce them. Then, they could sometimes pass these fakes as the real thing, often selling them for small fortunes.

Email Spoofing A New Forgery Style

Throughout the centuries, methods of forgery have changed, but the motives behind them haven’t altered. Internet crime, like email spoofing, affects everyone at one time or another. Email spoofing is a surprisingly simple way criminals use to forge email addresses for unethical reasons.

Some of the most notorious forgeries in history were discovered because someone was familiar enough with the genuine article. Likewise, it takes a careful eye to detect when someone is sending you a fake email. Just one small change in the address can create one that can easily fool people.

In most states and local governments, email spoofing, also called phishing, is illegal. Some unscrupulous people use e-spoofing to harass others or to make false claims against individuals or organizations. The most detrimental spoofs are those that extort money or personal information from unsuspecting recipients.

How to Email Spoofing

How can you tell if someone is spoofing you? Do you have enough Internet security to protect your private information? Consider these six tips to help prevent you from being the next email, spoof victim.

1. Carefully Examine the Sender’s Email Address

One of the best ways to fool you is to use familiar email addresses. For example, you might think you are receiving an email from a well-known legitimate business. However, the criminal makes a slight change in the address or domain that is easily overlooked.

Check out the sender’s email provider for signs of foul play. Would your life insurance company send you an official email by Outlook, Hotmail, or Gmail? Even if the cybercrook was smart enough to use .com, .org, or .net, these aren’t always proof of the email’s legitimacy.

Before you click on anything or disclose any personal information, scrutinize the sender’s address. You will often see one letter changed, added, or omitted. The letterhead and trademarks look real, but the address is fake.

To avoid getting phished in the future, be sure that your account is protected by a sender’s policy framework or SPF. This program helps to prevent cybercriminals from using your email address without your consent. It also minimizes spoofs that can come through your server to your inbox.

2. Examine the Subject of the Email

Even if the subject line seems legitimate, but you still have suspicions, do some prodding into it. If you use Gmail, go to the right corner of the email, click the three dots, called an ellipse. Scroll down the box and click on show original sender, which should match the entered sender address exactly.

For other email programs, find the return-path function to compare the addresses. You can also look up the sender’s IP address, which is the fingerprint of any computer or mobile device. Use your program’s IP lookup tool and compare it.

3. Trust Your Instincts

You’ve heard the saying that things that sound too good to be true usually are. Some spam that slides through your mail filters is such obvious scams that they are laughable. Others are a little more subtle with their deceptions.

The content of an email is often a tell-tale sign of a spoof. Why would the IRS send you a threatening email and then ask for your Social Security number and banking information? If you receive a debt collection notice from a company you have never owed, wouldn’t they already have your account information?

These heartless cybercriminals are hoping that you don’t recognize their scam and will offer any personal information they request. Adamantly protect your financial and personal information and never give them out to suspicious emailers. Remember that legitimate financial institutions and businesses will never request usernames, passwords, and other private information by email.

Another clue for detecting probable email spoofing is the graphics, grammar, and spelling. Many cybercrooks don’t have the equipment to forge official-looking letterheads and trademark graphics. The pixeled image may be distorted or faded.

As you scan through the content, notice if the grammar is awkward or incorrect. Non-English- speaking phishers often rely on rudimentary translation apps that are rarely precise, and you may see glaring misspellings. These unprofessional errors wouldn’t be found in a letter from a real company or organization.

Other phishing scams to beware of are those who are soliciting charitable donations. Often, these are fake organizations, or they are impersonating legitimate ones. One notorious scam involves email spoofs claiming that you have won a lottery fortune, and they need your banking information to deposit your winnings. Don’t click on anything or give out your private information.

4. They Misspell Your Name

They entered your email address correctly, but how did they spell your name? If this were an actual letter from your company or an organization with which you regularly correspond, wouldn’t they know how to spell your name correctly? An automatic red flag should go up if the email is vaguely addressed to whom it may concern or dear recipient.

5. Be Wary of Foreign Emails

If you receive a strange email from an individual you’ve never met, it’s almost sure to be an email spoof. At least one time or another, you’ve probably received an urgent email from someone supposedly living in a foreign country. As luck would have it, this fake foreigner has selected you to solve a personal crisis.

It’s a perennial phishing scam that uses different scenarios. The sender claims to have an unbelievably large check that is being held up in US customs. To get the funds released, he must have an American-side bank account. If you would send him your banking information, he will reward your kindness with a hefty sum of money.

Be assured that there is no check, and this isn’t a real person. If he gets your financial information, the only cash he is going to get is yours. Don’t be duped by these cunning cybercriminals.

6. Increase Your Email Security with a Difficult Name

Most people make their email addresses using their names, birthdays, or other relevant information. You are making it extremely easy on email hackers when you use your name as your address. When you use numbers, underscores, or numerical characters, then you are going to increase the chances that your email won’t be hacked.

Cybercriminals look for their next victim by their lack of internet security. For instance, if your email is [email protected], then it’s pretty easy to see that the recipient’s name, and determine that he was likely born in 1982. Using this information, the criminal can quickly compile up your data.

Do you know how easy it would be to get information about that specific person?

A simple internet search can give phone numbers, addresses, and even data about who lives in the household. So it’s easy to see that making the email address something more randomized, like [email protected] would make it much more challenging to get any valid data about this person.

Don’t make things easy for the intelligent internet criminals of today. When you put your personal information on social media outlets, then you are giving them all the ammunition they need to make you their next target. Be careful what email address you use and what you post on the internet.

Organize Your Email Account

Even when you are an individual and not a business, you’ll find your email flooded with junk from unknown senders. Depending on your email provider, most of this unwanted e-litter goes into a spam file to be deleted. Sometimes, you may be so overwhelmed and agitated with junk mail that you aren’t so careful to read the senders’ URL.

Study the help guide from your email provider and see how you can organize your account to recognize possible email spoofing better. You can also download free programs that allow you to keep your mail organized. These programs will also unsubscribe you to unwanted subscriptions automatically.

If you get a suspicious email, then you need to report it as spam through your email server. The only way to stop these attacks is to be proactive.

Final Thoughts on Being Cyber Safe to Avoid Email Spoofing

The internet has brought about many opportunities for people to work from home, stay connected to people across the globe with ease, and to have the power of information at the touch of a button. However, with all the good things that the world wide web has done for society, there are also some downfalls.

Hacking your email and other accounts have become quite easy, primarily when you feed information to hackers unknowingly. Thankfully, there are ways that you can be proactive and stop or reduce the threat to your email and other aspects of your life. Do you have the protection you need against email spoofing?

10 Email Signature Tips to Look Professional at Work

In a world where tweets and blog posts are all the rage, communicating via email is still as popular as ever. In fact, in the business world, emails are still one of if not the primary form of communication online.

And if you send lots of emails for work, you probably want to create an email signature that ends all of the emails that you send in a professional manner. 

Well, there are a ton of email signature tips to keep in mind when creating your very own email signature. And once you know what to do, and what not to do, you’ll see that creating the perfect email signature isn’t as hard as you may believe!

In this article, we’ll give you 10 email signature tips and tricks that you need to know in order to create the most professional and effective email signature. Now then, let’s get started!

1. Remember: Simple and Sweet

If there’s one word you should have in mind when crafting your email signature, it’s simplicity. Doing too much is almost a guarantee that you’re going to create a signature that turns people off.

Less truly is more, to say the least.

2. Limit Yourself to 3 or 4 Lines of Text

A great way to ensure that you keep your signature simple and sweet is to limit yourself to 3 or 4 lines of text. Anything more than that is going to be overwhelming, or too much to read, which isn’t what you want.

3. Design with Mobile Users in Mind

It’s the year 2020. Odds are, you send and receive the majority of your emails from a mobile device. It’s also safe to assume you’re not the only person who does this, meaning you need to create a signature with mobile users in mind.

Making something that is mobile-friendly is easy, as long as you limit yourself to how much content you include. Also, check to see how your signature looks on your mobile devices to confirm nothing looks off before sending too many emails. 

4. Consider Using a Picture

Regardless of your brand or business, you likely have a picture that you feel represents what you’re all about. Whether it’s a headshot or a company logo, consider including that picture in your email signature.

Don’t be afraid to go with a bit of color, too, as it’s a great way to stand out in someone’s email inbox. 

5. Balance Your Content Evenly

If you do decide to go with a picture, make sure you format your signature so that everything looks balanced. In other words, make sure your text and your picture flow together smoothly.

A good rule of thumb? Position your picture on the left side of your signature with your text on the right. Combined, your text should be the exact same size of your picture, meaning no words drop below the picture itself.

6. Don’t Include Your Email Address

There’s absolutely no reason to have your email in your signature. People already know who is emailing them, making that bit of information redundant.

Including your email address makes you look a bit amateurish, which of course, isn’t what you want.

7. Leave “Sent From My iPhone” On

We’ve all see that “Sent from my iPhone” tag at the end of an email. And while it may appear to be unprofessional at first glance, it’s actually not the worst idea to leave that feature enabled, if you have an iPhone.

Letting someone know you sent an email from a mobile device leads to them being more forgiving of any spelling or grammatical errors. And of course, spelling and grammatical errors are much more common when typing on mobile devices.

8. Link Your Social Media Accounts

While linking to your email address isn’t necessary, linking to your social media accounts is. Doing so can make it much easier for clients and customers to contact you, which of course, can be quite helpful.

Just make sure that you’re social media accounts are also professional, as someone is likely going to click on them eventually. 

9. End With a “Call to Action”

Ending your email signature with a call to action, or a CTA, should be near the top of your to-do list. Also, don’t overthink your CTA, as that’s a great way to set yourself up for failure. 

Something as simple as your social media links, or a link to your portfolio, works well. 

10. Browse For Examples in Your Inbox

If you’re still not sure how to format your email signature, consider copying someone in your email inbox. Odds are, you have quite a few examples to browse, and if you see something you like, try to mimic it and make it your own.

Also, you can make a digital signature online in just a few minutes, using an email signature maker tool.

10 Email Signature Tips and Tricks

Well, there you have it! Those are 10 email signature tips and tricks that you can use to create the perfect, most-professional email signature!

Remember, above all else, keep it simple. Don’t feel like you need to tell everyone every single thing about you in a few lines. Only include the most important details, as less is always more.

If you’re not sure exactly what you want to include, take a second to browse your email inbox for some examples. And if you find something you like, but aren’t sure how to recreate, use an online email signature maker to bring your signature to life.

Looking for more ways to stand out in the business world? Check out our blog!

How to Grow Your Business With Targeted Email Marketing

Do you regularly send out emails to your list only to hear crickets? That’s not unusual to hear. People are bombarded with email marketing messages every single day.

An office worker can get up to 120 emails a day. How can you make yours even get noticed? You can use targeted email marketing.

Read on to find out what targeted email marketing is, why you should use it, and how to jump-start your email campaigns.

What is Targeted Email Marketing?

Targeted email marketing is a way to segment your email list, which allows you to deliver personalized content to your customers.

One reason why your emails are missing the mark is that you’re probably sending out one newsletter to your entire list, assuming that everyone in your audience will be interested.

You’re treating everyone like they’re all at the same place at the same time. The reality is much different. They are at different points along their customer journey.

It’s like sending an email to your entire audience telling them about your product that they need to buy. About a third of your list already bought that particular product.

That is something that they feel that you should know and you might lose a little credibility with them by sending that email out to them.

Benefits of Targeted Emails

It may seem like a lot of effort to create segments out of your list. It is a little more work, but the reward is worthwhile. Here are some of the reasons why you want to have targeted email campaigns.

People Love Personalization

Your customers don’t want to feel like their everyone else or like a number. They want to be special and like they matter.

Personalized content can help businesses increase sales, whether you’re a B2B firm or you have a consumer package goods company.

Personalization doesn’t mean adding a person’s name in the subject heading. That can feel a little inauthentic. People would rather have discounts and offers that are just for them.  

Higher Open Rates

How many people open your emails? Of course, there are a number of factors that you have to consider when you compare email open rates.

One thing that’s not disputable is that email opens are higher when you target your marketing campaigns. Reebok is a great example of a brand that saw massive success from using a highly targeted campaign.

Higher Conversion Rates

The purpose of email marketing is to get your list to convert into customers or to encourage them to buy again.

Not only can targeted emails increase open rates, but they increase your conversion rates, too. Customers are more likely to buy when they have timely and relevant offers in front of them.

Examples of Targeted Emails

You have probably seen a lot of targeted emails. Have you ever put items in a shopping cart only to have to leave the website? Did you get an email reminding you to complete your purchase?

That’s an example of targeted email marketing.

Another example is when you sign up for someone’s list and they put you into an automated email funnel. You open up a couple of the emails and based on those opens or link clicks in the emails, you get a product offer.

You can segment your list based on the offer that convinced them to subscribe, when they subscribed, or their location.

For subscribers that haven’t interacted with your emails in a while can be sent a re-engagement email. You can ask them if they still want emails from you.

It seems counterintuitive to do that because you can lose subscribers. If they’re not engaging with your content, they’re not likely to buy from you anyway. You might as well keep the good brand perception and give them an out.

How to Create a Targeted Email Campaign

How can you apply targeting to your email marketing? Here are the steps you need to take to set up a targeted email campaign.

Scrub Your List

When was the last time you sent an email to your list? If it’s been a while, you want to reach out to them to ask if they still want emails.

If you don’t have an email list yet, you’ll want to start building one right away. Make sure that you have signups on your website. You can also use a database of your old prospects and current customers.

You don’t want to assume that it’s ok to add them to your list. You want to give them the option to sign up and ask for their permission.

Create Your Segments

There are countless ways to segment your list. For example, if your company is targeting PDM professionals, you can target by location.

If you’re a clothing retailer, you may want to create targeted emails by gender. How can you get that information? You will need to collect that customer data either on your signup forms./

Create Content for Each Segmented Audience

This is the fun part. You need to create content for each audience. This may seem like extra work, but it’s worth it.

How can you create relevant content for each segment? It depends on how you segment your audience. If you segmented by gender, you can showcase products on sales that are for men and for women.

A shopping cart reminder is a simple email reminder to return to your site and finish the purchase. Think about each segment and what’s important to them. That will help you develop content that’s relevant and will get results.

Make Targeted Email Campaigns Work for You

Targeted email marketing campaigns are a great way to get more bang out of your email marketing efforts. Personalized content can go a long way to create loyal customers and increase sales.

There are many ways to segment your email list. You want to find the ways that will allow you to send the most relevant content to your list.

Do you want to know more about writing great content? Check out this site often for more articles that show you how to create a content strategy. 

7 Fool-Proof Email Marketing Tips

According to estimates, an astonishing 281 billion emails are sent each day.

Even when you divide that among the over 3.8 billion people who have at least one email account, this figure can make for a pretty messy inbox.

To make sure your emails don’t end up in the dreaded spam folder, you’ll need to craft a clever, compelling campaign that grabs your audience’s attention.

Here are seven email marketing tips to help you knock your next email marketing campaign out of the park.

1. Remember Why Customers Love Email

Despite what some experts like to claim, email marketing is far from dead. In fact, it’s actually thriving more than ever.

But before you craft your next great campaign, make sure you understand what makes email marketing so effective in the first place.

People like email because it’s quick, convenient, and is a great way to connect with their favorite brands. Through an email, a subscriber can learn about deals, product updates, and more.

In short: email is useful, even if it’s asynchronous. If you’re still not convinced, you can learn more here about the engagement potential.

2. Create a Template

Since marketing emails are here to stay, you can rest assured that you’ll end up sending more in the future.

To save yourself time, create a few templates so all you have to do is fill in the blanks with your great content.

3. Personalize The Subject Line

Since we receive so many emails in a given day, most of us will just skim through our inbox clicking ‘Read’ on almost everything.

To combat this trend, some marketers recommend personalizing the subject line with the user’s name. Though it’ll take a bit of extra time, your effort isn’t in vain.

Studies found that personalized subject lines increased open rates by between 50% and 58%.

4. Demand Your Audience’s Attention

A name isn’t always enough to catch audience attention, though. You’ll still need to be smart about coming up with compelling subject lines.

A good subject line encourages the reader to take immediate action or inspires them to open the email based on puzzling or humorous phrasing.

If you’re not quite sure how your subject lines stack up, it’s always possible to test them before blasting your message to your subscribers.

5. Preview Before Publishing

Always, always, always double-check your draft before publishing!

From an embarrassing typo to formatting errors to missing images, there’s a lot that can go wrong. And you might not always catch it when you’re creating the email.

Avoid losing your credibility by running your copy through a spellchecker. Then, make sure the email’s formatting is correct (and works on mobile devices).

6. Less is More

Be careful about sending too many emails. Remember, subscribers’ inboxes are already inundated with too much content.

Spamming them is only going to drive them to click ‘unsubscribe’.

7. Don’t Forget Your Call-To-Action

Last but not least, make sure each email ends with a compelling call-to-action that inspires the reader to take action.

It doesn’t need to be complicated. Something like telling a reader to reach out to your business or linking to a piece of content is more than sufficient.

Follow These Email Marketing Tips For a Successful Campaign

Creating a quality email marketing campaign requires some trial and error. If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Pay attention to your metrics and keep these email marketing tips in mind — you’ll grow your subscriber base in no time.

We love helping businesses reach their full potential, and we’d like to help yours! Get in touch today and learn how our marketing services can help you reach the top.